Delicious in Dungeon (or Dungeon Meshi if you prefer) has been one of the best surprises of 2024.
The anime, released weekly on Netflix, is an utterly charming combination of high fantasy tropes and culinary experimentation. Each episode sees an intrepid band of adventurers descend further into the titular dungeon to fight, overcome, and then cook up all sorts of interesting creatures.
The fun that the team at Trigger is having bringing Ryōko Kui’s manga to life has to be seen to be believed – and the amount of time and energy put into carefully imagining (for example) exactly what a seared dragon steak might look like is a triumph.
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That’s why the show’s most recent instalment, episode 12, was such a shock.
If you can’t tell from the description, Delicious in Dungeon is a show primarily concerned with having a good time: cracking jokes, cooking weird meals and hanging out with your pals. That tone underwent some major shifts this week though as our party finally found the body of Falin, who they've been hunting for the whole time, and were able to bring back to life.
It's not that the show hasn't had serious moments before. Episode 11 featured an explosive confrontation with a 'red dragon', and the action sequences generally are frenetic – a marked shift from the kind of laidback atmosphere the rest of the show creates.
But by bringing back Falin from the dead in episode 12, Delicious in Dungeon has drawn a line (or two) in the sand about the kind of show it has the potential to be.
First, the very fact that the team was able to pull off the stunt was unexpected (albeit not so much if you've read the manga). Most of Delicious in Dungeon season one set up the pursuit of the red dragon and the rescue of Falin as the primary goal.
It's been the main motivator for every wacky adventure, and you'd be forgiven for thinking it was more of a MacGuffin than anything else. After all, she was eaten by a dragon. How could they possibly save her?
So by achieving the impossible, the show has essentially reset both its stakes and direction. We're currently 12 episodes through a 24-episode season (as far as we know), but the story feels like it's been blown wide open in a genuinely exciting way.
It's the kind of structural reset that you might expect from a more highbrow show, not one that spends long sequences discussing how best to eat living slime creatures.
However, it's not just that Laios, Marcille, Chilchuk, and Senshi were able to pull the feat off – it's the how that surprised us the most.
Episode 12 opens with the crew digging through viscera and gore to recover what remains of Falin’s skeleton. It then makes a wild choice to turn the cooking-show format we've seen deployed in every episode, where most of the series' comedy originates, into a dark ritual.
Marcille describes the right way to arrange bones in the same way Senshi talks about cuts of meat, and the act of casting the spell (a sort of forbidden necromancy) takes on an absurd quality.
On its own, this works as sort of a gag concept. But the way that Marcille’s spell is treated by the rest of the party, and the sheer amount of gore featured in the episode, gives everything a weird horror-tinged tone which might indicate the direction the show is headed in.
One of the best things about Delicious in Dungeon is how unexpected every episode ends up being. Its core concept delights in taking fantasy tropes and twisting them into something new. Episode 12 proves there are plenty of surprises left in the pot.
New episodes of Delicious in Dungeon air every Thursday on Netflix
Ali is Hearst UK's deputy social strategy director. He has been covering TV and movies for more than six years, all while wrangling Digital Spy's social media and video channels - for which he received a PPA 30 Under 30 award. He specializes in writing about anime, LGBTQ+ representation, science fiction, and comic book adaptations. Recently he's begun collecting Star Wars interviews like Infinity Stones and has spoken with The Mandalorian's Pedro Pascal, Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy and the creative team behind The Bad Batch. Dave Filoni, you're next.
