Dungeon Meshi S1 ★★★★☆

When I first watched this it took me a while to get over the overtly gamey aspects of the setting. It’s an acquired taste, y’know? Need to chew on it for a while. But there is a great satisfaction in seeing the concept of a dungeon being carefully examined, butchered, and picked part. To consider how it works and what needs to be true for it to exist and for it to continue to exist. Its economy, its ecology, its lifecycle. And there is a funny, compelling and interesting story woven throughout. It is not just wanking itself off about lore. The story is almost fractal in nature. Examining from the top down the world, the dungeon, the adventures in it, and the monsters that make their way into the adventurers’ stomachs. There are so many little things to pick up on and watch out for on rewatch. As a small but amusing one I don’t think that I noticed on my first watch: During the first intro there is a party trying to use a dog to harvest mandrakes.

I do think it feels like overly direct in adaptation at times. Awkward asides that interrupt the flow of conversations and various little visuals that I think work better in a comic than on television. And the way episodes are so clearly two chapters stabled together with more than often very abrupt and obvious transitions in the middle. Towards the end these start to feel like they’ve really gotten out of sync with the storytelling, with a run of episodes where the first half of one episode continues quite directly from the second half of the previous episode, only to change to something different in the second half that will be continued in the first half of the next. The Golden Country, griffin, and changeling episodes all follow this pattern with the somewhat underwhelming finale being confined to only the second part of episode twenty-four.

Still, I am very much looking forward to the second half of this show.