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EP. REVIEW: Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? II

after watching the 1st episode I became really disappointed.

I think I enjoyed the first season because I had gone in with different expectations, back then I just expected a lighthearted fun watch with a bit a somewhat different art style and was surprised by the nice action choreography and the strong emotions in the red Minotaur battle, basically I came expecting for little so they over delivered.

this time around it was the oposite, I came fresh after remembering the highlights of the first season so I felt a harder crash when faced with the sub par writing. the first relevant scene in this episode revolves around a random douche mocking hestia, calling her an unaccomplished goddess that has nothing going for her except her big tits, so we must be on Bell's side, right? except, apparently the show itself doesn't because it introduces hestia for the first time with a shot of her chest, then refuses to give her any personality trait other than being a plot device for going into the party and then just do a generic over bearing jealous love interest routine. then there is the Apollo guy, I just can't respect a show that treats its audience as idiots by making the villain as blatantly cartoonishly douchey as it just did. come on, they don't have to give him a nuanced back story or whatever but they just kicked the overly blatant scumbag smug face™ into over drive. I mean, if they want to make him a dick that's fine but they don't have to shove it in our faces so hard, it makes me fell looked down upon

At least the art retains some of the charm from the first season such as the elegant lines in wallensteins' back and shoulders, and the opening suggest that there are going to be at least 2 more arcs after this one

then there is episode 2. on the one hand there was a good fill of well choreographed battle animation, but on the other the writing became even more nonsensical. I can get behind people not caring about injustice as long as it doesn't happened to their own family, I can also understand major familias not wanting to get beef with another major familia, but bro the way this played out was really stupid, it was as if all of a sudden the city became the wild wild west (while the first season did nothing to suggest that). are there no warranties at all in that city? whats with that "they will just pay the fine"? is that what they do there, fine people for attempted murder? if that's the setting they want to have fine but don't just throw it at us like it doesn't matter, elaborate and make it more palatable, gee. if they want to make us buy this ludicrous prohibition era gangster film scenario at least work harder at introducing it and justifying it. then there were the blatantly shameless inorganic shots of hestia's body admits what was supposed to be a scene filled with tension and thrill.

to be clear, I think the series is still enjoyable, if anything the action alone is enough to keep me watching and hopefully the next arcs will be better written but, oh boy, color me utterly disappointed with the quality of the writing and direction

I wonder why did the reviwer called the war games arc the best of them

Familias going to war or attacking each other has been established though. The Freya Familia attacked Ais after one of her training sessions with Bell (don’t recall if this was in the first season but this was in Sword Oratoria), and there is Ryuu’s backstory where her familia was murdered by another (group of) familia, and she killed one of the familias involved in revenge (as was introduced in the first season). The Soma familia’s shady dealings are also of a piece of this Wild West esque lawlessness. I don’t really get why this came out of left field for you.

As for the Guild, they don’t have their own military force, so if a larger familia goes on a rampage and the other larger familia aren’t inclined to intervene, they would have no way to enforce any punishments on them beyond financial. Even if they were to hire a larger familia, unless that familia is vastly stronger than them and can suppress them quickly, that would probably just make for a longer and more destructive war.

.......why?what? and how?...,

familias constantly being a dick to each other was indeed established, what wasn't established was for this town to be completely lawless, and that's what I find issue with

lets break it down.

"As for the Guild, they don’t have their own military force" then why don't they? if they are not supposed to have it then who is the one supposed to have it? how could this city had been founded without any mechanism to hold citizens accountable? do you see where I am getting at?

"so if a larger familia goes on a rampage and the other larger familia aren’t inclined to intervene they would have no way to enforce any punishments on them beyond financial" you are basically saying "if a group of people goes out an assault some one in a whim then the victim must depend on another large group of people wanting to intervene also in a whim of their own" and we are supposed to imagine everyone agreed with that when the gods sat down to decide the rules for coexistence

"Even if they were to hire a larger familia, unless that familia is vastly stronger than them and can suppress them quickly, that would probably just make for a longer and more destructive war" so the logical solution is for them to let the big mafia go rampant as they please? that's just stupid. it doesn't even take going to war to subdue them, even if Apollo familia happened to be stronger than any other single familia it couldn't possibly be stronger than all the other familias combined, all it would have taken to subdue them was a pact of ethics in which if a familia shamelessly assaulted someone as they did (hestia had not agreed to any war or competition) all the familias would band together in order to cast out the rogue familia from the town, and they would have to either behave or leave because they are not idiots and simple math says they couldn't win a war against the whole town

if they want me to buy into the world building they need to treat this society as something more functional. also, I really appreciate your concern and efforts in trying to fill me in, but you are forgetting that te real issue is that you are not supposed to make these justifications, the show is, and it didn't

Did Miach and his animal-eared archer girlfriend appear in the first season? The way they were introduced was like we were supposed to be familiar with them already, but I have no recollection of them.

thus far Loki Familia – who might reasonably be expected to help out, given that Loki and Hestia are sort-of friends – is trying to stay out of it.

Cam0 wrote:

Did Miach and his animal-eared archer girlfriend appear in the first season? The way they were introduced was like we were supposed to be familiar with them already, but I have no recollection of them.

Miach was present in the first season, can't say the same about the archer

I only know about her from the mobile game (which has a great series prequel story going on now), so unless I'm forgetting her appearance in Sword Oratoria (which I've only seen once), I'd say, no, she hasn't appeared before this season.