Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? - Season 3

   Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? (ダンジョンに出会いを求めるのは間違っているだろうか) is a fantasy harem series based on the light novel of the same name by Omori Fujino and Yasuda Suzuhito.  The third season ran 12 episodes and originally aired in the Fall of 2020.

     After the dangers in facing down two powerful Familia's in the last season lead to the Hestia Familia establishing themselves, Bell and team aren't able to kick back and relax just yet.  Through his overwhelming universal compassion, Bell rescues a mysterious monster from the dungeon, a monster who elicits human-like emotions and intelligence.  With the reluctant help of his family they sneak the unique creature back to the surface of the city and to their home.  After bestowing the name Weine on the monster, she starts to become a member of the family, causing tension with others.  No matter what they do, they can't cope to keep her existence a secret for long.

    The god overseeing the adventuring guild tasks Bell with a secret mission, revealing to the Hestia Familia the existence of many more monsters with human like existences.  The hope is that Bell and his friends can help to usher in a new era where adventurers and the monsters of the dungeon can co-exist.  Unfortunately, the insanity of a long dead architect has other plans for the benevolent idealism of a few powerful beings in the city.  Bell has to choose between his Familia's reputation and standing and the possibility of saving others that just want to live their lives peacefully with everyone else.

     Going into season three I was quite skeptical that the story could keep pushing forward in scope and importance.  Season one centered around the survival of Bell.  Season two scaled the scope of the struggle significantly, leading Bell and his small but growing band of friends to face two incredibly difficult threats from rival Familia.  It felt like the show had accelerated the threat levels too far and would have a hard time of believably increasing the dangers to the cast.  I imagined it would slide back to being a dungeon crawler like the first season, just with higher level monsters, but still not moving forward with the story.

    Instead season 3 presented a dramatic up-shift in the over all story.  The revelation that certain gods with in the city were aware and even supporting an emerging society of monsters that desire to exist beyond their banal life as experience grinding farms for the dungeon crawlers.  Bell is faced with a challenge greater than all before him, a challenge he can't exactly solve with brute force and unnatural ability.  He needs to find a way for both sectors of the shared space to co-exist.  Trough his actions, the monsters trust him to help them achieve their goal.  That hardest battle is going to be convincing his adventurer brethren and the other Familia heads that these beings are worthy of respect, differing from the creatures they have faced for centuries.  At this stage, season 3 is the strongest when it comes to story and plot development, skillfully building upon the previous seasons to push the narration forward.  Hopefully season 4 will continue this incredibly upper trajectory in narration.

    As with the other seasons, this season is widely available commercially.