Is it Wrong to Have a Title for a Light Novel that is Not Two Lines Long and Describes the Premise of the Show with as Many Words as Possible?Danmachi says no. It also has no problem being a shameless representation of what light novels are all about; not limited to the ridiculously long titles other books would use as the synopsis in the back cover. So yeah, what do otakus want today? Videogames? Ok. Lolis and tits? Fine. Some generic fantasy land with a generic main character, who is otherwise special? Sure. Just take a big marker and draw a fat vertical line in the checklist of clichés without bothering to verify anything, for Danmachi doesn’t try to exclude anything, or include anything more.So why the hell am I even reviewing this thing if it’s so bland and mediocre? If it’s the way I describe it, then nobody will care about and it would go unnoticed. OH I WISH THAT WAS THE CASE but it isn’t. Danmachi happens to be by far the most popular title of the season it came out. Not even the Fate / Stay Night hype was anywhere near the amount of attention this one got out of nowhere. And it won’t fade away from memory any time soon either, thanks to the obsessive nature of anime fans. For you see, all it takes for them to get excited, is to find a single thing that visually stands out. If they do, there is no end to what they will do with it. In Danmachi’s case, that would be a ribbon. Yes, you heard me, a ribbon. Just place it under your boobs and VOILA LET’S HAVE A QUATRILLION COSPLAYS ABOUT IT. And thus came the plague of the endless Hestia cosplayers, who couldn’t stop dressing like her, or drawing her simplistic design, consisting of just a single colored white dress with a blue ribbon under her boobs. How the devil does that make her remotely interesting? Because she is a loli with huge breasts, skintight clothes that easily make her boobs and panties show, she has epic level powers to undo all your mistakes, is obedient to the main character, and lives with him in the same room, massaging his body and even hugging him as they sleep together! SHE IS MY WAIFU! COME HERE BRESTIA!But come on, there has to be more to the character than that, right? I mean, she is a goddess for crying out loud, and there is a whole world of magic, deities, and dungeons out there. Isn’t she part of a much bigger scheme or something?Yes, you are right, she is. She is a different incarnation of Asuna, the protagonist is another Kirito, the world is another Sword Art Online, and of course both stories are light novels. So as you see, Danmachi is a spin-off of one of the most famous anime of all times, that otakus consider a masterpiece. Thus all its fame is excused and well-earned since…… Wait, no it’s not. Danmachi is no spin-off of SAO. They have nothing but very superficial similarities. Oh, that’s right, the protagonist is voiced by the same actor who did Kirito. The otakus are right; Danmachi is SAO! Also, just like all successful light novels such as SAO, it is full of interesting ideas, presented in the most basic way and never elaborated, so the fans can imagine any crap they like about them. The more specific the world becomes, the more solid it feels, which is exactly what we do not want from our power fantasies. We want them to be vague, so they will always bend to how we like them to be at any given moment.This is also why our protagonist is so bland. We need to imagine him being as we are; the more personality he has, the harder it is to self-insert and believe we are him, as he goes around collecting harem girls. Because that is what we wish our lives were like; being liked by all the girls, even if we have no personality. But we also need to be able to win them somehow, and that is why we need a power no other man can possess. In the case of Bell, the hero of Danmachi, it’s a skill that makes him level up a trillion times faster than anyone else, and the ability to fuel his special attacks with the power of waifu love, so he can win against any opponent, regardless of how powerful he is. Sounds broken and unfair for everyone else, and also boring because you know the protagonist will always triumph by using asspulls? Yes, but who gives a crap if it makes you win all the time and get all the wet pussycats without having a personality?
I could spend a few paragraphs describing other characters, events, and areas, but I see no point in doing that, since they do not deserve it. Nobody else matters beyond the special blandness that is Bell, all other girls cover different fetishes but are otherwise no more interesting than Brestia, and all events follow the exact same pattern of being resolved with asspulls, regardless of their set-up or level of threat. The amount of thought put into the script, is one tenth of what I’ve spent in writing this review.
I could spend some digital ink in talking about the production values, but I also see no point in doing that if the actual show is so painfully uninteresting. No amount of pretty colors and nice sounds can make up for a crappy script or a stereotypical roster of meh characters. It’s ok looking and sounding if that is what you only care about in your power fantasies. But that is all it is.
Now go back to spending 30 seconds drawing Brestia and her boob ribbon. Do it while it’s still somewhat relevant. By the time the second season came out, most of the hype was gone, because the otakus jumped ship to some other generic power fantasy. Danmachi got lucky by coming out during a season that had nothing else to derp about, but once other derp things existed during the sequel, Brestia and her ribbon were already used toilet paper. She’s now a mostly dusty dakimakura, abandoned on a moisty basement after getting smeared with a gallon of otaku semen. It’s left there, as an exhibit of a time when anime fans had nothing better to do besides crossdressing as a loli with a blue ribbon under their fake boobs.
Screenshots
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