Sword Oratoria: Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side

Alt title: Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darou ka Gaiden: Sword Oratoria

TV (12 eps)
3.714 out of 5 from 8,330 votes
Rank #3,012
Sword Oratoria: Is it Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? On the Side

Ais Wallenstein’s life changed forever on the fateful day she met Bell Cranel, but while Bell's story launched him into his future, her story sends her deeper into her past. Within the dungeon’s treacherous depths, Ais and the other members of the Loki Familia encounter an irregularity that could threaten not just their party, but their entire world.

Source: Sentai Filmworks

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Reviews

Rbastid
3

Oh treasure hunting, where everyone sets out in search of boobs, boobs and boobs, or at least that’s what you’d think when watching yet another show that focuses less on plot and more on filling in that time period before you’re old enough to buy pornography. Story - 5/10 Sold as a side story to the original series, we’re supposed to be given a glimpse at what a real familia, one run by Loki and starring “the Sword Princess” Ais Wallenstein, looks and acts like. What we instead got was a story that went no where, more useless vanity shots, and a series that strayed far from the adventure show that drew us all in the first time around. The show starts off with the familia already at the level fifty safety zone, which means all the fun of getting down there, and the need for the writers and animators to show some creativity, is skipped for us. While there the area is attacked by a new species of monster, one which has the ability to invade a monster free zone, as well as having attacks that are more powerful than anything known to exist. Due to the unexpected damage the group took, they head back to town, experiencing weird occurrences of monsters being out of their designated areas on the way up. That’s where our story crosses with the original, as Ais has to save Bell from a Minotaur they weren’t able to contain. Back in the city Ais mopes around because she hasn’t leveled up, while the group’s young mage Lefiya does the same, because instead of writing an original plot they decided to just give her the same exact one as Bell, where she gets saved by Ais and then feels she needs to also level up to protect the one she has a crush on. At this point we have another crossover with the original, the out of control monsters from Monsterphilia. It’s here where we get some good story information regarding why these monsters and dungeons exist, pretty much all as entertainment for the gods to watch, as well as the release of the monsters being a plan to lure out Bell, as the gods believe there is something special about him. For the rest of the series we deal with pretty much one storyline, though in the true fashion of this series it’s ruined by useless filler and unanswered questions. After the tough battle against the new monsters, Ais needs money to repair her unbreakable sword, so she heads down into the dungeon with a few familia members to find some items to sell.  While there they stumble across the murder of a high level adventurer who was on a mission to find and deliver an item. Ais and Lefiya eventually find the courier who he delivered the item to, a young girl named Lulune. She shows them the strange orb she was given, which contains a monster inside, and the three are soon confronted by a cloaked woman who demands the item.  A fight ensues, which proves to be one of the toughest Ais has ever had to take on, and during the battle the woman refers to Ais as Aria, the name of her mother. After a protracted fight, where other members of the familia eventually come to turn the tides in Ais’ favor, the cloaked woman takes off, leaving our heroes to head back home to figure out what’s going on. On the way up the group runs into a floor boss, and determined to prove her strength to herself, Ais takes it on in a solo battle, becoming the only person ever to do so and also becoming the familia’s fourth level six member in the process. Now Ais’ main goal is find the truth about the redheaded monster tamer who stole the orb from them and of her mother’s true identity and fate, a journey that first has her travel halfway down from where they were, for a useless battle, all to be told to go even further down for yet another useless battle. Before that can happen Ais has a few more run in’s with Bell where she see’s how quickly he’s been leveling, and is now able to use magic without even chanting; so she agrees to help him grow through sword training. This makes Lefiya jealous, as she wants to be Ais’ only focus, so in order to grow and gain her attention, she decides to start training with the guild’s other mage elf, so that she can become a real help while on expeditions. The training Ais and Bell have pays off in another crossover with our original series, as Bell is now able to single handedly beat a minotaur. The climax of our show starts after being told they can find the truth about Ais’ mother on the Fifty Ninth floor. The familia, along with some help from other adventurers, make their way down to the levels few others have ever visited. This interesting sounding journey is no where to be found though, as Ais makes a detour to again save Bell, and then suddenly our entire group has made it down into the Deep Levels beyond the fiftieth floor. When they finally arrive at their destination it looks nothing like what was described by the one familia who has seen it. Altered by evil spirits, the level has monsters who act just like adventurers, with the ability to cast magic and control other mobs. Now it seems as if we’re getting somewhere interesting, but instead all we’re getting to is another overdone fight with a big giant monster and lots of shouting. And of course everything ends with little miss worthless summoning up the power to save the day, because they had to make this trash character be our ultimate hero, one who defeats the baddest boss and brings forth what we expected all along, an ending with absolutely no closure that forces us to buy the next money grabbing series they decide to make if we want real answers. It feels like the whole point of the show wasn’t to showcase Ais, show comparisons between the Hestia Familia and the Loki Familia, or just to reminisce about the fun of the level grind and reaching a new achievement, no the main point of our story was to show that jealousy makes you stronger, in the case of the psychopath Lefiya. Her power and desire keeps growing every time she sees Bell succeed, which doesn’t lead to a healthy competition, but just to a weirdo doing things that would almost make it seem like she’ll be the villain in the next season. Bell, even though he did have a crush on Ais, was for the most part leveling up for himself, as he wanted to no longer be a weakling dependent on others, Lefiya was spite leveling. It’s not all bad, I did enjoy how they tried to tie in scenes from the original series, to help us understand at what point and time this was all happening, but they unfortunately just gave us the same exact scenes, rarely expanding on it or really showing us Ais’ point of view. They also had that very tiny bit of useful information about the gods, but again without expanding on it there wasn’t much added to the overall universe. Animation - 4/10 While much of the animation resembles the first season, this time around it just lacked the locations and feel of an MMO that we sometimes were treated to. More so than the original, which seems almost impossible to do, this lot of episodes made it appear as if the animators were even more focused on drawing the female figure than actually creating an interesting world for us. We’re given a handful of locations, even less new monsters, but many many more scenes of girls squeezing their own chests or having their clothing ripped off. I almost feel as if watching this show would create a whole new wave of feminists, as this apparently one of a kind fighter, “The Sword Princess,” has the basis for most of her fights be so that the animators have an excuse to tear off her pants. I could almost look past the reuse of so many scenes if everything else didn’t point to this version of the show being a bad money grab from fans. Sound - 3/10 The opening and closing songs for this iteration of the series are so terrible it almost hurts. The first is a squeaky and annoying song that I can see fitting many anime series, but not this one. The real pain come in the closing song, it sounds like a high pitched, mush mouthed child trying to, well I don’t want to call it singing for fear of insulting that ability. I can’t see how they made a series that obviously is focused on fidgety teen boys, but with music for infants. The music played within the series is pretty good, well when it’s actually there. Unlike the first season I didn’t get that sense of an RPG, where background music is always playing to help bring the environment to life. Most of the great V.O. artist that took us along the journey in the first thirteen episodes take a back seat to some of the more annoying voices in anime. The two that really make you want to hit the mute button are our Bell replacement Lefiya and the leader of the familia Loki. Both just have that screechy and overly comical sound that I’ve come to hate from all the other characters voiced by these same actors, who go series after series without trying to make any discernible differences in those they voice. Others that aren’t great, but were less prominent throughout the series, were Ais and the group’s resident “Bro,” Bete. What’s also disappointing is that when the show incorporated artists I generally enjoy, like Cynthia Martinez, they still weren’t as good as they usual are. The only saving grace to the audio in this series was that I believe our party’s Gimli ripoff, Gareth, is voiced by the same guy who does McGruff the Crime Dog in the insurance commercial. Characters - 4/10 So most who watch this series will already know who Ais is, a young girl who has become something of a legend, as she’s already attainted level five by the time she’s turned sixteen. Now after a particularly grueling battle she starts to wonder why she can’t hit level six, and in turn goes out on reckless expeditions and tries to solo monsters in order to level up. During one of these expeditions she gets into a fight with what seems like another adventurer, one who refers to her as Aria, the name of her mother. The battle is tougher than others Ais has had, but it ends in a stalemate, so now Ais is determined to best her new foe and also find out what the connection to her mother is. Through this process of leveling and searching for information we learn very little about Ais. Outside of finding out she lost her parents at a young age, and later that her mother was a spirit who is held in almost as high a regard as the gods themselves.  Although the show would have you believe Ais is the main character, in reality the person the show revolves most around is Lefiya, and boy is she just an awful character to lead a show. Where Bell was a new adventurer, trying to level up so that he can both impress Ais and be a protector, Lefiya is a seasoned mage who has no idea what she’s doing and instead follows Ais around like a creepy stalker. Too much of the series has her fantasizing about our princess and being jealous of anyone she’s around. They wanted to integrate her and a story similar to Bell, of her leveling up to impress someone, so that she could have a big ending, but instead she was just a drag on the story and could have easily been replaced by a more interesting member of the familia. Most of the members of the familia are those we know from the series itself. There’s the group’s goddess Loki, a horribly annoying character who is there just to have someone molest the family members and make pointless dirty jokes. Tiona and Tione, the twin Amazon type members who, again, are just there for the breast jokes and running around in next to nothing. Lastly there’s Bete, the jerk wolf man who was a bully to Bell in season one, and whose role doesn’t change much here. Of those in the Loki familia, the three senior members, who have all attained level six, are the most interesting and, for the most part, least focused on characters. With so little story occurring in the series they could have replaced some of the pointless filler with stories of these three, how they’ve made it this far in their leveling and some of their exploits along the way. But then again that would need to involve having a creative team that had some idea how to write an interesting and original story. The new enemy created for this show is pretty standard and not very well written. Revis is a monster tamer who no one has ever crossed paths with. Despite being unknown she is very powerful and has the ability to create monsters that are a handful for even the greatest adventurers. After calling Ais by her mother’s name, she becomes the target of our “Sword Princess,” though she also has the desire to raise her level in order to defeat our blonde heroine. Unfortunately they don’t do a good job of actually building her character beyond that, pretty much being nothing more than a lazy plot device that leads to an unfinished story. For some reason they needed to put in a new version of the exceedingly annoying Liliruca, this time under the name Lulune. She’s another character just there to get in the way and make the audio hard to listen to. While they tried to at least build up the characters a bit more than they did in the original series, too many of them were just worthless, and those who weren’t either were ignored or in Ais’ case, left with a million questions.  Overall - 3/10 When it came to the first season I had commented that the show was fun to watch and made you look forward to the next episode, though it had very little value in rewatching it. This time around I can’t say the same. The show seemed to be more focused on Loki’s perversions or Lefiya’s fantasies about Ais, than an actual engaging story. There was a very good plot for them to run with, as well as the overall fun of having these parties dungeon crawl and act like the characters of an RPG, but instead they just tried to shoot for an audience that considers the same repeated boob joke “high art.” For what they were trying to do they should have just given us a small three episode OVA, but then again it’s tough to have an OVA that just creates a million questions and leaves all them unanswered. While the original story ended with a lot to be desired plot wise, it at least had a proper arc and ended in a way that would almost make you feel satisfied, but kept you looking forward to the next season and Bell’s next adventure. This time around the story was left incomplete and seemed as if they wanted to force you to buy the next installment. In no way can this be looked at as a complete season, it was instead one pointless battle and a hint at a future story. Positive Reasons for Score:  * There was a small amount of plot information that’s important to the story.  * Introducing member’s of the Loki Familia, who are an interesting group.  * A decent plot, though it went almost no where and wasn’t written in an interesting way. Negative Reasons for Score:  * It’s almost a copy of the original, but trade Bell and Lilli, for Ais and Lefiya.  * Lefiya is far more psychotic than most of the villains in the anime world.  * Overall there was little point to this being more than a three episode O.V.A. Ways to make the show better:  * Don’t start the group already at the dungeon’s end, show us the way down, at least a little bit, or do so during their second trip down.  * Make the crossovers between this and the main series quicker, instead of replaying full scenes.  * Don’t leave Ais’ past as such a huge mystery, considering the same plot is being used for Bell.

LittleRosie
6

I was waiting with bated breath for a season 2 of Danmachi and yet, when the actual season was aired I was left sorely disappointed. Here I was, hoping beyond hope, Bell's story would continue and we'd get to see how much he would grow and prosper, along with just how much Freya would become obssesed with him, and lastly how Zeus is his Grandpa.  Instead of that feast, I get the same story but from the Loki Familia's POV with a little more added in. Even worse? They used A LOT of footage from the previous season! They didn't even bother to make new content for some of it, for example- Bell's Minator Fight. The entire scene was straight out of S1 with the only change being  that it was cut. I was not a happy camper. Plus, to top it all off, they added in a totally new character and tried to insert her into S1 even though she was clearly not there. The addition of Lefiya just totally ruined it for me. Her becoming the new MC and supplanting Bell just made it all boring and shallow in my mind. What was the point? I almost gave up on watching it after the first episode, but then my brother informed me that Bell was in the latter half of the season more so I continued, thinking, "Oh, maybe it'll get better!". I was sorely mistaken. The only times we saw Bell, was when he was training, fighting the minator, and the one new scene with him, Aiz, and Hestia. That made me pretty said. All in all, I guess is was okay. The animation was great- except that they reused too much footage. The sound was really good, though a few things sounded a bit strange, but that's perfectly acceptable. The characters were disappointing and so was the story, in my opinion at least. Others might disagree and that is perfectly fine- you do your own thing and so will I. I just hope they come out with a Season 3 that continues Bell's story a lot quicker than this season took to come out!

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