A media rec: Dungeon meshi
Feb. 16th, 2021 12:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
myrdschaemFor the small 3-sentence thing I have been rereading a bit of Dungeon meshi aka Delicious in Dungeon which keeps on being a gift. It's a serialised monthly seinen manga that is part D&D campaign and part slice of life cooking.
The plot in general: an adventuring team loses their team member Falin, a healing focused sorceress, to a Red Dragon. Adventurers can be revived with magic, but they have to hurry back into the dungeon before Falin, who was eaten by the dragon, can be digested. To make the trip right away, they decide to not carry food and instead eat what they can find and kill in the dungeon.
One of the strengths of the story is the world building. Ever chapter is a small puzzle on how to eat a monster. Some of these are obvious, like a basilisk, but ramps up fast. Just some examples from the first to volumes include gardening on top of golems, using traps to fry things in oil or chapters on ghosts and living armour.
These fun stories function as a trojan horse to advocate for sustainable food production, less industrialised farming, nutrition and biodiversity. The stories dig into the mystery of how a dungeon works overall, portraying it as a complex ecosystem where adventurers breaking in are wreaking havoc because they act thoughtless and ignore the consequences.
There are other strong points in the writing, but these are what I wanted to focus on. Check out the series, if you can, or talk to me about it. I haven't even gotten into the characters, haha. Mostly because the food porn is distraction enough.
The plot in general: an adventuring team loses their team member Falin, a healing focused sorceress, to a Red Dragon. Adventurers can be revived with magic, but they have to hurry back into the dungeon before Falin, who was eaten by the dragon, can be digested. To make the trip right away, they decide to not carry food and instead eat what they can find and kill in the dungeon.
One of the strengths of the story is the world building. Ever chapter is a small puzzle on how to eat a monster. Some of these are obvious, like a basilisk, but ramps up fast. Just some examples from the first to volumes include gardening on top of golems, using traps to fry things in oil or chapters on ghosts and living armour.
These fun stories function as a trojan horse to advocate for sustainable food production, less industrialised farming, nutrition and biodiversity. The stories dig into the mystery of how a dungeon works overall, portraying it as a complex ecosystem where adventurers breaking in are wreaking havoc because they act thoughtless and ignore the consequences.
There are other strong points in the writing, but these are what I wanted to focus on. Check out the series, if you can, or talk to me about it. I haven't even gotten into the characters, haha. Mostly because the food porn is distraction enough.
no subject
Date: 2021-02-16 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-02-16 06:36 pm (UTC)I also think the character designs reflect that the author is a woman - for example, there is a big, plump female oni companion. She is not bad looking, but like the other female characters isn't shown sexualised. I still ship her, because she is adorable, but the manga does not feel male gaze-y in the depiction.