Update from v5 to v9: lowering the rating from 3.5 to 3

Rating: 3, Translation: 5

[Rating/Translation scale: 5 = almost all readers may enjoy / infrequent minor errors. 4 = large majority of readers may enjoy / frequent minor errors or infrequent major errors, no difficulty to read. 3 = 50% of readers may enjoy / frequent major errors, unable to understand some sentences or a paragraph in a chapter. 2 = niche audience may enjoy / unable to understand moderate portion of a chapter. 1 = portion of niche audience... more>> may enjoy / unable to understand most of a chapter.]

A 14-y.o. Orphan farm-boy in a fantasy world goes to the dungeon city to become an adventurer. In this world, adventurers receive game-like levels, stats, and abilities through tattoos given by patron gods who have descended from another dimension. The MC starts off with no experience, being the sole member of a new goddess's guild, with the goal of becoming a hero with a harem.

Positives: Feels like a full-fledged novel series: full scenes and full storyline. Interesting mechanics on how adventuring works. MC starts off at zero, and has to overcome challenges each time he wants to advance to the next level. There seems to be a surprise in the backstory to the MC, but the author takes a very long time to reveal occasional hints.

Major Negatives: Some readers may dislike the MC. He has a cheat ability to level up dozens of times faster than anyone else. Almost every girl falls for him (usually for no reason), while he is totally oblivious and awkward around girls. He is extremely naive or impulsive. He is always stammering with exaggerated body language. His personality does not change, he does not get any less naive or oblivious even after 9 volumes.

The story's setting is bizarre and very depressing. The story seems to target teens, but the setting is more about personal violence, rather than typical adventuring/fantasy violence. The dungeon city is lawless. People murder, assault, kidnap/r*pe each other, sometimes on orders of their gods, often with no consequence. Adventurers are like s*aves to their gods; they can only leave their guild with permission or run away. Many of the story arcs surround these types of violence, yet the MC never gets any more street smart. Although MC gains levels/income/harem, the world never improves and stays depressing/lawless.

There are s*x s*aves and implied r*pe, but for some reason the author keeps calling the victims prostit**es. I don't know if this is some kind of cultural thing, like the Japan WWII "comfort women" issue.

Minor negatives: The story's scope is small. The setting is limited to the dungeon city, and the dungeon below the city. There's no romance, just scenes of MC being embarrassed, and the girls being shy or jealous of each other. Fighting scenes have annoying yelling or animal sounds in every page, or these overused sentences that are just exclamation marks. There are long explanations that I start skimming over.

Overall: Fair fantasy story about adventurers/dungeon diving. There are some major and minor issues, but they become more and more obvious when reading past volume 5 (which is where the anime stops). Personally, I eventually got tired of the MC and the story, but I think at least half of fantasy readers would disagree with me.

Other info: The anime goes through volumes 1 through 5. There are currently 11 volumes. Yen Press has translated 9 volumes, and you may need to read those as the fan translations are legally not available. <<less

A true masterpiece of a novel. If you haven't read Danmachi yet, you are truly missing out. If by the time you finish reading this review you still haven't decided to read the novel, watch the anime and come back!

Here are some core points:

The protagonist is not OP from the get go, but he grows at an incredible pace and does his best to overcome the obstacles on his path. I can almost guarantee that even if you solely read novels with OP protagonists, you will love this one. On... more>> the other hand, even if you hate OP protagonists, you will probably still love it.

All side characters are well developed and interesting. There are no filler characters, and all of them play their roles properly.

The world itself is very simple, and yet, very captivating. This is a dungeon-crawler novel, but this does not mean that all the events take place in a dungeon. You will see plenty of world development, however it is on a much smaller scale than in other novels (In Danmachi, this is a very good thing tho.).

The story progresses at an amazing pace. I never got bored while reading this novel.

The development of the protagonist is apparent. In most novels, the protagonist pretty much remains the same person from beginning to end. This is not the case in Danmachi. You will see clear differences between Bell in vol 1 and Bell in vol 11, and the growth itself is not spontaneous but well-paced.

The action scenes are some of the best out there. And by best, I don't mean tons of explosions and flashy spells, I mean that you actually experience the battle as if you were the protagonist. You experience all the emotions behind Bell's decisions and actions, as well as all the pain he goes through.

Danmachi has a decent sense of humor (if you like silly humor that is). At times it actually made me laugh, and it is worth mentioning that it is incredibly hard to make me laugh.

Lastly, from the start, the protagonist is by no means a genius. He is kinda average, with an inclination towards being a bit too simple, due to how innocent he is. But this is also part of said character development, as he noticeably grows as the story progresses.

All in all, if you don't like fantasy and character growth, then Danmachi is probably not for you. However, I believe that there are very few people that would not enjoy danmachi. <<less

This light novel is a beast! The author cuts all the bullsh*t and tells you a fairy tail story about Bell Cranel and his friends. There is no filler words in this novel. Translation is done flawlessly! You won't find plot holes in this light novel, the story is air tight. There is an anime adaptation of this light novel that is beautifuly done, for those that aren't into books, the anime follows closely the books story, and for those that can't get enought of the light novel I recommand... more>> watching the anime! <<less

Okay.

A light novel that has a lot of potential at first. It's still okay, but as we progress through the story, let's just say some things don't work out that well.

Let's start from the MC.

• • Bell is your average harem protagonist, it means that he's dense, naive at times but is getting all the girls.

But don't get me wrong yet.

• • He's not at all a prime wish fulfillment type of MC where he's just doing everything he wants, he's actually in the quite good area. He's a zero to hero type of MC but with crazy potential. Overall his personality is like a guy who just can't see other people suffer, he will help them no matter what, no matter how dangerous the situation is.

• • Sure he seemed to be reckless. But all his actions are pretty justified with his relentless personality, and he puts absolute effort in everything and is smart in battle. And I think that's what likable about him. Think of this like most old heroism tales, he's idealistic but he's able to live it up with his efforts. It's kinda silly to look at those kind of person, but is admirable nonetheless because he just had this spartan energy.

Now there's a lot of things that we should criticize. Such as,

• • World building : is meh. Up until 17 volume, the whole novel is just all about the city of Orario and the infamous Labyrinth. Even though there's countless nations, gods, people out there, the author doesn't really tell us much about the world outside of the Orario. There are some moments where the plot is taken place in the outside world but only for like background story for some characters, and not really much info can be attained. OOT -------->
    Spoiler

    (That's a shame, it's like Attack on Titan past Return to Shiganshina arc, there's just a lot of potential for world building, but instead of constructing on the massive worldbuilding, exploring the world in AoT, everything just narrowed down into war between nations or Eldian vs Marley. And Isayama doesn't even bother tell us anything about other nations, the world situation, it's just Eldian vs Marleyan, Paradis vs Marley all the time.)

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• • Power creep:
    Spoiler

    This series handles power creep in a pretty lame way. Like, Bell is already level 4 when the rest of the party is still level 2 or even level 1. I think up until vol 15, he's even at the near end of level 4, from just how crazy his battle with Juggernaut. Bell is just progressing too fast. At this pace, if the party's development rate is just as normal as most normal adventurers do, then the gap is just too big and honestly I just don't know what they're gonna do late in the story.

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• • Power system:
    Spoiler

    in like vol 13 & 14, the author just straightly abused his own power system that he himself created. I remember someone said that only Ottar's shockwaves is able to defeat level 4 monsters. And I confirmed it myself by reading Familia Chronicles. But how the party managed to survive the rampage from a level 6 monster Amphisbaena is just beyond my understanding.

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• • Plot Armor: The author does that for the sake of plot armor.
    Spoiler

    First of all, the average level in that party is level 2 or 3 with Aisha being level 4. Haruhime has this level boosting ability, but even that has limited use and only boosted your level by 1. And Bell is not even there. How everyone survived with no death is just ridiculous. There is a literal level 1 & 2 there fighting against level 6 gigantic monster.

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  • Art: No, this isn't a critic. I just want to say the illustrations are amazing. Such is expected from Suzuhito Yasuda.

That being said, I won't rate this 3. Why? Because author is very skillful in describing the battle scene. It's quite addictive reading up how Bell clashed with all his enemies. Vol 14 has about 400+ pages and most of it consisted of the battle scene, and yet I was able to read this book in just a few hours. These kind of moments get you absorbed.

I don't think the series is being explicit. Like having fetish bs, straight disrespecting women or what, not really. S*avery and prostitution exist in this novel yes, but I feel like the author take this kind of topic in a somewhat soft way? This novel tried to stay away from being straight dark because well, pure heroism tale.

And really, those kind of thing exist in the past in real life y'know. And since this series is closely related with Norse, Greek and other mythology, I think I'd say it's quite accurate. The civilization is like way back, so things like s*avery is a common thing.

And I don't think girls just fall in love with Bell for like no reason. That's wrong.

• • Hestia: falls in love with him because he's literally her first follower and say, some things must have happened when 2 people from the opposite s*x is being together, alone just two of them, for a long time. 'Aight, I don't mean in that way. They don't go wooing each other.

• • Haruhime: because Bell saved her life even if knowing that she's a prostitute, though in actuality, they revealed that she's still a virgin.

• • Lily: well I don't really remember. I think she scammed him or betrayed him, but Bell is still being kind with her. Plus, Bell also saved her from her familia.

• • Syr:
    Spoiler

    I mean, it's Freya. She deemed his soul as pure and then proceed to disguise herself as Syr in order to get close with Bell. And you know the rest.

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• • Ryuu: with just how so seemingly admirable Bell was in volume 13-14 with his usual damn relentless personality, it's pretty obvious that she would crush on him. His battle with Juggernaut is really good and once again I'd say, he's being really really relentless.

There's more girls in the series that is in love with him, but discussing it further just makes me look like a creep.

With how this series being not a wish fulfillment type of novel and just how good the author is at describing the battle, even if it has some bullsh*t like the generous plot armor, 4.0 is a pretty deserved score. In the scale of 1-10, I will probably give 7.8 - 8.0.

That's a good score, I'll instantly give 3.0 for novels like Overlord where it's just a blatant wish fulfillment or the MC being complete hypocrite.

Unless Omori f*cked this novel even further that is.