Dungeon Meshi - Dryad soup bowl

Girl she's just eating pizza calm down

They've been doing better at making marcille look disheveled, I approve

i love the extras of dungeon meshi in how it fleshes out the world because they make it so much more evident how race affects every part of the story while avoiding the zootopia racism problem. like obv a main theme of the story is like, humanity and desire, 'to eat is to live', etc, but since the majority of it takes place in the dungeon isolated from society and thru the lens of laios, the racial aspects play out more like shadows on a wall for most of the story.

then in the extras we get comics like this

which at a glance fleshes out the racial aspects via a character explaining the racial rules of universe - humans have x amount of bones, while orcs and kobolds have more. however, if u take it less straightforwardly, it points out how the concept of 'human' is a constructed concept in the world. the fact that there are different categories of human in different parts of the world based off of what types of humanoids occur there is already a demonstration of this. in response, the bones explanation seems to kabru and the characters as an objective way of measuring humans vs nonhumans.

but obv, when the culture was deciding what humanoids were humans and nonhumans, they weren't blindly analyzing skeletons and then deciding. just visually, one can glean that orcs and kobolds look less like the ingroup of tallmen, elves, dwarves, gnomes, etc. the bones explanation appears as a justification for that immediate prejudice under a scientific guise - I'm sure that one could come up with the same number of physical differences between a gnome and an elf that they would find between a tallman and an orc. it sounds a lot better to say 'well, an orc has 230 bones while a human has 206' then 'well, an orc looks ewwww yucky yucky to me while a human looks normal'.

and what i like abt the comic is that the characters take the explanation at face value for the most part. when a contradiction is brought up in the oni, kabru can neatly slot them into the predetermined number of bones framework. bc that's kinda how it works irl - there r cultural prejudices that we can posthumously justify, and if we find something outside of it, we can twist it to fit into our predetermined binary. however, since the reader does not live in a world where there are orcs and kobolds to be prejudiced against, we can see that flaw in the cultural logic. when the party encounters the orcs, the number of bones has no bearing on their humanity. They r shown to be cliquish and distrusting of outsiders, but not any more than the elves are later in the story.

tldr dungeon meshi worldbuilding is so good

Sorry but Kabru is so fascinating to me as a character, in a pure mechanical sense, because of what Ryoko Kui does with him. Everything about him is a red herring. He's deliberately introduced as some kind of rival for Laios, a party leader who is hopeless against monsters but absolutely brilliant with people both in and out of combat, and who has good reason to oppose him.

By the end of chapter 31, you might even think Kabru's going to end up as some sort of anti-villain, an antagonist with the best of intentions who nevertheless tries to foil our hero's plans. He wants to defeat the Mad Mage himself, he suspects Laios of being too irresponsible to be trusted with control of the dungeon, and his crew even thinks that Laios's party stole from them (and they're kind of right!). All signs point towards an inevitable showdown.

And then ... none of that happens.

Confrontation over the stolen treasure? Kabru is literally too smart to fall for the classic miscommunication trope and correctly decides it's not worth making a big deal of.

Kabru's deadly PVP skills? Aside from trying to take down Falin, he never fights another human again.

Wanting to be the one who defeats the dungeon? Turns out he was only doing that because he didn't think any other adventurer would have people's best interests at heart, and he's more than willing to play a support role in the whole affair.

Thinking Laios is up to no good? He really did just want to get to know the guy more. He has his misgivings, but ultimately ends up trusting Laios with his life.

Is Kabru going to get some sort of comeuppance for hating monsters and not appreciating their ecosystem? Well no, he has good reasons for hating monsters. He ends up wanting to learn about them through Laios's eyes, but he's never forced into any "Wow, guess I was wrong about them!" revelation.

Hell, even his implied ladykiller ways, which might lead you to think he'll end up being the stock "chivalrous lech" type of character, don't really manifest. He has a lot of opportunities to act flirtatiously around women, but doesn't. He's just a guy whose natural charisma makes him into human catnip.

And that's all hysterical to me, to pull it off. It's a fascinating way to tell a story. To introduce a character explicitly as a rival, potentially even a villain, and instead make them a deuteragonist. It's like a magician making a coin disappear, then slowing down their trick to show you the misdirection. "Did you see what I did there?" they ask with a wink. "The coin was in my other hand the entire time."

when you eat, will you set a plate for me?

love when his eyes do this

very good laios lines this episode

Funny things I found out playing with language setting in Netflix while looking episode 14:

Chilchuck's scream sounds HAUNTED in brazilian portuguese. Give it a try if you can.

In spanish dub, Senshi says: "tocó mis senos de hombre", which means "he touched my man boobs" in Spanish. And I think that's the best dub line one so far.

Marcille is so cute!

you and me

It’s Dungeon Meshi Thursday everybody! Have another Senshi warmup ✨

he refuses to eat anything but the zombie meat

still an absolutely iconic moment 🫡

your honor they’re 🏳️‍🌈

(Part 2 up now :DDD)