Pros
- A combination of an adventuring anime with food and cooking
- Some good character development
Cons
- Strange, lighthearted story with an otherwise serious mission
Dungeon Meshi Review
Dungeon Meshi takes two different anime premises: adventuring in a dungeon and cookery, and mashes them together into a fun, lighthearted adventure with an otherwise serious goal of saving the protagonist’s sister, Falin.
There aren’t many food or cooking anime, and perhaps the two most recent ones would be Food Wars! and Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill. Maybe Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon sort of counts, but that’s more prepared foods rather than cooked-from-scratch foods. Regardless the path of adventuring and cooking is not an often-explored anime genre even if everyone needs to eat.
Dungeon Meshi follows the story of a small and diverse racial party led by a human knight named Laios and his companions, Marcille the elven mage, the halfling locksmith Chilchuck, and the dwarven fighter cook Senshi. This adventuring is returning to the depths of the dungeon in order to rescue Falin from the stomach of a dragon—if they can save her soon enough, she can still be revived.
But going into the dungeon requires a lot of preparation and and materials, most of which could be mitigated if the party chooses to eat the inhabitants of the dungeon along the way. That’s precisely what they decide to do as they go deeper into the depths of the dungeon, and their culinary guide is a dwarven fighter and cook simply known as Senshi.
As the characters fight, cook, and eat their way down the dungeon, they learn more about what this mysterious dungeon is and who their companions are. This series does a decent job going over the background of the characters as they descend into the depths and discover answers to the dungeon that will help them reach their goal of saving Falin.
Any adventuring story is improved when the characters become more relatable. And despite their different backgrounds, Laios and his party are united by their friendship and loyalty even if some of them may have different reasons for saving a fellow party member.
This party is also united in their gradual acceptance of relying on dungeon monsters and flora for sustenance. Not everyone is as initially excited as Laios and Senshi, and even Marcille’s refusal to partake sometimes feels forced rather than natural. But even she succumbs to hunger and the delicious smells that result from Senshi’s expert cooking.
Dungeon Meshi is a great adventuring and dungeon crawling story that, despite its title, has a fairly serious goal. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that the reason this party is in the dungeon is not to sample the culinary delights that lie within, but instead to save a fellow sister and friend.
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