DanMachi Producer Noburhiro Osawa Teases the Anime’s Future & How It’s Changed Over 10 Years

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? took over our screens earlier this year with a new season of the anime, and we got to talk with the producer behind it all about the anime’s potential future and how far it’s all come in the last ten years. Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? is now celebrating the 10th anniversary of the anime’s original debut, and it comes hot off the heels of the fact that the anime just wrapped up its highly anticipated fifth season earlier this year as well.

As It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? celebrates the 10th anniversary of the anime, ComicBook got the chance to speak with producer Nobuhiro Osawa all about the anime’s path thus far. Not only did Osawa reveal his interest in continuing the anime beyond its fifth season (and what is holding it all back), but the producer looked back on how the franchise has changed over the course of its decade tenure thus far.

How DanMachi Was Turned Into An Anime

When asked about the approach to adapting Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? into an anime, Osawa revealed that it was a commitment that the team wanted to see through until the end, “It’s not just DanMachi, but whenever we start with something that has an original, we always kind of start it with the commitment that we’re going to keep up with it until the original is finished up. So the same with Sword Art Online, Mushoku Tensei, all of those are with originals. It’s the same way that we approached those.”

When picking up the anime at first, Osawa revealed why the team wanted to tackle Fujino Omori’s original light novels in the first place,”We started the first season when there were two volumes of the book out, and the first thing that really grabbed me was Bell’s charm. His character, and also the worldview was so hashed out so that really pulled me in. And the moment that I read it I thought, ‘Oh, we got to do this.’” And what he learned from this story is character is at the core of it all, “I think what I learned from DanMachi is that the character is the backbone of the story. So to look at characters, not just on the surface, but the deeper parts of the character. And that will basically carry through a series and really become one of the through lines.”

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There were some big challenges in Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon’s anime run thus far, however, as Osawa revealed how tough it was to adapt the events into Season 4 as that phase of the story was jus so big, “The toughest in the production process was Season 4, because it was three volumes of the original [light novel] Volumes 12, 13, and 14. But the problem was, even though it was only three volumes, some of the volumes had twice as much material. It took twice as much to portray that story.”

How DanMachi Has Changed Over the Years

Needing to then expand its episodes, Osawa explained, “And so even though up until that point, we were doing one cour for about three volumes, we just couldn’t do that. We had to expand it to 22 episodes for Season 4, so that was the most challenging. You can see the difference in the thickness of the volumes.” But early on, one scene with Bell really made an impact, “The scene that really gave the deepest impression to me was in Season 1 Episode 8, when Bell decides that he wants to become an Argonaut, a hero.”

But it’s been a big decade for the anime as it has gone through some major changes over the years, “Over these 10 years, there’s been a total evolution of the anime. That includes how it’s being drawn, the use of 3D, the direction, how it’s shot. Everything is evolved. There’s also a different director now, and this director uses a lot more action. So that’s a change that has been notable.”

Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? has yet to announce whether or not it will be continuing after Season 5, and the light novels are now in the midst of their final arc. But as Osawa explained, he wants the anime to continue as long as there’s more material, “I definitely, as a producer, want to continue on the series. The problem is the anime has caught up to the original, so really it’s up to [series writer Fuijino Omori] to write. And the faster he writes, the faster the anime can be made.”

If you wanted to check out the anime so far, you can now find Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon‘s five seasons, OVA specials, and feature film now exclusively streaming with HIDIVE.