Danjon no Naka no Hito

The "dungeon" is a standard feature in most Japanese isekai and fantasy anime. A magically created place that adventurers can traverse in search of treasure, usually across multiple levels, each with a final boss to defeat - and at the end, the dungeon boss. So far, so good. But has anyone ever considered what goes on behind the scenes of these dungeons?

That's what this anime series is dedicated to. What happens when a wall collapses during a fight and you suddenly find yourself standing in the dungeon boss's living quarters? Then, as a top adventurer, you quickly get a job behind the scenes. And suddenly, the monsters you were fighting the day before are colleagues. And actually quite nice people. And how do you get new recruits? And how do you interview them? How do you renovate the dungeon? How do you deal with rule breakers?

This anime, which is quite amusing for the most part, is dedicated to all of this. It's not an expensive, glossy project, which you quickly notice. There are a lot of freeze frames, there aren't as many interlacing frames, and the design isn't as good as it could be. But you can overlook that, because you realize that everything is lovingly crafted.

The stories have a few long stretches here and there, and sometimes you wish that perhaps they had gone a step further, with the normalization behind the scenes, and that a bit of magic had been removed. The quasi-official, unofficial relationships with the real world also rob the whole thing of the meaning and value of the original idea a little.

But in the end, it's a very entertaining, successful series, even if it's not outstanding. More of it!