English Dub Review: Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? III “(Yearning) A Far-off Dream”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

After being ambushed on the 20th floor and discovering an entire community of talking monsters, Bell and the rest of the Hestia Familia sit down with a group of the villagers leaders and discuss what has transpired and the history of the community. Called Xenos, the monsters have been biding their time while they dream of a life above on the surface.

Meanwhile, Hestia has a long conversation with Uranus, who tells her about his theories on the Xenos and their existence. According to him, monsters are reincarnated when they die, and after enough time has passed, their unspoken dreams and wants make them into a member of the Xenos. Hestia is afraid that being associated with them will cause her Familia to lose standing, but it’s a risk Bell is willing to take.

Our Take:

After a fairly solid episode last week, Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? III falls to some of its lowest heights this season, delivering a snooze fest of an episode that drags on and on while characters convey exposition dump after exposition dump. With nothing going on in terms of action, there’s really no hook or conflict in the episode, which makes it seem like filler of the worst variety.

We start off with Bell and his Familia friends talking to the leaders of the Xenos monsters on the 20th floor. And that’s basically where we remain for the entirety of the episode’s first half. They sit around listening while the Xenos members are used as tools to deliver endless exposition. Things get a little more interesting when a skeleton who used to be known as the Sage shows up. He created the Philosopher’s Stone and gained eternal life, but he’s quickly gone again so that the monsters can fill the group in on more backstory.

The existence of the Xenos themselves is interesting enough, but not to make up for an entire episode without conflict. Bell notices they have monster gems, which allows them the opportunity to tell him that they kill other monsters and eat their jewels for a quick power up, thus erasing any guilt or conflict Bell might feel about talking to some monsters while mercilessly slaughtering others.

While Bell is listening to these lectures, Hestia is getting an earful of her own from Uranus. The god’s weird theory about how monsters reincarnate is interesting, since it means every monster has the potential of gaining speech someday. There’s also the Hermes Familia and their plans for evildoing. They lure a group of Xenos, including Wiene, with the cries of an injured comrade, and then ambush them once they show up.

It promises to make next week’s episode a lot more action packed, hopefully, but I wish that it hadn’t taken an entire episode of nonstop monologuing for it to happen. Hearing a talking lizard refer to Bell as Belchie is only funny so many times. The life of the Xenos might be tough, but I think making it through this episode might have been tougher.