Danmachi is back with its third season! And I must say the pilot episode, while a bit fast paced, is still a good adaptation despite trimming several scenes.
First off, they have obviously emphasized the interactions between Wiene and the Hestia Familia. The Vouivre girl’s scenes are done well, even better than the novel, especially how she acts around Bell. She is cuter in this adaptation, more adorable, and Hadaka Rina(Last Order from A Certain Scientific Railgun, Silica from Sword Art Online) is perfect fit for her voice.
One thing that the anime did better was the scene where Wiene accidentally injured Bell. The suddenness of it, all the blood that gushed out from Bell’s arm, was perfectly adapted and enhanced. And for the first time since season 1, I feel like J.C. Staff is taking an arc more seriously than the previous season.
The rest of the episode is mostly spot on, though they glossed over the conversation with Hephaistos, and the meeting with Miach and Takemikazuchi is only briefly adapted. The trip from when they first encountered Wiene to their return at Hearthstone Manor is also removed. However, that is just really a minor scene altogether, and totally not necessary to the plot.
As usual with J.C. Staff’s adaptation of Danmachi, Bell’s inner thoughts and monologues are mostly absent, particularly his opinion on Wiene and their situation. However, they have offset this by focusing on the Wiene scenes as mentioned above, so I can actually let this slide.
Now they have removed and trimmed two scenes in this episode, one at the very beginning and the other near the end. The first one is the full encounter of Bell and Wiene. In the novel, Bell actually left Wiene the first time after seeing her due to his turmoil of being unable to kill a crying monster girl. But in this episode, they combined the very beginning of their first encounter to their second encounter when Bell had a change of heart and decided to save Wiene instead.
The second scene is not removed, but it is heavily trimmed, probably due to time constraints. In the novel, the meeting of Hermes Familia went for quite longer than what the anime adapted. And they removed the part where some of the members encountered real talking monsters during a raid at an illegal trading den, and they were left shaken by the way they saw how the monsters were treated aside from the fact that they could speak.
For me, I wish they could have kept these two scenes together. Probably move the Hermes meeting in the next episode while fully adapting the Bell and Wiene encounter. The latter because it shows Bell’s actual growth, and the former because it is relevant to the plot and shows more of how Adventurers think about the monsters they kill. Nevertheless, these aforementioned cut and removed scenes barely affected the story as a whole, so it’s still good.
The animation in this episode is good and crisp, though since this is just the pilot and we are still in the middle of a pandemic, I terribly expect it to go down in quality. But I’m hoping that the studio can maintain this quality. As far as opening song goes, I’m not a fan of this anime’s opening once more simply because I prefer something epic, so there’s that.
Overall, the first episode of Danmachi’s third season is a good pilot episode despite some flaws. Definitely a solid 8/10.