by Bayani Miguel Acebedo
The fantasy genre of anime has gotten into a kind of slump with the popularity of isekai–which were novel when they were conceived, but have devolved into male fantasies where the protagonists enter a magic world, slay monsters, and get a harem of women. While fans have started getting sick of isekai stories, fantasy as a genre is finding a return to form with recent properties like “Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End”, and Studio Trigger’s recent adaptation of the fantastic “Dungeon Meshi” or “Delicious in Dungeon” by author Ryoko Kui.
The anime has successfully adapted multiple arcs of the manga, and a second season is already underway. For fans who can’t wait though, they’ve turned to the original manga to further explore the fate of Laios, Marcille, and the rest of the Touden Party.
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Returning to Form while Subverting the Formula
On the surface, “DunMeshi” feels like a plain isekai where the author takes the fantasy genre and just adds a special twist to it, but instead of having a smartphone or turning into slime, the main hook of the series is that it’s essentially a fantasy cooking show.
For context, the story of “Dungeon Meshi” follows the Touden Party, a group of adventurers who have lost one of their key healers and are on a quest to go back into the dungeon and save her. Unfortunately for the party, they don’t have enough money for food and supplies; so they decide to counter this by doing what no adventurer has done so far—make meals out of the dungeon’s monsters.
The co-protagonists of the series are Laios Touden, a classic swordsman archetype with an unusual love for monsters, and Marcille Donato, a studious elf mage who specializes in ancient magic. Other members of the Touden party include Chilchuck Tims, a half-foot locksmith who acts as the ‘adult’ of the group, and Senshi, the newest member of the party who has lived in the dungeon the longest and introduces the party to preparing monsters as food.
The series starts out as a very plain “monster of the week” story, with the Touden party slaying and eating all kinds of monsters, but the world eventually fleshes itself out, and many readers consider the Red Dragon Arc to be a tipping point where the series starts asking more existential questions and explores the deeper motivations of each of the characters.
How Ryoko Kui Crafts Her Fantasy World
Besides making monsters look like mouth-watering dishes, “Dungeon Meshi” has been praised by fans for its character design and world-building. Though the story has multiple different fantasy races and magical creatures, it has a unique element in that elves, dwarves, halflings, and “tall men” are all considered subspecies of “Human”. The only thing that really differentiates the races significantly is their lifespans. Tall men live as long as typical humans, but elves and dwarves can live for hundreds of years. Halflings, on the other hand, have shorter lifespans; Chilchuck in the story is 29-years-old, but compared to other half-foots, he’s already in his middle age—which explains why he’s kind of a grump.
As for character design, Kui manages to stand out by having an emphasis on celebrating all kinds of body types. In her “Daydream Hour” books where she explores the different design choices she made for the series, there are several studies on how she was able to make each character stand out as themselves while she interchanged their clothes; the experiment even went further when she started switching their races and tried to hone in on what made each character visually unique.
While anime can be criticized for favouring specific body types and character designs, “Dungeon Meshi” has stood out by having characters of all shapes and sizes, from stocky builds to small bodies. Kui even makes it a point to make sure that the elven race is full of androgynous characters to really help push the notion that elves are very gentle and demure beings, while also very powerful.
Not to mention, the creature design in the series is also magnificent. With the emphasis on the monsters being edible in this world, Kui has resorted to basing each creature in the show on a specific animal. Sure basilisks and griffins can be based on snakes and horses; but only in DunMeshi will you see the mimics be translated into giant hermit crabs or ‘enchanted armor’ be molluscs that are just working together to scare humans off.
How the Series Treats Fanservice
While fanservice has been rampant in properties like “Re:Zero” and “KonoSuba”, “Dungeon Meshi”, like “Frieren”, seems to be actively avoiding it. Marcille as a heroine would have been sexualized in the very first chapter of the series if this was a typical fantasy manga, but Kui manages to be very tasteful with the character, giving multiple panels where Marcille’s beauty as a character shines, but without having to show her cleavage or flash her panties. Interestingly enough, the manga does seem to feature a lot of ‘panty shots‘ for the character of Senshi the dwarf. Fans consider this to be Kui’s mocking of fanservice, while at the same time a celebration of the sexuality of a character who is not conventionally attractive.
Reception
The manga ran from 2014 and only recently ended in 2023, so any fan looking to check out the manga doesn’t have to worry that they’ll get to a dead end and have to wait for the next chapter to upload.
Throughout its run, “Delicious in Dungeon” has managed to sell millions of copies while the series was still ongoing and has also been included in several lists for top manga from several magazines. Most recently it was able to win the award for Best Comic at the 55th Seiun Awards and it also won Best Continuing Manga Series in the American Manga Awards.
Thanks for the Meal!
Despite its very humble start with the comedic premise of adventurers forced to eat monsters because of poverty, “Dungeon Meshi’s” story eventually evolves into an existential exploration of why humans consume food and why the act of sharing a meal with friends and family is sacred.
Though the fantasy genre may have gotten drowned in too many isekai titles, “Delicious in Dungeon” presents a refreshing fantasy world with interesting characters and fantastic creature design. You’ll find yourself completely absorbed in the manga and supplementary materials as you wait with the rest of the fanbase for the second season of the show.
