Anime Spotlight #24: Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? Arrow Of the Orion!
Article by Sean Wilkinson,
DanMachi: Arrow Of the Orion! takes place some time after the events of Season I and Sword Oratoria, as Bell's party in the film only consists of Lili and Welf, and his home with Hestia is still intact, meaning the Apollo War Game from Season II hadn't happened yet.
a.k.a. The Ticketmaster,
a.k.a. The Animeister
With the TBT 2023 push this week being for the movie, Coriolanus, this seemed like the perfect week to cover DanMachi, a JRPG-influenced anime with a few anachronistic tendencies and a heaping helping of inspiration from Greco-Roman mythology...for some reason that feels like a stretch now that I've written it down and I'm looking at it.
On Monday, as one does because that's the modern world's official anime day of the week (but true fans watch anime every day!), I covered the entire DanMachi anime in an Anime Spotlight. Today, because I now review movies on Fridays whenever I have one that I feel like reviewing, I'll be reviewing the DanMachi "Theatrical Release" (or "Movie," depending on what your subtitles say), Arrow Of the Orion!
If you remember my Critters review, you know what happens when a movie has an exclamation point at the end of its title.... Now, if you would be so kind, please remember to comment at the bottom of this post, Become A Ticketholder to join the Ticketmaster Familia if you haven't already, help out my ad revenue as you read, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the blessing of the latest news on my content.
But before we get into the review, here are some "fun" "facts" about Orion:
- Orion was born when Zeus, Hermes, and Poseidon urinated on a bull hide and buried it because the man who cooked the bull for them was having fertility issues.
- Orion is an alleged rapist (either of his wife--their marital status is also in question from source to source--Merope, or of the goddess Artemis).
- Orion once went insane and threatened to kill every animal on Earth, prompting the Earth herself to kill him.
- Orion is said to be between twenty-six hundred and over eight thousand feet tall.
- There are no less than eight versions of Orion's death, including being accidentally or purposely shot by Artemis, and various instances of being stung by a scorpion (the Scorpio constellation), one of which was sent after him by Apollo, either to defend Artemis' virginity or because Apollo was a siscon.
- Orion was once believed to also be Jason, of Jason and the Argonauts fame.
- Orion's death allegedly predates the Trojan War.
- Because Poseidon is one of his fathers, Orion can walk on water like Jesus.
- Because cancel culture did not exist in Ancient Greece, this fathoms-tall, genocidal rapist born of a sea god's urine was classified as a Hero, and became a constellation alongside his dog(s), who are either Sirius or Canus Major & Minor.
Keep these in mind for how much (or little) they line up with the movie's events when you watch it. And please watch it, because I'm about to review it and here's a Spoiler Warning!
The animation, for the most part, has that bouncy, fluid, high frame count look to it, with the exception of most of the monsters (which are obvious, but decent CGI), and the fights have much more work and continuity to them than what we'd see in the later seasons of the series proper.
When it comes to the plot, most things we will see established in later seasons are outright contradicted, especially concerning monsters and the Dungeon (non-sentient monsters being confined to the Orario Dungeon unless Adventurers take them alive for taming, black market activities, or events like Monsterphilia, whereas in the movie, it is shown that there are other, "failed" Dungeons outside of Orario that were sealed off, as well as that there are monsters that exist in the wild).
Complete non sequitur, apropos of nothing, but there are also apple-like fruits that just grow on trees with fresh, hot soup inside them so the movie can keep going without our heroes having to halt the plot to scavenge for food at one point. The movie also makes a point of using the later-established reincarnation mechanic of the series (from that "Hestia gets kidnapped" stretch of Season II) and the anime movie trope of "so non-canon it hurts" to forcibly give Bell romantic chemistry with another, more mature and comfortably attractive virginal Goddess (so, a non-canon, more age-appropriate, better version of Hestia With the Big Chestia) so Hestia has something else to be huffy and jealous about besides the age-appropriate, mortal animal girl who's in love with him and the age-appropriate-but-probably-an-avatar-of-the-series'-villain barmaid who makes him lunch every day and the mature but androgynously sexy elf who gives him advice and took him armor shopping and the mature half-Spirit sword prodigy who let him use her lap as a pillow while she consentually beat him unconscious for a week and the mature assassin-elf who showed only him where the remains of her old Familia were buried and the many handfuls of other female supporting characters (unfortunate phrasing) he may or may not have canonically seen in various states and degrees of partial dress.
What was I talking about?
Nothing; I'm writing.
But, oh, yeah; the plot!
There actually is one, and it's your typical, pre-Season IV episode/arc in movie form.
After earning some currency for their Dungeon loot, Hestia, Bell, Lili, and Welf attend Orario's New Moon Festival (where everyone is wearing and/or selling merch based off of every other phase of the Moon because that makes sense and merch with New Moon branding is merch with no branding...?).
Hermes rips off that not-yet-mentioned Arthurian legend reference from Season IV--I mean, hatches yet another scheme--I mean, runs a Test Of Strength booth at the Festival with a "trip around the World" as the top prize for anyone who can pull a Spear from a chunk of crystal.
This gives Leyfia the opportunity to have a speaking role in something and prove how not unique she is (one of three secondary elven characters in the series, with Bell's Wallenstein fixation and Hestia's repetitive jealousy as her chief personality traits, so...not very unique at all) by getting in a jealousy/superiority contest with Hestia to prove how out of Bell's league Ais is (not that Leyfia is even playing the same sport, if I'm metaphoring correctly).
But because King Arthur ripoff and main character, Bell is chosen by the Spear and we are introduced to Artemis (sister of Apollo from Season II, so based on every animated frame of his face from the War Game Arc, he's definitely a siscon), who suddenly appears for reasons that will be a plot twist later.
The Spear (the titular Arrow Of the Orion, Exclamation Point) is a trident, which is a nice nod to Poseidon in the source mythology, but the inspirations are unimportant to the plot of the film.
Hestia states that she and Artemis (and presumably, Astraea, though that is never spoken of in the anime that I can recall) were virgin Goddess buddies in the realm upstairs, but is immediately shocked when her Sister From the No Misters Club runs past her and throws herself at Bell, claiming that he is the reincarnation of Orion (who, if you remember from the above "facts," was a multi-thousand-foot-tall, zoocidal, alleged rapist of Artemis herself in one version, so...obvious glossing over of difficult subject matter and clear liberty with the source mythology on display in this film).
Artemis and Hermes concocted this neo-Arthurian scheme to find the spear's wielder so they could quell a monster outbreak in a wooded region far outside of Orario (read: the Vernean trip was a fake prize) and defeat an ancient, long-sealed monster called Antares (so I can't say anything bad about the movie's astrological or astronomical accuracy because this name makes perfect sense with the main monster threat).
A little more on the fight choreography, CGI, and creature design: it's good, like I said earlier. Coherent animation with minimal simulated editing in its composition, impressively flashy energy effects, and impactful scenery damage. The main monster threat, in keeping with the Orion mythos, is a horde of scorpions, the CGI for which is obvious but not painfully incongruent, and gives off the same jittery eagerness in its animation as Scorpinok from Beast Wars and the Deathstalker Grimm from RWBY. Antares itself is of the same quality, but is a misshapen, unsettling, Kafka-Cronenberg centaur abomination that gets some good hand-drawn animation work in a few closeup shots. The Moss-Huge and Juggernaut from Season IV had these hand-animated bits, too, but the CGI didn't work as well despite being four or five years more advanced than this film's boss monster.
Add in the plot twist that Antares ate Artemis (say that any number of times as fast as you can without biting your tongue off) and can now use her powers to make a giant lunar bow-and-arrow in the sky so the movie can just barely avoid a lawsuit from George Lucas and Disney, and Bell must put aside his...feelings? Of love? For an immortal virgin who got eaten by a scorpion-centaur monster and had to Cult Of Chucky part of her soul into the Spear that's named after the giant, animal-genociding rapist he was in a past life and he's shown sleeping with it earlier in the movie?
Deep breath. What was I write-rambling about again?
Oh, yeah; Antares ate Artemis, that second moon in the sky isn't a moon, it's a space station made of magic, the movie's plot says Bell has to be in love with Artemis or something for the Spear to work, she's a ghost living in the Spear, and it's Act Three so he has to save Orario from destruction by killing Antares by killing Artemis by using his Ultra Instinct Super-Saiyan Spirit Bomb Argonaut powers to throw her at herself really hard and he's sad because she's hot and she's dead and it'll take, like, ten thousand years before RNGeezy says they can get reincarnated at the same time and fall in love for realsies this time, no rape, I swear.
Another deep breath....
I really wish I didn't know as much about Greco-Roman mythology as I do because it made watching and reviewing this movie super-uncomfortable. I've got to give it major points for the cinema-quality animation and making a CGI bug monstrosity look the right kind of terrifying, but everything that lowered the early DanMachi seasons to barely enjoyable (Hermes' antics, Hestia's jealousy, Leyfia's...existence), coupled with the unnecessary, forced, reincarnation-based chemistry between Bell and Artemis--not that I'm a Hestia shipper, because I find that to be a different kind of questionable--brought this well-animated, averagely written (good mystery and plot twist, though) feature down a few pegs in the aftermath that was my critical brain.
This is a movie review post, but it's also a continuation of the DanMachi Anime Spotlight, so like I did with Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero during "Dragons Week," I'm going to leave this ungraded and let my words and your feelings about them and your own viewing experience do the talking.
I hope you enjoyed something along this journey, and please remember to comment at the bottom of this post, Become A Ticketholder to join the Ticketmaster Familia if you haven't already, help out my ad revenue, and follow me on Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, and LinkedIn to like what you've seen and receive the blessing of the latest news on my content.
Ani-Ticket-centaur-master,
Out!
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