Halfway Point: Tanken Driland

Toei Animation doing something like this? It might not be too bad...

At least chibi warriors doing an animated dungeon crawl is relatively new (and still better than those two ToHeart2 OVAs).

Merpiest face candidate for 2012

The studio that has created Dragon Ball, Saint Seiya, and Sailor Moon has now brought you...Tanken Driland.

What the hell?

The graphics are relatively simple, since the characters are all chibi; however, I don't think the series was made necessarily for eyecandy, so as long as the graphics are decent it'll be fine. And they were, so that's that.

The audio is meh. But they add in random classical music during battle scenes. What's that about?

Plot time!

Congratulations! You have found:
Beam of Light (small) x2
Beam of Light (big) x3

There's a princess in a faraway land that looks strangely like central Europe but with less snow on the mountains. She wants to be a Hunter, which is what they call adventurers over there. So armed with her sword and with one level as a Fighter class, she and her comrades set off...to go...somewhere. And get loot. Like, they actually pretty much just go around to get awesome loot. Which is pretty cool, I guess.

I dunno, it seems pretty interesting due to the character interactions - and it takes some time to milk the monster battles, making it seem like it actually cared about the dungeon crawl aspect. It seems like I'm watching a stream of Mabinogi sometimes, without the grinding aspect. The characters are also pretty cool, from the ninja-like aide that serves the princess, to the guy with the faulty gun, to the princess herself. It's not a half-bad story by any means (albeit a bit simple), and I think you guys should at least give it a whirl and see if it's worth your time.

One thing I should note though: a lot of the times in tense situations, Driland takes too much damn time waiting. There could be a guy that has to shoot the finishing blow from his rifle and Driland could wait an excess of 30 seconds just to resolve it, despite the fact that you are shouting "SHOOT! SHOOT THE DAMN GUN!" at the screen for most of that pause. If you're not the type to get frustrated easily at such things, this series will go over so much better for you.

Recommendation: Try it out for a spin.

If you don't shoot I'll kill you