Don’t miss Delicious in Dungeon, Netflix’s first anime banger of 2024

Do you like to eat? Of course you do. How about Dungeons? You try, yeah? Maybe played a fantasy role-playing game or two? Never? That’s cool too. You’ll still want to take a look Delicious in the dungeon.

Based on the popular and recently completed manga by Ryōko Kui, the new Netflix anime is a loving, faithful adaptation of one of the most enchanting fantasy stories in recent memory, a series in which food is just as important (as…). Chef’s Table) as well as entertaining tabletop-style adventures (e.g Baldur’s Gate 3). The story follows a group of adventurers in a world where a mysterious dungeon has appeared and a ghost brings the message that an unimaginable treasure awaits those who descend into its depths to defeat the sorcerer who resides in his heart hides.

Laius and his friends Marcille and Chilchuck are one of many such groups who make regular expeditions into the dungeons, and we meet them in a moment of great bad luck when a dragon kicks their ass and appears to devour their friend Falin. Laius has no resources left for a proper rescue and is very hungry. He concocts one final plan to return to the dragon and rescue Falin: they eat their way through the dungeon, finding and cooking edible monsters to sustain themselves as they travel deeper without supplies.

Image: Trigger/Netflix

That’s it! Only one episode is currently available (Delicious in the dungeon is the rare Netflix simulcast), the series can leave the viewer with the impression that it is quite poor. Given the faithful adaptation Studio Trigger is making here, it’s almost certainly going to get better. But that doesn’t mean the show isn’t without charms right from the start.

As it stands, Delicious in the dungeon is a great D&D-style hangout show that insists on filling its dank, monster-filled halls with good vibes and sitcom quirks. You only get a small taste of it here, but it’s easy to see how the main characters contrast each other: Laius is kind of a determined goofball, Marcille is prissy and put-upon, Chilchuck is annoyed by how hard everyone is working at his job as a thief and Dwarf newbie Senshi scary

A big part of it Delicious in the dungeonThe appeal in manga form is that Kui is apparently a huge nerd. She has a clear love for cooking and fantasy role-playing games (check this out their wonderful portraits of Baldur’s Gate 1 And 2 casts) and Delicious in the dungeon is a loving outlet for both passions. Reading the manga, it’s easy to get caught up in the equal care Kui puts into depicting the act of cutting meat with a knife, as well as the equipment of her adventuring party or the anatomy of the monsters they face.

Image: Trigger/Netflix

This is perhaps the biggest hurdle for the anime adaptation of Delicious in the dungeon: A lot of manga is more expository, and that’s a little less interesting in motion than on the page. An uninitiated viewer might wonder what the point of it all is.

This is where it helps to know where the story is going – because while Kui’s manga is heavily episodic and pays little attention to the inciting incident in which Laius and his group rescue their friend from the belly of a dragon, it is actually very interested in to slowly develop characters and a long-term story, to an extent that will only become noticeable after a short time.

But until then? Enjoy the details. Delicious in the dungeon builds an entire fantasy world out of the silly little questions that fantasy fans ask about genre fiction for the first time. “What does everyone eat?” is of course the big topic, but that’s not all. Instead, it becomes a thread that is constantly being pulled, continually producing new details. If a dungeon’s monsters are edible, what do they eat? Food chains produce ecosystems that produce cultures and rules and wealth that insidiously alter the generic fantasy world Delicious in the dungeon into something unique.

And maybe you’ll pick up a few cooking tips along the way. The monsters may be fake, but the knife skills are real.

Delicious in the dungeon is now streaming on Netflix. New episodes appear every Thursday.