Canary in the dungeon

Time to talk an unnecessary amount about floors!

Episode 6 of Dungeon Meshi was produced in collaboration with a smaller studio, Enishiya - and it went way harder than I expected, for being made up of two relatively simple and self contained stories focusing on one character each.

And you can really see how those extra resources meant the animators could give full focus to both halves of the episode. Let's take a look at one piece that stole the show.

The first half was handled primarily by episode director/storyboard artist Keita Nagahara and co-animation director Hirotoshi (or Hiroaki? [1]) Arai. It's actually kinda insane how much of this section can be attributed to these two.

But the real star of the show is the second half, Chilchuck vs the mimic, led by co-animation director Toya Ooshima in his first animation director role for TV anime!

And the biggest aspect that knocked my dang boots off was something that's very consistent with Ooshima's style: background animation!

By animating the backgrounds rather than using painted still images, Ooshima and the team of other similarly skilled animators are able to create these beautiful dynamic camera movements that wouldn't be possible otherwise. Like these cuts by Takeshi Maenami where the camera becomes an expressive part of the scene, zipping forward and backward, and tilting to emphasize the speed of this murderous hermit crab. (Maenami's style is also very recognizable here - snappy timing and quick camera movements)

Or this cut by the incredible Kaito Tomioka which cleverly combines a traditional background for the walls with a fully animated floor. The level of detail in these tiles is just completely insane, and used to great effect with this wide, diagonal angle, and the way the camera tentatively drifts forward before reversing direction, and the tiles blur out as it speeds up.

I don't think I'm the only one caught off guard by how much they full-assed this little side story, but it was a pleasant surprise!

I broke down the entire episode in this video here. A lot of research went into this one, and I think it's the best one of these videos I've made so far, so if you're at all interested in more of this type of analysis in video form, I would really appreciate it if you checked it out, or re-blogged this post! Thanks

[1] It's listed as Hirotoshi on Anime News Network, but Hiroaki on a key frame that Studio Trigger shared on Twitter, so I'm not sure which one is wrong.

I was thinking about dungeon based media and I made this alignment chart

chilchuck is the most powerful character in the manga just for this

The English dub might actually be good ;0:

I’ve been obsessed with this tweet for a while so I’m posting the it to tumblr to inflict it on more people

dungeon meshi but they end up in the back rooms, a cursed idea that was eating away at my brain

Peer-reviewing @monikoishi's tags because they're banger.

god bless

i see no difference, love is love

Getting a bit sick of all the "ooh I'm so glad Laios has a soft body!" "Laios is built like an average guy" style posts. Because he doesn't and isn't.

Laios is built like a fucking professional wrestler. He isn't like, super chiseled or anything but he does not have an "average" body, he his built like someone who does a LOT of physical effort and training.

there are 2 kinds of mangaka when drawing: the ones that hate woman and the ones that love woman

And, guys...

i think ryoko kui really loves woman.

i think the whole thing is wonderful

oh my bad! i posted this months ago but i shouldve included what the book is, this was from kate bornstein’s “my gender workbook: how to become a real man, a real woman, the real you, or something else entirely” and it’s also on internet archive where you can borrow it for an hour

you can also download the new edition directly as a pdf here !

I just love how they were just as wild and varied as people are today. It makes it feel way more normal to be like "Yeah sometimes my gender is a swamp thing, but sometimes I'm literally Just A Guy."

i love tool assisted speedruns

for the love of god someone please explain me how the fuck tas works

People are talking about how reading Dungeon Meshi gives them an internal monologue Senshi for eating properly I think we all need to adopt an internal monologue Chilchuck at work. Like the boat is literally sinking and he's just watching it happen because he's on his lunch break.

#remember chilchuk would tell you to always put ur own needs and rights first in the workplace 🧡 (@clowniconography)

This is the Union Chilchuck, reblog him to affirm your own worth as a worker and entitlement to regular breaks

in light of kinda recent events