While many fantasy anime include dungeons, Delicious in Dungeon takes full advantage of the concept by committing to its world-building. Each dish that Laios’s adventuring party cooks from monster parts is more than a running gag, they are what turn the underground realm into a genuine location, and not just a tired video game reference.
Delicious in Dungeon‘s attention to detail is what elevates the storytelling of the show past its peers. Many of the fantasy shows that saturate the anime medium minimally develop their worlds, tending to rely on audience familiarity to make up the difference. This is especially true for isekai, where the references to gaming and fantasy tropes reduce the necessity and reliance on world-building.
The dungeon setting tends to suffer most, being reduced to an excuse to create fight scenes against often literally lifeless monsters. Delicious in Dungeon, however, shines by being different, because it chooses to examine what an underground ecosystem such as a dungeon could really be like.
Solo Leveling Fails To Develop The Original Appeal Of Its Prologue
Solo Leveling seems to have left behind the most interesting elements seen in its prologue to rely on the classic tropes of the genre instead.
Delicious In Dungeon Takes Food And Monsters Seriously
Produced by Trigger, based on the manga by Ryōko Kui
While the anime often plays its foodie angle for laughs, a natural occurrence when the characters are eating scorpion stew or ghost-freezed gelato, it’s significant that it treats the monsters as actual living, breathing creatures that can be used as ingredients. Probably the logical conclusion is in episode #4, where Senshi reveals some golems he has been keeping active for their fertilized soil, showing that the story cares about depicting a balanced ecosystem. More important, however, is Senshi’s comments about the dungeon’s ecological food chain, and how more vicious monsters below could chase their prey upwards towards unprepared adventurers.
The dungeon is an actual underground expanse, even if it fantastically holds an entire abandoned kingdom within. Within are animals and plants that have a complex relationship with each other and humans beyond constant combat. In other words, everything in Delicious in Dungeon is part of a living fantasy world. All too often, the fantasy imagery has been coopted for video game shorthand, popularized in recent years thanks to shows like Rising of the Shield Hero, which reduces its monsters to something one can only extract “experience” from as efficiently as possible, before moving on with the “actual plot”.
This season’s hit Solo Leveling is even worse, with its de-emphasis on fantasy creatures, with Jin-Woo’s gamified power growth sending him into dungeons generated from nowhere and populated by monster-shaped magic automatons. This recurring choice to make dungeons and creatures artificial hollows out their significance, reducing them to glorified fighting arenas and dummies for the sake of a little combat action.
That’s why Delicious in Dungeon is so refreshing: the dungeon and its animals are not fantasy-themed window dressing for a fight scene, but a place that Laios and the others have to navigate and survive; in other words, actually adventure through.
Delicious in Dungeon is available on Netflix
Watch on Netflix
Delicious in Dungeon
Based on the manga series, Delicious in Dungeon is a comedic fantasy series with a cooking emphasis. The series follows the exploits of a guild leader named Laios as he heads into a massive dungeon that contains a sunken kingdom, lured by the promise of untold treasure if he can slay the magician that caused it all. When a dragon takes his sister captive, Laios partners up with a new group of adventures and finds themselves cooking monsters to keep themselves filled as they seek to stop the dragon and save his sister.
- Release Date
- January 1, 2024
- Streaming Service(s)
- Netflix
- Directors
- Yoshihiro Miyajima
