Laios’ crew has a new member: the part-beast (by magic, not birth) Izutsumi who was previously in Shuro’s party and she’s a prickly addition to the group. Now that the party is deep underground, in areas barely explored before (except by the surprising number of folks who live in the dungeon), they can’t afford to have anyone acting up and risking everyone’s lives.
So Izutsumi will have to learn how to play nice and eat monsters, all the while the rest of the party spills old secrets and those on the surface begin to plan subjugating the dungeon once and for all.
As someone who’s first experiences with fantasy stories was through books, not video/tabletop games, I’ve always been a little bemused at how many comics of all kinds try to fit dungeon-crawling into them and the varying levels of success these stories have in making it not feel like a video game mechanic. “Going into a dungeon on a quest and/or to fight monsters” is an idea that works well in an interactive medium, like games, but less well in a static medium like books or comics where the readers don’t experience that same thrill of exploring and puzzle solving.
For me, the majority of anime/manga I consume that does involve dungeon crawling as a plot point leave that aspect feeling rather underdeveloped; most of the time series just treat this kind of adventuring as “expected” and won’t really delve into why this particular setting exists, like it’s just there as authorial shorthand so that the story doesn’t have to spend more time on the setting (which is a little funny since the setting is literally a character’s entire world!).
Delicious in Dungeon was like that to start with. Ryoko Kui was able to make me care about the characters (and laugh often) so I loved the series but I always felt like “there is a magical place under the ground, a dungeon, with strange creatures and riches beyond imagine, created by an elf but no one could tell you how” was a bit of a cop-out, a storytelling shortcut to get the story moving and that irritated me a bit. So I’m quite surprised that this far into the story that Kui has decided to spend several chapters stepping back and showing the reader the larger world this manga exists in. While this particular dungeon is unusual in several areas, dungeons in general are a known phenomenon and are treated essentially like a kind of magical natural disaster. And the existence of dungeons has shaped this world; it’s implied that dungeon management has helped lead to the overarching elf authority that’s been hinted at in the series and we get to see it first hand here (and how many of the character chaff under the different perspectives and morale of the elves).
This far into the story Kui didn’t really need to spend time on this aspect anymore (even I had stopped questioning “why dungeons?”) so I’m curious what this means about the future direction of the story. Volume by volume, this story has expanded beyond Laois and his party; the central part of the story is still to get Falin back (their newest plan now involves eating all of her monster parts, which is on-brand for this series and might actually work) but we can now see that this disaster has occurred when tensions are already very high surrounding this dungeon and that the dungeon itself may be on the brink of a transformation.
While things boil on the surface, down below Laois and the gang have some pretty typical (for them) adventures in these two volumes. There’s an extended bit where they keep getting changed into other races (Kui even draws out an entire chart showing what each party member would look like as each different race, a fun extra), Senshi is able to get some closure on his past, and we even meet some people from the lunatic magician’s original kingdom who are now living in a village with some lifestyle modifications. I’m not sure which was funnier in that village — seeing that they have to use monsters for livestock, since that’s all they have around, or seeing the village girls accidentally invent haute couture fashion in their boredom.
Both of the volumes are very satisfying, and I never felt like Kui was spending too much time on the surface or that it had been too long since we had an update on how the elves’ plans were progressing. I’m still not sure how much more of the story is left since I feel as if Falin’s resurrection was the halfway point, and frankly I could see it either being wrapped up quickly or slowly playing out over a number more volumes. I’m content and along for the ride however, as there are still monsters to try and eat so let the adventures continue!