I remember a few years ago… ok more than a few… pre-covid, the anime of Little Witch Academia was released on Netflix. It was released in large batches rather than one episode a week and many complained. To this day with shows like XMen 97 getting weekly releases many people cite it as a superior model than a big dump. So with Delicious in Dungeon coming to Netflix I was very happy to see it as a weekly release, and it became what I’d watch on Thursday at dinner. That covered about half a year.
Man this had been a good time for Elf Waifus and pure fantasy (as in non Isekai) two high profile and very well received series with Frieren and this but onto the plot.
Delicious in Dungeon is a fantasy series starring a team as they delve into a magical underground dungeon to rescue the lead’s sister. The Touden Party suffer a calamity when, distracted by hunger, they are taken out by a large red dragon. Falin, the sister of team leader Laios, teleports the rest of them to the surface, and gets eaten. Making matters worse all their equipment was left down so they are out of money and 2 members leave right then. This leaves Laios the Tallman (human), Marcille (elf) and Chilchuck the Half-foot (hobbit basically) left to try and save her before she’s digested. Laios, without any other way to get supplies, plan is to eat monsters as they head down, fortunately they are quickly joined by Senshi a dwarf that happens to be a culinary master when it comes to cooking monsters and is very knowledgeable about the dungeon and its ecosystems.
The series as you might figure out from what I have said has a bit of cooking and food porn in it as Senshi often goes into quite a bit of detail on the meals he cooks and they even get presentation names. So you often get episodes split into parts, encountering a monster and them working out how to take it down using their unique skills and then afterwards, how to cook it and eat it.
The show is really good and has lots of little bits of worldbuilding very well implemented throughout. For example the fact that they mention rescuing Falin from being digested openly acknowledges that at least in the dungeon, resurrection magic is possible. But it’s more than that, you start to notice recurring elements in the background, architectures that all pay off as it continues. Characters get developed as it’s essentially a RPG team going deeper and deeper, learning more about each other and how they react to that.
I can’t not talk about Senshi’s dub voice actor. I had been watching SungWon Cho’s short videos on YouTube enjoying them and I was really excited to hear he was voicing a character in the show. Got even more excited when hearing he was a big fan of the manga. It’s very much a dream come true situation and he does the job very well.
One may, after the first episode, mistake this for a food porn fantasy show but the level of effort put into excellent integration of world building, the character development and portrays will keep you watching. Mysteries start to rise as questions are answered, deep mysteries slowly begin to be uncovered, and just when the goal seems done new goals are revealed.
Delicious in Dungeon is definitely one of the top anime of this year, and considering Frieren was also this year that’s really saying something.
Rating: 🧝🧝🧝🧝🧝
