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Delicious in the Dungeon is definitely a pleasure.
Setup is simple enough. It’s a typical fantasy land (at first blush anyway) with monsters and adventurers, and our heroes Laios, Marcille, Chilchuck and Senshi have quite suitable goals for those Dungeon diver: Enter the dungeon to kill monsters and earn treasure to become rich and famous or at least make enough money. Above all, rescue Laios’ sister Falin from the clutches of the vicious dragon. In the end, they cooked the monsters they killed to save money because they were broke. Simple enough.
However, even ordinary ingredients can create something extraordinary with the right preparation and cooking time.
First, the big draw here is the subtle twist on the standard fantasy formula that’s both familiar and fresh. The core dungeon-crawling adventurers are old at this point, but of course our heroes are struggling to get by and trying to pay the bills just like the rest of us . They must consider questions like “Where will our next meal come from?” and “Should we sell our current equipment to buy cheaper things that can also be eaten and hire someone to help?” work?” They screw up and everyone abandons them. These are explainable struggles.
Likewise, dungeon games like eco are not new but are very well done. Even in the earliest days of the bygone era of the 1970s, D&D had a kind of cryptic but confusing logic about how dungeon environments functioned and changed over time. Delicious in Dungeon follows this tradition by treating monsters as living creatures with unique characteristics. Things like mushrooms that can be easily cut lengthwise or whose little wiggly legs are good additions to the pot. Applying basic cooking principles to unlikely ingredients creates compelling stories that are unpredictable while still having a consistent internal logic in the world.
The cast is also great. They all have their charm – I especially like the Senshi’s unchanging expression in every scene regardless of tone – but I think the real star of the film is Marcille. In another interesting twist on an old pastime, unlike Tolkien’s very modern halflings who act as stand-ins for the audience, here we have the half-elf wizard as the audience’s surrogate . Like the rest of us, Marcille doesn’t know how to prepare such strange dishes, feels like her ideas will never work, is constantly hurt or embarrassed, and finds these strange dishes disgusting. disgusting to look at. She is our window into the strange world of roast kobolds and bewitchers, and what a charmer she is.
More importantly, however, Marcille allows us to learn about and evaluate our perceptions and biases about the food we eat in real life. What exactly makes something gross when eaten? If a cooked creature looks appetizing but has eaten something disgusting before, is it still taboo for us to eat that food ourselves? If an imaginary animal is just two ordinary animals cuddling together, have we become numb to the wonders of the natural world around us?
Delicious in Dungeon takes an interesting premise in a fantasy setting and helps us discover our own view of the world while we’re caught off guard—and that’s what fantasy stories are all about, Honey.
And before I forget: the animation is amazing. The team at Trigger has done a huge community good by presenting Delicious in Dungeon with all the care and love they could muster. The wonderfully goofy and expressive faces, the fun and crazy action, the meticulously detailed food preparation – it’s all here and then some. Everyone, we will eat well all season long.
Episode 1: Rating:
Episode 2: Rating:
Grant is a host on the Blade Thief podcast and the Super Senpai Podcast.
Delicious in Dungeon is now streaming on Netflix.