My granddaughter told me I should watch this anime she’s been watching, titled Delicious in Dungeon. I’m not normally a fan of anime (why must the characters always react with such extreme expressions and noises?), but OK, I half-watched a few episodes.
The premise is straight-forward old-school D&D — a mixed-class party of adventurers march through the levels of a dungeon, murdering monsters as they go. What makes it different is that the focus of each episode is the adventure of cooking and eating what they kill, producing fabulous meals from slimes and parasites and giant bats.
I can see how it might be a good show for picky eaters. One character, Marcille (?) is always horrified at what gross, horrible thing they plan to eat, and always comes to the conclusion, after taking a bite, that it was delicious. I can’t relate to her — I’ve always been an omnivore with a weird palate — but I can appreciate the presentation of exotic meals in every episode.
She even looks a bit like Iliana.
It’s on Netflix if you’re looking for it.
Just finished the series so far last week. PZ is right, it’s really good.
Echoing Akira. PZ is right, Marcille is irritating as hell to start out (in fairness most of them are) but it very much rewards accepting that and seeing where the story goes.
If you like an OP main character who stands back a bit to let supporting characters do their thing, I recomnend Frieren, aka “After Journey’s End . Slow the first episodes, emphasis on social relations, then the sh*t hits the fan.
I think you ought to give it a closer look. There’s some really marvelous world-building going on that’s fairly subtle, but I think you’d appreciate the attention to the ecology of the dungeon, and the in-world explanations for many common dungeon tropes. I especially liked the non-magical explanation of how the animated suits of armor were moving (a few holes in that, but it was inventive reasoning nonetheless).
I also appreciated the way the various cultures were organically presented, and their conflicts and customs revealed via character development rather than as-you-know exposition, insights you wouldn’t get just half-watching it.
Your granddaughter has good taste! Listen to her. :)
A gf and I watched Dungeon Meshi together on calls as a long-distance date night for a bit; it’s very fun. She described it as being “the gradual realization that no one here is neurotypical; just all in different ways and with different fixations.” Also, to badland @3, I don’t think either of us found Marcille irritating per se but did agree that she’s trying really a bit too hard to seem like the “normal” of the group up until ~5ish episodes when you go, “Oh that’s her deal, she is also a freak [complimentary]”.
Well,the broccoli-monster would be save from me.
Now excuse me, I’ve got to venture into the dungeon that is my fridge and hunt for spinach and mushrooms.
Studio Trigger, the folks behind this, also produced “Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.”
“why must the characters always react with such extreme expressions and noises?“
Because the aesthetics of anime draw on the aesthetics of kabuki. There is cultural contingency at play.
Would you believe that the blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money had a review of it?
As others above have noted, it goes into some very deep worldbuilding with regards to how everything actually works and the ecology of the dungeon, and the further in you go the more you realize that none of the main characters are anything approaching ‘normal’, they just deal with their own weirdness and backstory in different ways. (Which makes sense… anybody who’d get involved in dungeon-delving like that is not going to be ‘normal’.)
itsuzumi is kbity
senshi is my most favorite character, though!
Sounds like Food Wars crossed with D&D. I’d watch it.
One should always take recommendations from 5-year-olds seriously. You don’t have to pretend to like what they like, but you should respect them enough to give it a try.
There’s some good stuff out there. See also, Disenchantment.
This is a very good one. I also second birgerjohansson @4, Frieren is a damned masterpiece of a show. And while we’re tossing out recommendations, The Apothecary Diaries. It takes place in Imperial China where a young woman is kidnapped and sold to the the palace as a servant. Her fierce intelligence and skills and knowledge as an apothecary help her not just survive but thrive in this situation in a time where that sort of thing could just happen and people in general had few rights, and women in particular had even less.
Despite all of this, while there is some bleakness, it’s not a bleak show and there is still plenty of humour, and other characters like sex workers are portrayed as real people doing their best to get ahead in a world with few options.