Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? II

2015 was certainly an interesting year. The SCOTUS legalized gay marriage, Subway's Jared got exposed for being a pedophile, and DanMachi was about dungeons. Now, in 2019, DanMachi is not about dungeons. DanMachi is now about fanservice and whatever happened in the first four episodes. The first arc of this season is unbelievably bad. The main antagonist of the arc decides that he wants Bell for himself and challenges our protagonists to a War Game. Ignoring the comically stupid motivations of the main antagonist, this almost sounds cool, doesn't it? Except there are three episodes of setup and one episode of War Game. Fantastic! In reality, however, the terrible pacing is a blessing in disguise, as episode four is far worse than the first three episodes. In the War Game, Hestia's familia has 5 combatants, while Apollo has like 100+. But hey, who cares! Everyone in Hestia's familia can take on dozens of Apollo's fighters singlehandedly. This might make sense for Ryu, who is a much higher level adventurer than everyone else. What doesn't make sense is Welf and Mikoto being able to beat dozens of adventurers of the same level as them with literally one attack. "Oh, but Mikoto has an OP spell! Oh, but Welf has an OP magic sword!" One of the worst things a show can do is contradict its own world-building. Why were we told so much about adventurer levels only for them to get defenestrated in this episode? That's not even the worst part of what is certainly one of the worst anime episodes ever created. The worst part comes in when Bell fights Apollo's commander. That guy beat Bell to a pulp with his bare hands a couple of episodes ago, but now, Bell can beat him easily. Why? He trained pretty much offscreen for a couple of episodes! That makes him comically OP! So comically OP, in fact, that he literally beat the guy with a kick and a punch. This juvenile writing should be insulting to any fan of the first season. After those four atrocious episodes, we get two fanservice eps in a row. Unlike the creators of KonoSuba, however, the people responsible expect you to take this season seriously. Episode 5 is slice of life with a bath scene. Episode 6 is Bell hanging out with a bunch of prostitutes. Fun! I don't have a problem with fanservice in itself; but when there is no substance whatsoever behind the fanservice, that's annoying. I remember when Bell was fighting a minotaur in season one. Can we bring that back? That was pretty cool. From protagonists becoming comically OP despite doing nothing to deserve it, to the absurd ratio of "plot" to plot, this season feels like some 12-year-old's power trip. If you want to see female anime characters get objectified, go watch HDxD or something. There are plenty of way better fanservice shows. If you want good fight scenes, you won't find them here, because the animators seem to give up on animating every other fight scene. As such, there is literally nothing redeeming here, unless you like bad fight scenes and mediocre fanservice. J.C.Staff already ruined DAL and Index, and here's the latest victim of their never-ending spree of destroying beloved franchises.