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(The) Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter (TV).




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Stark700



Joined: 30 Jan 2012
Posts: 11762
Location: Earth
PostPosted: Fri Jan 08, 2021 11:40 am Reply with quote


(The) Hidden Dungeon Only I Can Enter (TV)

Genres: action, adventure, fantasy
Themes: ecchi, harem

Plot Summary: Noir is the son of a minor noble with very little to his name other than a job offer–which is canceled before he can even start his first day. He does possess one rare trait, though: the magical ability to consult with a great sage, even if using the skill gives him terrible headaches. Unsure of what his future holds, he accesses the sage for advice on how to move forward and is directed to a secret dungeon filled with rare beasts and magical items. It is here that Noir will train, compiling experience and wealth, until he's powerful enough to change his fate.
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Anime adaptation of the light novel.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15580
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sat Jan 09, 2021 5:07 am Reply with quote
Episode 1

Probably a good idea to ask permission before just deciding to alter someone's body on your own presumption. This being when he just decides to shrink the boobs of his childhood friend when she complained about a sore back. I do wonder if he can like learn anything, why can't he just ask the great sage how he can lessen headaches when using the skill, alter it with his new abilities to not do so, or ask how to release his master from the chains to set her free.

I kind of like the designs, but I kind of fear that this is going to be a lot of broken power fantasy stuff and not really well written female characters. Not that our main character is a well of written character.
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camseyeview140



Joined: 26 Jan 2021
Posts: 241
PostPosted: Fri Jan 29, 2021 11:17 pm Reply with quote
This is, so far, one of the worst new anime of the season, it's just as sleazy as Redo of Healer, but on an entirely different awful level.

The lead sucks, the women aren't really characters, and the fantasy world itself is so boring. It's another power fantasy harem fantasy that can't even bother to have good jokes.

It has maybe one or two wrinkles that could be funny, but they have yet to, well, BE FUNNY.

It also doesn't look as good for softcore parody and fanservice. It's like no one on the team was having fun and are only doing the bare minimum.

It also has no real stakes since the powers the lead has can simply fix the situation, so all of this drama is going on and I'm like "just let the guy have a few hours with his blonde girlfriend and he will have enough....you are making all of this overly complicated by your own stupid rules.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15580
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sat Jan 30, 2021 11:49 pm Reply with quote
camseyeview140 wrote:
This is, so far, one of the worst new anime of the season, it's just as sleazy as Redo of Healer, but on an entirely different awful level.

The lead sucks, the women aren't really characters, and the fantasy world itself is so boring. It's another power fantasy harem fantasy that can't even bother to have good jokes.


Agreed.

The women not really being characters is something I have especially kept in mind, because fanservice heavy shows can still have the character feel interesting. The example that comes to mind is that his childhood friend is apparently happy to kiss him and stuff, but apparently even she did not think that made them in a relationship, and she just has a lazy amount of jealousy attached. Repeated over all the other female characters, including his sister, falling in love with him. I don't even know what to say about how his teacher (chained up lady) was acting unless she happened to also be interested in girls in addition to I think he hint earlier she liked guys, but that would make her too interesting.

The comparison is there to this season's Starter Town show. Where of course the main character has a harem of girls that like him, but you have a chief who as the most powerful has strong rules, a woman with other things on her plate, a yandere who is comically unstable, and a mercenary mostly acting out of her own ambitions. You have a cast of female characters that have their own wants and desires outside of the main character, or I don't think are made to be super good. Also helps that the main character in that show has a more pure intentions for other people other than pretending there is a reason than panty shots and other fanservice.

And I feel like I bring it up too much, but even the super heavy fanservice show like Interspecies Reviewers is an okay standard. At least in that show it does away with the subtext and just says that many of the girls are prostitutes, and I would say adds to the characters by expressing that they are just doing their job.

In this show you have little sister who loves her brother just because.
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Cam0



Joined: 13 Dec 2009
Posts: 4933
PostPosted: Sat Feb 13, 2021 5:08 pm Reply with quote
I caught up with this and honestly I find this show very mildly entertaining even though it is extremely generic. It has a slightly similar vibe to the Isekai Smartphone anime from a few years back. That show was also extremely generic and made zero effort to tell a compelling story, but it somehow managed to have a certain charm to it. It was just lighthearted, good vibes all-around. This show feels a bit like that just a bit more sleazy in a way. But the sleaziness in this show feels sort of innocent and silly. Like how Great Sage's idea of getting tons of LP points through sexual gratification is to line up a bunch of girls and run by them while letting your hand touch their boobs.

The episode with the spectator army of incels was a bit face palm inducing but otherwise I've found this show to be sort of exactly what I want every season: An extremely generic LN adaption that makes no effort to be anything other than extremely generic with some lightheartedness as a cherry on top. (And the girls are cute design wise)
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camseyeview140



Joined: 26 Jan 2021
Posts: 241
PostPosted: Sat Feb 13, 2021 5:20 pm Reply with quote
I feel like this show is so close to being funny at points, but fails to be funny. Even if it wanted to just be sleazy ecchi softcore stuff, it's not well animated to be such a thing.

I keep thinking about how much better shows like How Not to Summon a Demon Lord or Konosuba are, and how this one just falls flat.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15580
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sat Feb 13, 2021 5:36 pm Reply with quote
Cam0 wrote:
The episode with the spectator army of incels was a bit face palm inducing but otherwise I've found this show to be sort of exactly what I want every season: An extremely generic LN adaption that makes no effort to be anything other than extremely generic with some lightheartedness as a cherry on top. (And the girls are cute design wise)


Yeah, that whole thing made me think that they were kind of straddling a line between making fun of these kind of people, and maybe being too empathetic. Like whether there was supposed to be some element of maybe this is what the audience are supposed to be like, hating on some other generic female characters with bad points, but swoon over the heroines that can only be charming.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15580
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sat Mar 13, 2021 2:42 am Reply with quote
Episode 10

What is wrong with this show?

This was a hot spring episode, which meant not only fanservice but a bunch of boys trying to spy on their classmates. It in general made me feel gross for having watched it. Makes me question if my taste changed, as I have kind of enjoyed some form of the joke before. But there just seemed to be an element of this episode had to try and make all of the other boys super gross in violating their classmates' privacy, so the level of pervert he is would seem good in comparison. Kind of general has made his character confusing, where he is a pervert enough to be what the series might consider relatable for what they are coming for, but innocent enough so he doesn't feel like a skeevy.

I don't even know all the girls in the episode decided to 'reward' him with letting him bathe with them while blindfolded. For one, none of the girls were actually in there yet, so there actually was no real need for him to try anything, so he just used up his life points and altered the abilities of other boys for no good reason. And they kind of just stripped this boy who passed out, and forced him into bathe with them.

There was also that element of just needing all the boys to be the worst, with the main character saying he understands as a boy too, yuck. And I guess apparently all the girls were just assumed to be happy to have this guy bathe with them. One part of the show is saying the need to protect these girls, just as the other part quite up to just showing them all get undressed.
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Melicans



Joined: 01 Feb 2012
Posts: 627
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Fri Mar 26, 2021 9:01 pm Reply with quote
Was that end anime original? I haven't read the novels but I've been reading the manga and that wasn't in where I read up to at least, so I'm guessing they either skipped ahead for the last episodes or made an original ending? Either way I'm gonna assume it means no sequel.
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
Posts: 15580
Location: Brisbane, Australia
PostPosted: Sat Mar 27, 2021 5:22 am Reply with quote
Episode 12 (finale)

It does feel a little bit sudden, and does feel like an anime original ending. Granted I probably did want to see the master let free, leaving her chained up probably would not have felt right to end with. Maybe a no win scenario.

Anyway, what really to say about this series. It is an ecchi harem anime, which gives the lead an overpowered ability, with limitations put on to create more ecchi scenarios. It leaves me wondering if I have become too much of a fuddy duddy, since I was not totally cool with how it had its ecchi, I think that I said that it left it feeling like it created weird scapegoat of other male characters to make the lead look better. The woman just feel a bit too much like objects, that they just have to fall for him. And ignoring that the show seemed fine with including his little sister among the harem, I was kind of more uncomfortable with the seeming adult women that were in such hot pursuit of this kind of average teenager. The guild lady especially in how she should see that his only real special traits were that someone gifted him these cheat abilities.

The show really feels like some author just spent a lot of time imagining different cheat abilities, and scrapped together this story, to create loose reasons for having the abilities and to not make the main character look too bad when he is incentivised to be a bit of a creep. I would have honestly been more interested to see what the master version would be for getting LP, because outside of some visuals of alcohol and riches, I don't know how it would have been. Like, would she be getting close to dudes like he would be for women, and or was she also into women, with her seeming to be rather quick to I think encourage Noir to give into the vices of some ladies. To talk about the rest of the cast, one of them kept reminding me of just a blonde Tifa. The characterisation of the female cast in general left stuff to be desired, like what they were interested in beyond bland main character, like was the childhood friend really happy with her should be a boyfriend being with other girls?

And to talk about the title, did I miss there being a reason why only he could enter the dungeon? He brought in his childhood friend later when he needed some help, but it really felt like him not sharing it with her for the entire run was him being selfish. He really couldn't share it with her, so the both of them could get stronger, and take part in the getting materials thing? It is generally why I felt like there was a disconnect between how he was supposed to be, and what his actions could end up being. Could he have also gifted his rare abilities to her? Sometimes I would ask a question why he could not use his cheat abilities to solve a problem, and although they might get there eventually, it generally felt like it took too long. Like the downsides of his sage ability, I would have thought one of the first things he would do would be to see if he could affect the ability to get rid of headaches. I also thought the show did not do a good job at getting across how bad these headaches supposedly were that he found the idea unbearable most of the time, which mostly came across as realising that it was too broken to solve any situation, and needing a reason he could not find the answer straight away.

A rating, I am probably going to hate myself, but Decent (6/10), it was not entirely bad, it had my attention even with some of the ecchi stuff, even though I would say they were not that bad. A So-so makes me think of something as indifferent, and if I am honest I don't think I was entirely indifferent, although I do wish it was better. Maybe it just seemed all the better when being compared to Redo of the Healer's rape-kun, although rating that one will probably make me hate myself again.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 24230
PostPosted: Sat Mar 27, 2021 5:28 pm Reply with quote
No need to feel humiliated and ashamed, DP - I gave this a Decent rating, too. It certainly wasn't anything special but it somehow persuaded me to hang in there until the bitter end. Yay? I did like how early on the protag would trash his dad. You don't often see that with "nice" guy characters.
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Cam0



Joined: 13 Dec 2009
Posts: 4933
PostPosted: Sun Mar 28, 2021 6:26 am Reply with quote
Guys, I feel left out, I gave this show a mere rating of So-so. The show was somehow capable of keeping my attention and give me mild entertainment, but it generally was so predictably uninspiring that it never surprised me in any way. It was exactly what I expected it to be, basically. I gave the somewhat recent The 8th son? Are you kidding me? a decent rating which is a show that feels very similar to this one, but that one felt just a little bit more competent and had some comedy in how the main character's escalating power kept inconveniencing him.
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 24230
PostPosted: Sun Mar 28, 2021 8:22 am Reply with quote
zomg, DP, Cam0 gave this show a ranking one level below ours! Let's just pretend he doesn't exist from now on. Wink
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bonbonsrus



Joined: 15 Oct 2003
Posts: 1537
Location: Michigan, USA
PostPosted: Sun Mar 28, 2021 8:47 pm Reply with quote
I thought this show was somehow slightly better than the sum of it's parts, but I'm not sure I could pin-point why. I am not the target audience for this type of show, and harem shows usually leave me pretty cold and disinterested. The plot devise to make him need to fulfill his lusts to get points was week at best, and the girls in his harem was not super interesting to me.

Why he never took cheap feels of his master incapacitated and tied up to prop up his points was both odd and unexpected (I seriously kept thinking it would happen, kudos to the show for not going there.) I'm also not a fan of milquetoast men which the protag usually came across as.

Yet, somehow, I found the show interesting usually. Tigerson was easily my favorite, somehow the look of the fierce lion with the name Tigerson and gentle personality was winning for me in a big way. The way Noir helped everyone, including his family even thought he clearly talked bad about/to his dad was nice. It somehow held my interest and I didn't dread watching it which surprised me. I'd give this a decent for sure.
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