When young adventurer Laios and his company are attacked and soundly thrashed by a dragon deep in a dungeon, the party loses all its money and provisions...and a member! They're eager to go back and save her, but there is just one problem: If they set out with no food or coin to speak of, they're sure to starve on the way! But Laios comes up with a brilliant idea: "Let's eat the monsters!" Slimes, basilisks, and even dragons...none are safe from the appetites of these dungeon-crawling gourmands!
Not a manga that is typically in my wheelhouse, but the world building and the characters are very well thought out and relatable. I only hesitate to give it a full five stars since it doesn't have that special something to really hook me personally, but in a different life, I can easily see this being a favorite comic (and overall series) of mine.
Edit: Also have to say, the way it blends the overarching narrative with its themes on the importance of food, is superb (exemplified perfectly in the climax of Volume 12) chefs kiss
This first volume is lighthearted and fun, and funnier than I expected. One particular joke made me laugh out loud even though I was alone.
The portrayal of the one (1) female character among the party of otherwise all men was frustrating; as the only woman, she is therefore the character who is melodramatically disgusted by eating monsters, who is insecure, who is always flagging behind the men and compelling the party to stop for a rest, etc. It's not great.
There is some hope that this might improve in future volumes, maybe, and at least her squeamishness also functions to make her the "relatable everyhuman" character for the reader, whose reactions are likely to be more like hers than like the other characters'.
In a vacuum, I do like her well enough. If the book had more than one female character, and said female characters had as much variety …
This first volume is lighthearted and fun, and funnier than I expected. One particular joke made me laugh out loud even though I was alone.
The portrayal of the one (1) female character among the party of otherwise all men was frustrating; as the only woman, she is therefore the character who is melodramatically disgusted by eating monsters, who is insecure, who is always flagging behind the men and compelling the party to stop for a rest, etc. It's not great.
There is some hope that this might improve in future volumes, maybe, and at least her squeamishness also functions to make her the "relatable everyhuman" character for the reader, whose reactions are likely to be more like hers than like the other characters'.
In a vacuum, I do like her well enough. If the book had more than one female character, and said female characters had as much variety among them as the men, she could potentially be fine as a character. But she's the only one, and her portrayal is so different to the mens' in such a blatantly and stereotypically gendered way, so she just comes off as trope-tastic token girl #3000, at least in this first volume. And this is so heavy-handedly so that it's hard to see her as an individual underneath that.
Regardless, I was able to overlook that aspect to enjoy the manga overall, and I'm intrigued and hopeful about the subsequent volumes. This one is very much episodic - fight monster! Now eat monster! Yum! - which is enjoyable in its own right, but I hear tell that the series does develope some sort of cohesive story later on.
I recommend this for anyone who thinks the premise sounds fun, and especially for cooking and D&D nerds.
The dungeon is swarming with monsters. That means it has an ecosystem. Where there are carnivores, there are herbivores for them to eat! There are plants that herbivorous monsters eat and water, light, and dirt to nourish those plants! In other words: Humans can sustain themselves in the dungeon, too!
I continue to be in the mood for comic/manga-shaped stories that resemble D&D games, and it made me recall this series that has been on my TBR forever. I was a bit worried it would be kind of gross with all the monster cooking, but with very few exceptions, it's not. It's actually really fun and entertaining.
I did find that it read more like a LitRPG than a fantasy adventure, even though it's technically not one. But there was just so much focus on the mechanical side of things: the levels of the dungeon, the casual resurrections, the monster-fighting …
The dungeon is swarming with monsters. That means it has an ecosystem. Where there are carnivores, there are herbivores for them to eat! There are plants that herbivorous monsters eat and water, light, and dirt to nourish those plants! In other words: Humans can sustain themselves in the dungeon, too!
I continue to be in the mood for comic/manga-shaped stories that resemble D&D games, and it made me recall this series that has been on my TBR forever. I was a bit worried it would be kind of gross with all the monster cooking, but with very few exceptions, it's not. It's actually really fun and entertaining.
I did find that it read more like a LitRPG than a fantasy adventure, even though it's technically not one. But there was just so much focus on the mechanical side of things: the levels of the dungeon, the casual resurrections, the monster-fighting strategies and monster "stats." Between all that and the elaborate step-by-step recipes, I'd even say it felt like reading a fictionalized setting book. Especially since the characters were rather one-dimensional for the most part. It took over half of the book for them, starting with Marcille, to begin displaying more than a single trait/skill per character.
Still, in spite of the above, reading this manga was a rather enjoyable experience, due to all the monster mythology and all the action scenes. I'm likely to continue the series the next time I'm in the mood for something like this.
Review of 'Delicious in Dungeon Vol. 01' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Dungeons & Dragons mixed with Julia Child and a dash of MMORPG. The result is Delicious in Dungeon: a combination dungeon crawling adventure and faux cookbook where the protagonists have fallen on hard times and need to eat what they kill while trying to work their way deeper into the dungeon with the goal of rescuing one of their party who has been eaten by a dragon.
The story plays with a lot of tropes of classic dungeon crawling RPG play. Why is the dungeon there? Why do people explore it? Why is it full of monsters? What kind of economy grows up around it? How seriously do adventurers take death when they know they can be resurrected?
The first volume is amusing enough for me to try another.
