DanMachi Season 3 release date confirmed for fall 2020: Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? manga/light novels compared to the anime [Spoilers]

The DanMachi Season 3 anime will have the action picking up significantly since Bell Cranel will find himself taking a stand in a war where he’s trying to stop both sides.

Unfortunately, the original DanMachi Season 3 release date was delayed by a season in 2020 due to the effects of the SARS-COV-2 coronavirus pandemic.

Right now, the anime production committee is shooting for releasing the anime in late 2020. Thankfully, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? (Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no ha Machigatteiru Darou ka?) Season 3 won’t be delayed until 2021 (see the release date section below for more details).

Thankfully, the wait for the third season will feel like a short battle to anime fans. The anime’s production team filled the gap in time by releasing a DanMachi OVA episode in early 2020. (See below for more details.)

In the first and second season, Yoshitsugu Matsuoka voiced Bell Cranel, Inori Minase portrayed Hestia, and Saori Oonishi was Ais Wallenstein. One of the new characters was Ares, a character based on the Greek God of War. Ares is the head of the Familia Rakia, a military country that often starts wars with other countries and cities.

The new DanMachi Season 3 cast members will include several new adventurers along with a new god that’s manipulating things from behind the scenes for his amusement. Ares was the big bad lurking in the background at the end of the second season, but in DanMachi Season 3 Dix Perdix (brother of Barca Perdix) will be the new main villain.

One of the biggest new characters is named Wiene, who will be played by voice actress Rina Hidaka (Accel World, Boarding School Juliet, Classroom Of The Elite, A Certain Magical Index, Food Wars!, Made In Abyss, Sword Art Online).

She will be joined by her friends Lyd, Ray, Gros, Laura, Aries, Gryuu, Asterius, Ranye, Fear, Four, Cliff, and Aude. Another new god character is Ikelos. Other new adventurer characters include Alise Lovell and Gran.

Most of the main animation staff at studio J.C. Staff returned for the second season, so it should not be surprising if DanMachi Season 3 will be the same. For the first two seasons, Hideki Shirane wrote the scripts, Shigeki Kimoto was the Character Designer and Chief Animation Director, Jin Aketagawa was the Sound Director, and Keiji Inai composed the music.

The biggest staff change in the first two seasons was the position of director. Yoshiki Yamakawa (B: The Beginning, High Score Girl, Little Busters!) was replaced by director Hideki Tachibana, who is best known for directing BlazBlue: Alter Memory, Armed Girl’s Machiavellism, and Circlet Princess.

While those anime are not fan-favorites, the second season’s director has also been an episode director, storyboard writer, and key animator for popular anime such as Bleach, A Certain Magical Index, A Certain Scientific Railgun, Naruto, Ninja Scroll, and many other anime.

The previous staff has been confirmed by the new March 2020 trailer to be returning for producing DanMachi Season 3. All of the previous Japanese voice cast will be returning.

The DanMachi Season 3 opening (OP) theme song music “Over and Over” will be performed by Yuka Iguchi, while the ending (ED) will be performed by the Sajou no Hana band.

The DanMachi Season 3 trailer that was released in September 2020 features the new opening music:

• Updated September 16, 2020: Added new DanMachi Season 3 trailer.

• Updated September 7, 2020: Exact DanMachi Season 3 release date confirmed!

• Updated July 6, 2020: DanMachi Season 3 release time frame confirmed! Added new key visual. DanMachi Volume 16 release date confirmed!

• Updated May 30, 2020: DanMachi Season 3 delayed!

• Updated March 22, 2020: Added DanMachi Season 3 trailer and key visual.

• Updated February 7, 2020: Added DanMachi Netflix release date info.

• Updated October 21, 2019: Added DanMachi OVA 2 trailer video and new details.

• Updated September 27, 2019: DanMachi Season 3 confirmed!

• Updated September 16, 2019: Revised light novel comparison and spoilers. Added more info on DanMachi Volume 16.

This article provides everything that is known about DanMachi Season 3 (Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Season 3) and all related news. As such, this article will be updated over time with news, rumors, and analysis. Meanwhile, let’s delve down into what is known for certain.

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon Season 2 Netflix release date in the U.S.

Starting in early February 2020, the Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon anime series began streaming on Netflix U.S. for the first time. Unfortunately, it’s only the first season, leaving first-time watchers hanging waiting for the second season.

Unfortunately, Netflix U.S. has not yet announced when DanMachi Season 2 will release on Netflix U.S., never mind DanMachi Season 3. In the meantime, the second season is available for streaming on Hulu, VRV, HIDIVE, and Crunchyroll.

DanMachi manga/light novels compared to the Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? (Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no ha Machigatteiru Darou ka?) anime

The story for the DanMachi anime TV series is based on the Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? (Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no ha Machigatteiru Darou ka?) light novel series by author Fujino Omori and illustrator Suzuhito Yasuda. As of June 14, 2019, the books were up to Volume 15.

According to the Japanese publisher, the DanMachi Volume 16 release date is scheduled for October 15, 2020. In the Afterword section of Volume 15, the author said the new book’s story is going to focus on Syr Flova (the name “Syr” is one of Freya’s aliases in Norse mythology).

The main series has generated two major DanMachi spin-off stories. Familia Chronicle is limited to Episode Ryuu and Episode Freya right now, although the author has discussed writing about more characters and groups in the future.

The more substantial spinoff, DanMachi: Sword Oratoria, focuses on the adventures of Ais Wallenstein. Written with a parallel timeline that begins before Bell is introduced, the Sword Oratoria light novel and manga series are already up to Volume 12 and Volume 15, respectively.

The DanMachi manga series is adapting all three storylines. The main story for the manga is being written by Omori himself and illustrated by Kunieda. Volume 10 was released back in June 2018, but the DanMachi manga is currently on hiatus as of September 2018 and fans are still eagerly awaiting Chapter 90.

The official English translation of the DanMachi light novel and manga series is being published in North America by Yen Press. As of March 19, 2019, the official light novel English translations reached Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? Volume 13. DanMachi Volume 14 is scheduled to release on October 29, 2019, while the English Volume 15 has not yet been announced.

As for the English DanMachi manga series, it’s actually caught up with the Japanese release. As previously mentioned, the manga is on indefinite hiatus so it’s uncertain when manga Volume 11 will release.

The DanMachi movie Arrow Of The Orion was a nice side story that introduced new characters without disrupting the events of the main DanMachi timeline. However, Bell Cranel’s power levels in the movie were amped to a level that didn’t make sense.

After all, Bell would not have been strong enough to defeat the stronger enemies contained in the film based on the power levels of the main timeline. In the DanMachi anime series, Bell became a Level 2 by defeating the Minotaur but he did not become a Level 3 until the middle of the second season.

The writer admits that he prioritizes creating an “interesting” story over other issues. If Omori had prioritized consistency within the timeline, then “pre-volume 11 Bell shouldn’t be a match for the enemy” contained in Arrow of the Orion.

“That’s how epic the story [for the DanMachi movie] is,” Omori said. “So if you’re familiar with how the light novels go after volume 6, then you might be a bit taken aback by the film. That’s the difference between novels and TV, so please pretend you didn’t see anything.”

When the TV show first aired back in 2015, the anime was already starting to catch up with the source material (Volume 7 was released back in April 2015). Considering the situation, it was not surprising that Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Sword Oratoria was adapted first in 2017 since the two stories run in parallel.

Now, the anime has plenty of source material available to adapt since the first season adapted five out of the 15 books available when the second season began airing in the summer of 2019. It would have been easy to assume that the second season would similarly adapt five more books, ending with Volume 10, but that’s not the case.

During Anime Expo 2019, the staff discussed how the production and audio recording for the second season was about halfway done at the beginning of July 2019. They also stated that the second season was scripted to cover at least light novel Volumes 6 and 7, although the final two episodes that end with DanMachi Season 2 Episode 12 are pulled from Volume 8.

Why are only three books being adapted when the first season adapted five light novels? The reason is the books started going all Harry Potter by greatly increasing in length. In English, the first five books ranged from 208 pages to 288 pages long, but newer books are noticeably thicker.

Volume 6 is 272 pages, which is why the anime’s second season adapted the War Games story into only four episodes, but Volume 7 jumped up to 384 pages! So, that book required six episodes to properly adapt.

Similarly, Volume 8 is 400 pages long, so it is possible the second season will only adapt part of the book. After all, Volume 8 s mostly side stories so it makes more sense to adapt more of that book as the beginning of DanMachi Season 3.

After that book, Volumes 9 and 10 weigh in at 272 and 304 pages long, respectively, so it’s likely that DanMachi Season 3 will adapt three books, which includes the full Xenos story arc (Volumes 9, 10, and 11).

The issue is whether more side stories from the Ares arc will be adapted by the anime. Animation studio J.C. Staff adapted the ending of Volume 8 since it’s a standalone book that Omori’s book Afterword says finishes the second major story arc of the series.

While it would not make sense to break up the Xenos story arc into separate seasons, the only issue is that adapting one large book and two medium-sized books could create pacing issues for DanMachi Season 3. Ending the third season with Volume 11 makes sense since the story is largely about Bell Cranel dealing with the aftermath of the previous two-part story from Volumes 9 and 10.

Hopefully, Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Season 3 will be 13 episodes long in order to account for the greater length of the source material.

Don’t get your hopes up for a Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Ares movie that’s based on content skipped in Volume 8. The first film, Arrow of the Orion, only generated about $700,000 USD (¥74,254,900) at the Japanese box office and did not crack the $1 million ceiling even when including overseas revenue.

What’s more, Volume 8 is a series of vignettes focused on different characters rather than a cohesive plot required for a movie script. If J.C. Staff produced a DanMachi Ares God of War movie it would be better to use the same strategy used for writing Arrow of the Orion and create a new original story.

Therefore, it’s safer to assume DanMachi Season 3’s ending will cover up to Volume 11. Any skipped side stores for the DanMachi: Ares arc could be adapted as OVA episodes.

The good news is DanMachi Season 3 has plenty of source material to draw upon. Better yet, English-speaking fans who want to read ahead can jump to Volume 9 and read so far ahead that they’ll be getting into DanMachi Season 4!

The bad news is reserved for both Japanese and English manga readers. Since the manga is on hiatus, manga Chapter 89 left readers hanging at the beginning of the War Games story arc, which means the story for the anime’s second season is already far ahead of the manga. It’s likely that DanMachi Season 3 could release before the manga even catches up with the second season!

DanMachi OVA episode takes anime fans to the beach

When DanMachi Season 3 was officially announced the official Twitter page for the series also announced a DanMachi OVA episode. The new Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? OVA episode released on Wednesday, January 29, 2020.

The story for the new DanMachi OVA episode is a side story unrelated to the main books. A key visual showed off Hestia and Ais in swimsuit bikinis. Yes, DanMachi is receiving the obligatory beach episode!

The DanMachi OVA episode will come in a Blu-Ray/DVD box set featuring illustrations by anime character designer Shigeki Kimoto. The box also includes a CD for the new ending theme song “Tropica Vacation” as performed by Saori Onishi, the voice of Aiz Wallenstein.

The new opening theme song will be “Hello to Dream” by Yuka Iguchi. Light novel writer Fujino Omori also wrote an original story that’s packaged with the box set.

It’s unknown when this vacation takes place in the overall timeline, but since it’s an original story focused on beach antics it probably doesn’t matter. Based on the preview video, Bell, Hestia, Welf, Lili, Mikoto, Ryu, and Aiz go on vacation to an uninhabited island. It’s supposed to be a restful vacation but it’s not too long before something happens…

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Season 3 release date planned for October 2020

The official DanMachi Twitter page has officially confirmed the exact DanMachi Season 3 release date. The Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Season 3 premiere date is October 2, 2020.

Originally, the premiere time frame for the Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Season 3 anime was originally scheduled for the summer of 2020, but in May 2020 the anime production committee announced that the DanMachi Season 3 release date was being pushed back to “October or later”, which meant the third season could have been released in 2021.

However, on July 4, 2020, the official Twitter account announced that “DanMachi 3 is scheduled to start broadcasting and distribution from October” 2020. Thankfully, the effects of COVID-19 did not worsen in Japan, so DanMachi Season 3 will be streaming as planned during the fall 2020 anime season.

Considering how J.C. Staff is infamous for running tight production schedules the delay wasn’t too surprising. The animation studio is extremely busy, with Food Wars! Season 5 releasing in 2020, and then there are likely future projects like One Punch Man Season 3.

Many studios’ schedules suffered from cascading effects due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the worldwide mitigation efforts. Attack On Titan Season 4 (maybe?), That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime Season 2, The Seven Deadly Sins Season 4, Haikyuu!! Season 4, Black Clover, Pokemon Journeys: The Series, The Promised Neverland Season 2, My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU Season 3, The Quintessential Quintuplets Season 2, Re: ZERO Season 2, Sword Art Online: Alicization Final Season, and No Guns Life Part 2 were all pushed back to later dates in 2020.

The Tower Of God anime, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, Kaguya-sama: Love is War Season 2, and Ascendance of a Bookworm Season 2/Part 2 were among the few anime productions that were able to complete episodes before the pandemic delayed the work.

【速報】『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Ⅲ』制作決定！2020年 夏 放送開始予定です。

『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』引き続きの応援よろしくお願いします！！#danmachi pic.twitter.com/qbKj9hnVW3

— ダンまちシリーズ アニメ公式@4期放送決定！ (@danmachi_anime) September 27, 2019

It’s not surprising that the ending of DanMachi Season 2 Episode 12 teased the future of the TV series. From a financial perspective, the DanMachi Blu-Ray sales in Japan have been doing well even as the anime industry made the shift to streaming revenue becoming the major factor.

According to the Oricon charts, even the DanMachi OVA episode released in 2016 sold well (the same can’t be said about the 2017 Sword Oratoria anime). Let’s just hope the third season continues this line of success so DanMachi Season 4 is also greenlit quickly.

DanMachi Season 3 spoilers (plot summary/synopsis)

The last time we watched Bell Cranel and his merry band, the story seemingly began to end with the grim prospect of total war since the war god Ares is coming to town once again with his Rakia army. But the citizens of Orario are not too worried since they have a dungeon and thus strong adventurers.

The Guild forms an Alliance composed of some of the strongest Familia to combat Ares outside the walls so life continues on like normal inside Orario. If anything, the enemy soldiers better worry about losing their money to the machinations of the gods!

Considering that the second season ended by adapting Volume 8 with only two episodes, the opening episodes of DanMachi Season 3 could begin by covering the missed side stories which showcased the various characters of the DanMachi world during the war with Rakia.

Light novel Volume 8 might be a long book but that’s not due to the main story progressing in a significant fashion. Similar to Volume 4, the eighth book brings to the table a series of loosely-related short stories focusing on each member of Hestia Familia with the exception of Haruhime.

(This summary includes a synopsis of all the major side stories and thus describes part of the ending of the second season.)

Isn’t it said that love and war go together? Four out of six tales focus on the recurring theme of love, especially the potential for love between gods, goddesses, and their mortal children.

Even as there are invading armies, Bell thinks about how he is in love with Ais while Hestia hopes to make Bell fall for her one day. Bell already has a volunteer harem starting since Haruhime would be perfectly fine being Bell’s mistress.

Bell and Hestia meet an old man who once was in love with a goddess. He tells how that experience affected his life.

Little Lili also has feelings for Bell and is surprised to learn that he is in love with Ais. Relationships are always messy and blonde-haired Finn Demne of the Loki familia ends up asking for Lili’s hand in marriage. The situation grows more complicated when Bell and Finn decide to duel over Lili.

It’s not all about complicated love. The story about Welf Crozzo tells audiences why he is separated from his family. Welf’s relationship with his Familia is explored and in the process, we meet the god Hephaistos.

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Season 3 probably won’t dwell too much on the side stories of Volume 8. It’s the epilogue of Volume 8 which sets up the next stage of the story when a dragon girl is born in a new area of the dungeon called the Large Tree Labyrinth.

The poor monster is attacked by adventurers and other monsters and is in despair for her life when she happens to stumble upon a certain white-haired boy. Bell was helping the town of Rivira by clearing out irregular monsters on floor 19 so he was surprised to see a monster crying, never mind that other monsters were attacking her.

Bell decided to leave the young female alone but was shocked further when the monster actually spoke. Bell then decides to save the monster girl from other adventurers and sneaks her out of the dungeon, thus fulfilling the series’ title by literally picking up a girl in the dungeon. Lil’ Lili even accuses Bell of having a monster fetish!

Underneath the Guild, the mysterious black-robed Fels reported to Guild leader Ouranos that an intelligent monster had been taken out of the dungeon by adventurers. When Ouranos learned it was the Hestia Familia, he ordered Fels to spy on them.

The discovery of an intelligent monster is shocking since it upends the foundational belief that humanoid adventurers and monsters are natural enemies that must always attempt to kill each other. Surface dwellers have deeply-seated fears of monsters so most people, including the gods, are understandably averse to the idea that monsters can coexist and integrate into society in any fashion.

Regardless, Hestia decides to help. Bell gives the monster girl the name Welusine but it is shortened to Wiene. Despite the best efforts to keep Wiene a secret, rumors of the monster girl start spreading. (It’s kinda hard to keep a secret when  Lili, Hestia, and Haruhime are chasing after an undressed Wiene in a bath.)

Meanwhile, Dix Perdix is upset because his Ikelos Familia members lost track of the talking female dragon monster on floor 19. When Dix heard elves talking about a talking monster, he began to investigate with the help of his god Ikelos.

After several events take place on the surface and in the dungeon, a mysterious mission given to the Hestia Familia has everyone traveling to floor 20. They are beset upon by powerful monsters, some of which they had encountered for the first time, and suddenly Fels appears and uses black smoke to make Hestia disappear!

Hestia awakens in a stone passageway only to find the Guild head Ouranos waiting for her deep in the dungeon in an ancient temple. Ouranos reveals there is a hidden village for intelligent monsters, which is called Xenos. The Guild’s head has a theory about the nature of the dungeon and how monsters come to be born.

The gods Hermes and Ganesha knew about the existence of the Xenos but they’re mostly a secret. Ouranos hopes that Hestia Familia might become the bridge which allows monsters and humans to co-exist and live together.

Bell and his friends enter the Xenos’ hidden village and they hold a feast with these new friends. Wiene will be left in the company of the other Xenos. When the Hestia Familia leaves on good terms, Fels warns them that adventurers are hunting the Xenos.

Meanwhile, back at the home of the Ikelos Familia, a Xenos inside a cage is tortured by the Familia members. Dix’s group had almost tracked the Hestia Familia down into the Xenos’ lair but they were stopped by members of the Hermes Familia.

But Dix has a plan for finding the Xenos’ hidden village. It’s not long before Dix’s hunters ambush Wiene’s group while they are traveling to another Xenos village and Wiene is kidnapped. In response, the Xenos are furious, overrunning Riviria in their attempt to find the hunters and rescue the kidnapped Xenos.

The revelation of the Xenos was still fresh when some of the intelligent monsters go out of control and take up arms in a mass migration to the surface that threatens all of Orario. Bell must stand in the gap between humanity and monsters and try to save all even if it means fighting against those he considers allies.

The ending of DanMachi Season 3 will have Bell dealing with the aftermath caused by his decision. Helping the Xenos came at a cost to the Little Rookie’s reputation amongst adventurers and he’s lost the trust of some of his friends.

The battle is not quite over yet, either, since Bell now has to help the Xenos aboveground by returning them to the dungeon. But standing in their way is the strongest Familia in the labyrinth city of Orario, the Loki Familia.

Unfortunately, anime fans will have to wait until the DanMachi Season 3 release date to watch how Bell Cranel resolves this latest crisis. Thankfully, we don’t have to wait too long for Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Season 3 to bring us the Xenos war. Stay tuned!