Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? - Season 4

    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 22 episodes and originally aired in the Summer of 2022 and the Winter of 2023.

      The events of season 3 have not entirely resolved themselves, but for now things are back to normal in Orario.  Bell and crew have mostly saved their reputation in the resolution of the conflict between the people on the surface and the growing society of intelligent dungeon denizens.  The guild has decided to give the Hestia Familia a real and recognized quest, a quest to explore lower levels of the dungeon, in order to help establish better relations with the Xenos.  On the 25th level the mixed party is set on by a monster that has been absorbing the crystals of other defeated monsters, greatly increasing its ability.  After a long and desperate fight they see its demise and are able to head to the dungeons midway safe zone.  Unfortunately their peace is broken before long and they are trust back into the perils of the lower levels.

    A man is murdered on the outskirts of town and all signs point to the culprit being the wanted adventurer, the Gale Wind.  Bell and the rest know this as the alternate identity of the gloomy elven barmaid Ryu.  Not willing to let their friend be killed by mob justice, they join the search team in hopes of finding her first.  Little does anyone know the entire thing is a plot of revenge and terror that recalls an even years earlier that saw all of Ryu's Familia destroyed.  A plot of madness that threatens the dungeon, everyone in at and even Orario above.  The small band of explorers must fight against odds like they have never faced before if they are ever to see the light of the sun again.

     The thing I was fearing finally came to be with this long 4th season.  I had feared, particularly after season 2, that the story would regress in scope of its subject.  Moving backwards to a place similar to the first season, where we find our hero(es) crawling through the dungeon, only facing higher difficulty threats.  Unfortunately, that's what we got in this season, even though that type of story repetition was covered quite well in the Sword Orataria side series.  What also started to become more common were standard shonen action tropes, as most of the story follows three drawn out conflicts.  We see time and time again the characters survive against impossible odds and physical damage.  Propelled by those around them, typical strength together types of propaganda common in shonen action stories.

    What was good though was how they intertwined Ryu's past and the events that lead up to her being a vilified martyr.  It was the strongest tread in the few treads wound together into this bloated 22 episode battle sequence.  By his nature Bell is product of plot armor, but this season really pushed it beyond any semblance of reasonable fantasy.  His ability to survive against every odd got a little tiring, knowing full well he was never in any legitimate danger, due to the nature of his story.  What was also put on full display was the resistance to permanently harm or kill off characters from the main pool.  The events of the other seasons also did well to expand upon the overall story, while this season was mostly a contained affair, which appears to have little effect for the narration moving forward.  It wasn't worth a full double helping and may have been better served as a movie.  Not being aware of where the story will go next, I can only hope it will redeem its self and return to the flow that it had been on, an ever increasing scale of conflict with some sort of end goal in sight to the narration.

     As before this season is widely available in multiple places commercially.