I don't normally write long reviews, but I wrote like 2000 characters in what my short review was supposed to be so I decided I'd clean it up a bit instead. First and foremost what I can say is that this season had a great deal of heart that the previous ones lacked, "Be a fool, Bell Cranel.", how the minotaur here parallels the original Greek myths, and the ideological conflict that surrounded the sentient monsters all made for an emotional center to this season that wasn't there for me earlier in the series. Enough so that I felt myself excited to see more from this season's main conflict. Aside from that there was some really impressive action choreography this season, and a great deal of the final fight was a visual spectacle. Bell's character avoids the more severe traps that await a power fantasy like this, so I haven't felt my interest in his growth and adventure wain as he grows stronger.

This show isn't cured of the issues I have with the first two. I find most of Hestia familia, aside from Bell who I've found charming throughout, to be rather dull. Hestia herself is also rather annoying in my opinion. Along with that Ais, has felt incredibly flat for the majority of the series, and it leaves me struggling to feel any particular chemistry between her and Bell. Though that point also leads to one of this season's points of growth, that is for the first time in the series she's actually felt like a real character, rather than a blank object of Bell's affections. I almost wish her ideological conflict with Bell had stretched out longer, though I felt its resolution was mostly satisfying in how it was carried out. The comedy is also more often than not grating, though not without a redeeming joke here or there.

Maybe the greatest relative strength here is that, unlike season two which spent 99% of its runtime not in a dungeon, DanMachi's third season returned to the high potential worldbuilding that the show offered in its, still admittedly rather mediocre, first season. Don't get me wrong, I don't unilaterally dislike the god politicking. In fact the Hermes and Freya stuff this season was rather interesting, but the more overt social conventions of the gods that dominated season two were a total bore in my opinion. The fleshing out of the dungeon, the inclusion of the Xenos, and the information we gather on Daedalus this season all made for a much richer world than had existed prior. Ultimately I wanted to give this season its flowers, I was incredibly skeptical of this show after the first two seasons so for an improvement like this, imperfect as the show remains, I'm quite pleased.