This review is based on the first four episodes of Ore dake Haireru Kakushi Dungeon or Hidden Dungeon as I'll refer to it. This anime is a fantasy ecchi, and a fairly competent one I would say. It manages to employ all those fantastic elements and tropes of the genre while avoiding their pitfalls for the most part. It's not the most well written story, but it's art and animation are well done, it's characters are enjoyable, and it's worth a watch if you don't have a strong aversion to the genre.
The premise of this anime is that our main character, Noir, stumbles into a
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hidden dungeon where he meets Olivia who bestows the 'Get Creative' ability onto him. The plot and story are largely driven by this ability, so it's worth exploring it. The ability requires LP or life points to use and it plays off the power trope where a character does something ecchi to fuel their power. This is often a fantastical and silly power, however here it actually feels grounded. Beyond sexual encounters, general pleasures seemingly will allow him to regain LP, the examples given and used are things like delicious food or frivolous uses of money on desirable things. This obviously is used to drive the ecchi of the series, but it makes sense and doesn't feel contrived for it. If you've played JRPGs this will probably seem logical to you, as they often use food items to heal or recover much in the same way.
I find that the story as it is so far deserves a 6/10, is it incredibly gripping or anything, not really. However, this is obviously meant to be a fun ecchi focused anime, as such something overly contrived or written would detract from the goal. That's not to say it's entirely uninteresting, it's just better temper expectations. The line of what is happening so far is well executed, and some interesting implications for the future of the story are present. I just wouldn't count on all this to be delivered on in a strong way, better to be pleasantly surprised than disappointed.
The art has been consistently quite good, which is important for an ecchi so this is a strong positive to have. However, the animation feels a bit inconsistent so far, while episodes one and four were both good, two had some not so great moments and three was just alright. I suspect that episode two will be an unfortunate exception overall, so I'm not too concerned about this. Regardless, Hidden Dungeon manages to deliver on what we're here for mostly and has it's moments of nice animation as well. 8/10
Sound 7/10, like many anime it's not doing anything too special, some spots where the sfx stands out as nice, but the OST is very typical. The voice acting itself is pretty good and most voices feel quite fitting to their character. I also quite liked the ED's song in particular.
The characters are an 8/10 as they are rather fantastic all around. Noir the main character is an odd one, both somewhat typical good guy mc, and simultaneously a bit of a savage who sometimes just says what's on his mind. He also goes out of his way to get the ecchi moments and never really shys away. His childhood friend is Emma Brightness who is cute and bubbly, is a rather hilarious character especially as more ecchi happens and harem members join the party. On the Emma Brightside (please kill me) for her she is winning the harem race rather comfortably, having gone the farthest with Noir. Lola is the guild receptionist who acts in the information broker role for Noir. She's quite forward and is attracted to success and a man who gets results. She's fanastic, a valuable harem member, and she lost that bet when she was introduced, highlight of the ecchi so far. Luna is the last member of the harem, and the one we know the least about so far unfortunately. She a gun cleric elf who has a strong sense of duty, and some notable skills that affect her stoic personality in humorous ways.
Lastly there is Olivia, she is the immoral compass of the series so it seems, bestowing knowledge and power upon Noir, the lonely goddess (not actually a goddess) chained to our mortal world. She's clearly an absolute degenerate and an asshole, in fact she seems to have the soul of a lecherous old gentleman. She's a troll who likes to tease and berate Noir at every turn, you know, when he actually visits. Much like how people used to think the sun revolves around the earth, you probably think the harem revolves around Noir, but no bitch it's Olivia's harem and Noir is just part of it.
My personal enjoyment of this anime so far is an 8/10, it's clearly not remotely the best anime ever or even this season. However, this anime's comedy has been on point, and the ecchi is enjoyable.
Overall 8/10, honestly Hidden Dungeon doesn't have as many flaws as you might expect. If you go into with an open mind, and again you're not averse to the genre, you will likely find this to be a quite enjoyable and fairly well made anime. It's biggest flaw is the season itself being overly abundant with amazing anime from sequels like Re:Zero to newly airing anime like Mushoku Tensei. So in that sense this might be something to watch later in a slower season.
Jan 30, 2021
Ore dake Haireru Kakushi Dungeon
(Anime)
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This review is based on the first four episodes of Ore dake Haireru Kakushi Dungeon or Hidden Dungeon as I'll refer to it. This anime is a fantasy ecchi, and a fairly competent one I would say. It manages to employ all those fantastic elements and tropes of the genre while avoiding their pitfalls for the most part. It's not the most well written story, but it's art and animation are well done, it's characters are enjoyable, and it's worth a watch if you don't have a strong aversion to the genre.
The premise of this anime is that our main character, Noir, stumbles into a ... |
