Last time on DanMachi, Bell made it to Level 4, which increased Hesita Familia’s overall rank to D. This means only one thing: Fetch quests! Now, they have to go to the Dungeon every day, get to a new floor, and come back with a bunch of crap to prove that they actually did it! Today, they enter Floor 25, a beautiful, watery paradise. However, on this floor is an enhanced version of the rare moss huge, which has gotten stronger by gaining EXP from other monsters. It deceives the party and they get separated from Bell. Bell meets a new Xenos mermaid named Mari, and she helps him reunite with his friends in time for him to fight the kids huge head-on. He uses a new combination of Fire Bolt and Argonaut to one-shot it like a boss. With their new victory, the team begins to head out of the Dungeon. But on the Floor 18 town, someone pops up saying that there’s been a murder! This would be setup for an arc where Bell is framed for some BS reason. But fortunately, the witness saw conclusively who did it: an elf named Gale Wind…
…whom at the time, I had completely forgotten was Lyu’s adventurer name! I don’t remember much of her backstory (even though it hasn’t even been a year since I read earlier volumes. Or, heck, it might be a marketing ploy to get you to read the Lyu Chronicle spinoff), but apparently, she killed some people, and that’s why she was working at the bar (i.e. to hide). Key word “was”, for she’s also vanished at around the time of the murder. That’s not incriminating at all.
Meanwhile, Cassandra has another prophecy, this time one where everyone dies. She more or less spends most of the volume perseverating on it, which doesn’t offer any help.
Of all the characters here, Lyu is the one who gets the character development this time. Unfortunately, this is probably one of the weakest character arcs in DanMachi up to this point. This series wasn’t too great on originality, but her backstory felt particularly checklist-y (professional term) to me. I didn’t feel any strong emotions this time around, which is weird, given that I’ve known Lyu much longer than Wiene from the previous arc. You probably get better context on this whole thing if you read the Lyu Chronicle stuff, but that feels really… jerkish, especially to me, who already has enough crap to be spending money on, and cannot work spinoffs into my budget.
Heck, even the boss battle in this volume felt like torture porn more than anything else. DanMachi is admittedly a series that’s fueled by it, but- I don’t know- something felt off about it this time. The cliffhanger ending at least shows some promise for this new arc.
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Verdict: 7.8/10
I’m sorry, but this is probably one of the weakest volumes of DanMachi thus far. Lyu’s backstory felt meh to me, and there really wasn’t that much going on. But hey, every long-running series has its bumps in the road. Plus, whatever arc immediately followed the Xenos was destined to feel underwhelming anyway. Let’s just hope that this is the ONLY bump in the road for a while.
Weeb Revues 