Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Vol. 1

By: Fujino Omori, Suzuhito Yasuda - illustrator, Andrew Gaippe - translator

Narrated by: Bryson Baugus, Shelley Calene-Black

In Orario, fearless adventurers band together in search of fame and fortune within the monstrous underground labyrinth known as Dungeon. But while riches and renown are incentive enough for most, Bell Cranel, would-be hero extraordinaire, has bigger plans. He wants to pick up girls.

Is it wrong to face the perils of Dungeon alone, in a single-member guild blessed by a failed goddess? Maybe. Is it wrong to dream of playing hero to hapless maidens in Dungeon? Maybe not.

After one misguided adventure, Bell quickly discovers that anything can happen in the labyrinth—even chance encounters with beautiful women. The only problem? He's the one who winds up the damsel in distress!

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2014 Fujino Omori (P)2023 Yen Audio

Fun adaptation of the Danmachi story!

As a fan of the anime, I was excited to hear that this series was getting an audiobook adaptation. I was hopeful that this would be an entertaining listen and it did not disappoint! The story has fun action/adventure, good comedy moments, and is easy to follow. The world building is done organically and does not disrupt the flow of narrative. The characters are fun and easy to root for also. Foe me having voice talent from the anime handle the narration is a nice touch and a bonus. Both performers did an excellent job in my opinion presenting this story. Overall, I had a blast listening to this and I look forward to checking out the other volumes. If you are a fan of the series, it is definitely worth giving a listen to!

Good Story, Somewhat Confusing Narration

If you're a fan of Danmachi (or even if you're new to the series), the story is great especially as the light novels go into greater detail than the anime does. It's an even bigger plus having the narrators be the voices of Bell and Ais from the anime. The negative to this is that instead of Bryson Baugus (voice of Bell in the anime) strictly handling the male voices and Shelly Calene-Black (voice of Ais in the anime) doing the female voices, they both take turns voicing all the characters which takes some getting used to and can really throw the listener off sometimes.

While Bryson Baugus does an amazing job with the different voices (his range is excellent as he makes each character sound unique and distinct), Shelly Calene-Black doesn't have much range and uses pretty much the same tone and voice for most of the characters. Her voice becomes really jarring whenever she tries to do a monster roar or character grunt/yell.

Though this review is for volume 1 of the series, at the time of me writing this, I have listened up through volume 5 and can say that she doesn't improve at all and actually becomes worse. Another reviewer of this volume mentioned "The male isn't bad and actually uses multiple voices to add variety and make characters distinct. Not sure if I can suffer through the next book." I powered through volumes 2-5 and can say that it was a great listen whenever Baugus was narrating, but whenever it became Calene-Black's turn, I couldn't wait for her part to be over.

Story-wise, this volume has good pacing and is a good start to the series, introducing the listener/reader to the world and it's characters. The story picks up in the following volumes and introduces a great deal of more characters, but as of volume 5 the main criticism that most reviewers have of both narrators taking turns instead of voicing particular characters has not been resolved, and it looks like it probably won't be. The story is definitely worth continuing though.

Better than the anime!

Gives a different perspective for the characters then you see in the anime, can't wait to continue.

performance was amazing.

I loved it, I hope they do the other 18 volumes like this. I just want to listen to volume 2 now.

Its ok, but...

I get what they were going for, but flipping back and forth between two narrators is just jarring and ruins the otherwise decent performance of each individual narrator. The only series I have read that does this right is Konosuba.

Read by Ais and Bell’s English VAs made it so much better

Love that it’s read by the English voice actors of Ais and Bell. When they try to imitate the voices of other characters from the anime it can be funny, especially Loki. Some of the monster noises can get annoying, and Bryson’s Hestia voice is a bit grating, but other than that, it was great!

Story,voice

Story and voice were both equally nice to me.
Thanks for reading have a good day!

So glad this series is finally in audio!

I’ve loved this book series for years! My only problem was having no audiobook option. I am blind, and wow e-books. Do you have text to speech. It’s just not as good as audiobooks. I am so happy that this series is finally going to be in an audio version. Can’t wait for the next books to be released!

Great, but...

I started with the anime, and my only criticism is a personal preference issue. I don't enjoy the first person view. It's not a real issue though.

Also: WHY IS THERE A GOBLIN SLAYER SAMPLE AFTER THIS?!

Gross.

Enjoyed

Made me laugh, had a good time, almost good enough to make me forget I’m depressed. Yeah…..