[This is a running series where I share my thoughts on a different comic most Mondays, sometimes Manga, sometimes American, Chinese, Korean or UK comics. I read a huge amount of comics and thought I’d start to highlight some of the more interesting ones.]
Series Name: Delicious in Dungeon (aka Dungeon Meishi
Author: Ryoko Kui
Artist: Ryoko Kui
Tags: Fantasy, Exploratory Manga, Cooking
Target Audience: General Audience, Fantasy Fans, Cooking Enthusiasts
MICE Quotient: Inquiry
Rob Rating: 9/10
Rob Synopsis:
In the lower levels of a deep and massive dungeon, a party is attacked by a red dragon. It goes about as well as you’d imagine…
Laios the Warrior, Marcille the Eleven Mage, and Chulchack the Halfling Thief are all teleported to safety by Laio’s sister’s spell, but Laios is determined to get his sister back from the dragon and wants to return to the lower levels of the dungeon. However, they lost all their money and supplies, and Marcille and Chulchack question how they’re going to survive. Laios has an answer…
And it turns out that Laios has been wanting to eat monsters for a long time.
The only problem is that they don’t actually know how to cook these creatures properly.
But with the help of Senshi the Dwarven Warrior-Chef, they’re able to turn a cave scorpion, a slime, and some other ingredients into a real meal.
But can you really eat monsters?
Apparently you can! And they’re delicious! Thus, the great journey to rescue Laios’ sister eat their way through the dungeon begins!
Poor girl! You’re gonna be waiting a looong time!
Official Synopsis:
When young adventurer Laios and his company are attacked and soundly thrashed by a dragon deep in a dungeon, the party loses all its money and provisions…and a member! They’re eager to go back and save her, but there is just one problem: If they set out with no food or coin to speak of, they’re sure to starve on the way! But Laios comes up with a brilliant idea: “Let’s eat the monsters!” Slimes, basilisks, and even dragons…none are safe from the appetites of these dungeon-crawling gourmands!
- Chosen as the 13th best manga of 2015 in the Book of the Year manga ranking of Da Vinci magazine.
- Ranked first in the 2016 Kono Manga ga Sugoi! (Male Readers Division).
- Nominated for the 9th, 10th and 11th Manga Taisho Awards in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
Rob Notes:
Delicious in Dungeon is another truly unique manga reading experience you won’t find anywhere else. The creator, Ryoko Kui has managed to come up with a novel twist on the tried genre of dungeon exploration and turned it into an adventure-cooking-comedy manga. Each story is about the party meeting new challenges and then figuring out how to cook the creatures they defeated during the challenges. At least, that’s how it starts, but as it goes on the story gets deeper and deeper as the characters’ inner lives and backgrounds are revealed, and eventually it turns into more of a slice-of-life drama about this group of very loveable misfit adventurers who are all unique in their own way.
This is another one of those stories that makes total sense from a fantasy setting perspective, and is so simple in concept, but just nobody actually thought to do anything with until now. Unless they’re all being artificially generated, dungeons MUST have an ecosystem, right? And anything which has an ecosystem has a food chain which can be tapped into. Why eat dried meat and other rations when you can enjoy the delicacies of the dungeon? It just makes sense, but is something that never really came up since Dungeons and Dragons and its various media descendants are still framed within the wargaming perspective.
If you have the chance, I definitely recommend you check it out. It won an award for a reason, and if you’re a gamer it might just spice up your next campaign! Literally!
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