© Ryoko Kui, KADOKAWA/Delicious in Dungeon PARTNERS
Episode 21 of Delicious in Dungeon slows down the pace and delivers one of the best locations in the series to date.
You probably already know this, but Golden Country is an excellent dungeon miniature. We had many visits revolving around what it entailed, who lives or has lived there, etc. as the party traversed the dungeon. However, this week we finally get a real front row seat to the Golden Country as the whole group gets taken there and spends time with the people there. It was fun for Laios to visit through the painting before, and now it's much more exciting for the whole party to visit.
In my mind, The Golden Country works so well because it taps into the same essential strengths of the rest of the series' world while still focusing them in a unique way. Delicious in Dungeon shines as it shows off some of the week's quirky new monsters and explores its unique physiology, ecology, and meal preparation. It's paced like a procedural and plays to the series' strengths: lovably goofy dogs encountering and eating fantastical wildlife. Here, the mystery shifts from monster-specific strangeness to horror-adjacent mysteries, leaving the audience wondering how this town came to be the way it is and why its people live there. so.
The mystery gets that extra oomph from its believable horror. I like the use of immortality as a reminder to reflect on the positive aspects of death and meaning. We must ask ourselves tough questions when considering the situation of the people in the Golden Country. Food is central to our struggles as humans, but it is also central to our understanding of work, community, and ourselves. Senshi commented that they continue to perform these rituals to stay sane, and when you think about how much time and energy food takes up even in our modern lives, it makes a lot of sense. .
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Grant is a host on the Blade Licking Thieves podcast and the Super Senpai Podcast.
Delicious in Dungeon is now streaming on Netflix.
Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more companies mentioned in this article are members of the Kadokawa Group.
