How to Cook Delicious Lore

Let's explore what makes Delicious in Dungeon one of the most enchanting and immersive anime worlds ever built.

00:00 What Do They Eat?
02:18 Naraka: Bladepoint
03:41 The Dungeon Ecosystem
20:17 Microcosmic Worldbuilding

#NARAKABLADEPOINT #ad #DeliciousinDungeon



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In the depths of his Mother's Basement, Geoff Thew creates videos analyzing the storytelling techniques of anime and video games. He has been named the number one Worst YouTube Anime Reviewer by The Top Tens.

[Truck-kun]

Laios being the classic *Male Human Warrior*, the most basic of RPG archetypes, and at the same time being the strangest and most bizarre of the group never ceases to be funny

[grahamkristensen]

When they explained that living armor is actually a colony of mollusks, I knew we were in for something special.

[MojoShoujo]

I studied ecology in college and I work at a science museum. The moment I knew I'd love this series was when I was reading the manga and saw the life cycle of a slime in a little extra, tucked away at the end of a volume. It's got a multi-stage parasitic relationship that I recognized from some species of snails. Kui didn't just take a glance over the basic concepts of a food chain, she dug deep and threw enthusiasm into the stuff that isn't glamorous, and I was freaking out and texting old classmates about it.

[Jacoboby]

What I love most about Dungeon Meshi (In addition to the incredible worldbuilding, food porn, characters etc..) is how scrappy the party is. Nobody has op powers, they have to fight for every scrap of food and power they can get and as a result every encounter with a monster feels harrowing and awesome. In a world where every other isekai is trying to out cool each other with their paint by numbers protagonists, here's a batch of weirdos all just trying to get Laios' sister back using whatever they can find and use along the way.

It's remarkably refreshing to have a story where the progatonists are actually underdogs as opposed to stories bending over backwards trying to make their op protagonists hated by the world or called weak for arbitrary reasons to force drama.

[Ebbylina]

My favorite DunMeshi lore tidbit is that being on the chunkier side is actually a sign of a very skilled adventurer in the Dungeon. They explain this being the case because when you die in the Dungeon, Resurectors use alot of the calories in your body to Revive you. The Manga also explain that this is why Kabru is so skinny haha. The Living armor was the first sign that this was gonna be something quite special when I first read it, but the intricacies of Ressurection magic was the thing that sealed the deal for me.

[Rozilla]

Ryoko Kui is the true heir to Terry Pratchett's genius- a comedic fantasy that's secretly full of thoughtful world building informed by research, interests and experiences.
Then when you least expect it you're hit with philosophical pondering that changes your whole life and characters you would literally die for.

[matrixiekitty]

A piece of world building that I adored was Marcille’s hair. Her varied hairstyles emphasized the importance of hair care to magic even before we learned about it directly. It also showed how much Marcille wants to connect with her elven ancestry, especially in the face of only being half elf and thus seen as not enough of an elf. It was also kind of a clever way to indicate the passage of time, if her hair is different chances are it’s a new day. This is especially helpful for days that are divided amongst multiple episodes!

[soso-wfuk]

MYCOLOGY MENTIONED! There's actually a thing in the "Monster Tidbits" bonus manga where the canaries talk about the Walking Mushrooms being a problem for the organization because they draw humans to them. Kabru assumes it's through the spores, but it's explained that Actually, it's because mushroom-obsessed humans will go out in droves to look at them anytime a dungeon pops up. The "Walking Mushroom Association" apparently has more members than those obsessed with dragons. I felt so seen by it lol

[zoro-sb]

One pretty small detail that I feel adds a lot is the fact that "humans" in this world are referred to as "tall men".

The show does a really good job at avoiding the human defaultism that plagues fantasy. Humans aren't at the center of some overlapping ven diagram between dwarves, elves, and orcs, but rather, every race is distinct in their own way, humans, or rather, tall men, no more or less so than anyone else.

[animeotaku]

I love that the author incorporated more lesser-known creatures like the barometz (based off of an actual plant that people mistook for a sheep growing out like a flower) and the sky fish (a cryptid that appears in photography, likely some fast-moving flying critter who ended up really blurry in the picture taken of them).

Also, spirits in this universe basically operating the same way as a microscopic ecosystem, as seen in the flashback to Marcille and Falin’s school days. That was the part that made this series’ world building truly click for me.

[Ash_Wen-li]

The first season left me hungry for more because us anime fans are starving for non-isekai fantasy

Edit: Guys I just wanted to make eating puns

[rowboatcop]

I love how much effort Ryoko Kui puts into the characters attire! No character just wears something because it looks cool, but rather it always tells you something about their job, their personality, their history, biological needs, and what they value. Its so intentional and adds such an amazing low level constant hum of world and character building

[rootbourne]

Man I’m going to miss Dungeon Meshi Thursdays. It was always such a bright spot to sit down with my wife and watch this show together when we were having a rough week. Absolutely cannot wait for when we can do that again.

[maxxhuevoduro]

My favorite part about this anime it's the way they adapted the title in spanish, "Tragones y Mazmorras" meaning "Guzzlers and dungeons", that being because D&D it's called "Dragones y Mazmorras" in spanish, a simple yet smart and funny pun that makes my dad joke oriented brain super happy

[Oops-All-Ghosts]

I think one aspect of the party dynamic that often gets forgotten is that Marcille is as fascinated with dungeons as Laios is. The difference is that whereas Laios is primarily interested in the monsters that occupy dungeons, Marcille is fascinated by the mechanics of dungeons. She knows everything there is to know about the flow of magic within dungeons and their structures, as well as the basics of their ecosystems (though in this area her knowledge is extremely limited, since as the video noted most people outside the dungeon don't see monsters as anything other than a problem to be solved as part of dungeon exploration).

Like she wasn't just studying dungeons as part of her broader fixation on magic; we see in flashbacks that she was actually creating her own mini-dungeons in secret. The fact that she shared these very private projects with Falin is part of how the show demonstrates how close they were.

I think this aspect of her character is important to acknowledge because without it, a lot of her later actions appear to make no sense. I think her understanding of these systems, and of some of the darker mechanics behind them, also helps to explain her exaggerated aversion to eating monster flesh (beyond the inherent squick factor, which other characters--even those who are also written as being somewhat prissy--get over much faster).

It also helps to explain her frustration with Laios and the others treating her as useless. Prior to her arrival in the dungeon, Marcille was basically the only person she knew with anything even approaching practical knowledge of dungeon systems. Again, she'd built model dungeons! Nobody else did shit like that! And so she had reason to expect to be a highly valuable member of the team. But Laios and Falin were doing goldstripping runs for years before Marcille caught up with them, and Senshi has been living down there for, like... Basically his entire life? So of course they have practical knowledge and experience that Marcille doesn't have, even after having gone on several delves with their old team, but because Marcille's entire sense of self-worth is tied up in her special interest for reasons I don't think have been touched on yet in the anime (but which I think are also a great example of the setting's worldbuilding), it is extremely difficult for her to accept that. So early on Marcille needs to learn to mesh that practical knowledge with her own highly theoretical knowledge.

Anyway, er. Thanks for reading; sorry for the long-ass comment.

[Beriorn]

A look at the mindset of the elves is Kabru. He's a goofy little guy but when push comes to shove he will end you. The elves didn't teach him how to fight, they taught him how to kill. And when he did he did so with no hesitation and pinpoint precision. I like that little murder twink.

[GallowglassVT]

They could have easily gone the way of a hundred other fantasy manga/anime with a cooking gimmick, but instead, they crafted a genuinely intriguing and fleshed-out world with intriguing history and, surprisingly enough, a pretty comprehensive ecology. Like, even the best fantasy series won't go that far on the latter. The creatures here feel like they fit into a wider framework rather than just sort of being plopped into ecosystems they feel out of place in. As someone who writes spec evo as a hobby, that just makes me really happy.

[Medidon]

I'm a big fan of how Ryoko Kui renames Humans into "Tallmen". Fantasy and science fiction has a problem of making humanity the default in their settings. Turning humans into the standard from which all other races are compared to. By making "human" into a classification that encompasses races like elves, dwarves, gnomes and ogres, it really highlights that people like Laois and the other Tallmen are just another aspect of the world, not better or worse than the other races.

[yin-fire]

"... Where the mushrooms are fun (little) guys..." That was a good one

[Lucky_Dagger]

I think it was from the manga bonus chapters but i love that having body fat is an advantage in the dungeon. Aside from the obvious part of being able to burn fat when food is scarce having body fat means if you get killed and your body is missing an organ that got exploded or torn out, party members can use the healing magic to replace your missing important organs with transmuted body fat. Plus the exhaustion from waking up after a resurrection can be curbed by the fat being burned for energy during the resurrection process.