#dungeon meishi manga spoilers

[artbyanaxolotl]

tempted to draw/make an edit for what the other touden party members would have looked like as dungeon masters

[realclemhours]

Hey so I finished Dungeon Meishi (manga included) and I wanna have a 3 a.m ramble about some of my thoughts about the ending

MANGA SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING BELOW THE CUT‼️

Okay so the ending honestly left me a tad disappointed. Don’t get me wrong there was still a ton of shit I loved and I am willing to hear people out who love this ending and get it more than I do, but first let me get into the things I do like.

The winged lion was such a fantastic final villain. The way it sweet talked genuinely made it sound so supportive that I kept flip-flopping on whether or not he was telling the truth despite FULLY knowing at this point that it was evil.

Laios turning into the beast he had designed since childhood, making one last change so he could eat desires, and using that to consume the wing lion was such an amazing play.

Everyone showing up after Laios ran away, then finding him, and Shuro hugging and showing pride in him was just so oughhhhh made me tear up a bit.

I absolutely LOVED the Itzusumi chapter where she asked all the main characters what they were going to do after the main story and finally came to terms with doing things she didn’t want to do.

I really love that Mithrun and Thistle got closure despite being antagonists and previous dungeon lords. It shows that they were just humans who were corrupted by the dungeon and deserve to recover just like our main protags and that’s really sweet :))

Finally, I’m just happy that the orcs actually get to live on the surface now. They deserve that

Anyways those are all the major things I liked/loved, there’s some other things obviously, but let me get to my issues

Okay first of all but it feels like in the last like 20 chapters outside of Laios and Marcielle the main cast doesn’t really do much. Like yeah, they’re there and they do talk, but the only time they ever really do things is like as a group? They’re either all acting a parasite or cooking a meal or trying to catch up the winged dragon in Laios’s body or they are just doing nothing while Marcielle or Laios is doing the protag stuff.

It’s kinda disappointing to me to be honest. They’ve build such bonds and built such likeable characters only to go “uhhh actually only Laios can do anything in the final fight against the demon and the others just stand and watch confused”. Which again, while Laios’s plan was really cool I just wish the others in the main cast got to contribute to the final battle. Have them all have their little time to shine you know?

I also personally don’t like that Laios became king and the curse. I just personally kinda prefer when protags give up that sort of thing to live a simplistic life. Honestly kinda wish Kabru became king in Laios’s place, but then again if Laios didn’t step up as king Marcielle would be in jail, the orcs would still be exiled, and the current leaders of the island would still be in charge and continue to be greedy and incompetent.

So uhhhhh yeah maybe best he became king even if I’m not fond of it-

But then we have the curse, which oooooo boy. I get that like Laios has to sacrifice something great to defeat a literal demon, but losing the ability to be around monsters entirely?? I can’t fully explain why but I just really dislike it. It makes me feel just kinda sad. But not sad like it’s a bittersweet sacrifice (Hiccup losing his leg in How to Train Your Dragon comes to mind as a bittersweet sacrifice I love), but just unsatisfying? Like yeah, the protagonist saved the world and his sister is now safe but now is life is kinda miserable since he has to deal with people all the time and can never see monsters again.Hurray 🎉

Don’t get me wrong I feel like Laios should absolutely lose something from fighting the demon. Not sure what exactly (maybe his desires for food or monsters or a limb), but what they ended up going with was just kinda disappointing to me.

Anyways those are just my takeaways from the ending. Let me know if I’m missing anything, I would love to discuss and maybe get my mind changed.

Overall, did the ending ruin Dunmeshi for me? Oh absolutely not. This was such a fantastic story and world that enthralled me till the end (even if it did lose me a bit at the end). Would still genuinely give it a 10/10 despite my complaints. I liked it that much.

If you asked me to summarize how the ending made me feel in relation to the rest of the series, well I would best compare it to a meal. Most of the meal is no joke 5 star best stuff I have ever eaten in my life. Then I get to my last item… some dessert. The dessert tastes amazing- but the texture is a bit odd and it bugs me to the point where I notice and feel how weird it was. Would I still hate the rest of the meal for the one slightly weird dessert? Absolutely not! I would still recommend the meal to everyone I know even with the off dessert at the end because everything else was just that fantastic.

Anyways yeah maybe the real Dunmeshi was the friends we made along away and then ate as we faced the fear of mortality and ancient gods beyond our comprehension <3

[bullshits-smut]

So caught up on dungeon meishi.

Fuckin wow that's a really good comic.

Spoilers for latest issues.

So it starts off as basically a gag comic about doing a dungeon dive in a generic anime western fantasy world but they are eating all the monsters they kill. It's goofy and fun but nothing really that amazing. Real similar to camp fire cooking in another world.

Unlike camp fire cooking it slowly expands and progresses into a more serious higher stakes plot as the secrets of the dungeon get revealed. It starts to drop the eating monsters gimick and become more about forbidden magic and world ending plots and shit, and it's fantastic.

But the thing that I think sets it apart from a lot of other stories that slowly grow in stakes and seriousness as they progress is the fact that it reveals that the eating monster gimick isn't a gimick. It's a thematic core to the larger story. Eat or be eaten, hunger becomes a metaphor for desire. They are feeding on the dungeon and it's monsters but the dungeon is feeding on their desire. The monsters are ultimately a lure for the heroes to be eaten by the dungeon. Learning to control your hunger or desire is key.

And by the end Laios devours the winged lion, being the only person capable of consuming its unfathomable desire.

It's all tied together. The early fun goofy eating monsters becomes the core theme of the story as it grows.

It's just... Fucking masterful story telling.

And that's not even getting into the art.

The art grows in the same way as the story. It's never bad even from the first issue it's nice art but it's verry standard.

Like this is nice art, but nice in the same way as like a hundred other fantasy manga. Id describe it as 'we have witch hat atelier at home'

But as the story expands and starts to grow out of its initial premesis so does the art. But interesting its less that Ryoko Kui becoming a better draftsman and more either intentionally or unintentionally the scope of the influence she's drawing from expanding.

While the early stuff is clearly drawing from the same pool of influences as a million isekai fantasy manga. As it goes on and becomes more conceptually abstract in its story. The art starts to take on a biblical quality.

Until Laios devouring the winged lion is just... One of the most gorgeous single panels I've seen in a manga.

That's a fuckin renisance painting, her art and layouts start to draw from renisance and baroque art. The ideas the comic are presenting even if in isolation they're good, the art transforms it into something mythic.

Just...

Yo this comics really fuckin good.

[screambirdscreaming]

Ok big total spoilers for dungeon meishi here, up through the end of the manga, but i have some thoughts

I don't dislike where it went with the concept of the demon, but i feel like it would have been more satisfying (to me) if they'd kept the scope dialed back a few notches?

There's a lot of interesting groundwork being laid for the dungeon itself as a thing that consumes: the dungeon-as-mouth imagery; the way it fulfills and feeds on people's desires - sometimes providing adventurers with exactly what they seek, growing more powerful with more treasure and stronger monsters as the number of adventurers reaches a tipping point; adventurers being eaten by monsters, etc. As an ecosystem cut off from sunlight, the dungeon has two energy sources feeding its foodweb: mana leaking in from the other dimension, and the energy brought down by adventures. There's a lot of interesting dynamic push and pull between those sources, where hypothetically the mana is an infinite source of energy and provides a surplus of production which adventurers harvest and bring up to the surface world - but the flow of mana into the world requires a pull from people's desires and wishes, which in turn are consumed by the dungeon. So who is feeding on who?

And then there's a concept tossed around of whether it would be possible to tame a dungeon - Marcille at some point states this as her goal, maintaining a dungeon in which monsters with beneficial attributes are kept without risk to humans. Her vision is very tidied-up and controlled, a farmed system, but a somewhat parallel desire is expressed by others who want the dungeon to continue indefinitely in a stable state: Senshi, the orcs, Laios.

But as we learn more about the dungeon's need to consume, this possibility slips out of reach. As long as there's more treasure to be found, the number of adventurers increases and the dungeon bloats on their desires - and when the treasure runs out, the adventurers leave and the dungeon starves. There's no stable equilibrium point to be found. Is this because the flows of energy into and out of the dungeon don't form a closed loop? There's no return of energy from the dungeon's wish-granting to the dungeon ecosystem, only the wishes consumed by the demon.

For that matter, what happens to the mana that flows into the world? Is the level of mana increasing indefinitely? Is there anything in the world that consumes it for good? It's at least implied, if not stated directly, that modern magic relies on gathering up and directing mana - whereas ancient magic involves pulling power directly from the other dimension. But it doesn't seem like mana is actually destroyed by its use in magic - at most, it's converted into other forms of energy, like heat. Which is still an energy sink problem on a global scale. (See: fossil fuels)

I think it could've been really cool to explore dungeons as both a source and sink of mana. Maybe if the demon's consumption of desires removed some form of energy from the world back to the other dimension? Maybe if some other aspect of the dungeon served to digest mana in a way that doesn't happen on the surface? Maybe if dungeons naturally accumulated mana and were involved in its global cycles of circulation, and the problem of bloating and crashing could be solved by cutting off the flow of mana from the other dimension?

Any of these could have involved grappling with the desire-eating demon in various ways, whether its an evil you have to live with to maintain the flow or mana and have to learn to manage, or whether it's a parasite feeding on the flow, or whether it's the cause of an energy leak that needs to be closed.

And there could be something there also with the unbearable burden of trying to manually control the entire dungeon system through one person, and the need to decentralize that control into one of ecosystem processes and collective management for the dungeon to become sustainable.

In contrast to that, the narrative turns away from the implication that the dungeon is feeding on the desires of all adventurers, and focuses on the flow of mana and desires through the dungeon master. And all the demons turn out to be aspects of one enormous consciousness - not just strange monsters cultivating burrows in which to feed, but something on the scale of a god. And so, while it's still very much dealing with themes of desires and consumption and balance and decay, it's doing so on a very abstracted, fantasy-epic scale.

Which is fine if that's your thing! But I think it'd have been neat if we got messy, farm-collective dungeon management challenges, rather than an eat-god-and-become-king type of resolution.

[socialpermadeath]

i'm in no way qualified to discuss the drama stuff but let's actually address her "negatives" below the cut because media criticism is within my wheelhouse. there will be spoilers for the episodes that have been released so far.

1. the main concept is weirdly grim for such a silly show - that's the point. that's the whole point of Dungeon Meishi. it provides both comedy and tension through use of tonal whiplash.

2. poor comedy - no accounting for taste but frankly, i think you're wrong. my friends think it's funny, my mom and dad think it's funny, it has passed peer review among people i know irl.

3. entire series is premised on the joke of anime drawing good food - again, this is a matter of taste that i would argue just isn't true. the joke isn't just "anime food is pretty" it's also "here's pretty anime food made with weird and sometimes off-putting ingredients." and also it being of a genre that doesn't get a cooking manga/anime where the rules of the world make that a very interesting base concept. it's an inventive twist on that convention.

4. every character that isn't Marcille is a stock archetype - i'm sorry, did we watch the same show? in what world is a dwarf who hates blacksmithing, a bitter, divorced father of three halfling rogue, and a fighter that is genuinely unwell beneath that smile a "stock archetype"? i can grant that the haunted cleric (Falin) is something i've seen before but the rest of them?! genuinely want to know what fantasy shows you're watching that routinely feature a divorced dead beat dad as their standard rogue because i want to watch them.

5. fan service bath scene - yes, there was one bath scene that might come off as fan service-y to some viewers but it was a) a lot tamer than some anime fan service scenes and b) shockingly geared towards lesbians. there's also some inversions of the standard fan service trope in how often we are shown Senshi's dick outline. tbh, as a man attracted to men, it's kind of refreshing to see a bara-esque man portrayed like that in anime.

6. several tonal issues - as i addressed above, the tonal "issues" are the point. it's meant to give you tonal whiplash.

7. anime being weird about female characters again - there definitely are some moments that I could see coming off as off-putting to an audience but the ways in which Dungeon Meishi is "weird" about their female characters is very different from how most animes are weird about their female characters and i think that's worth something. we don't get panty shots, we don't get "yeah she looks 9 but she's actually 100 years old so it's fine to sexualize her" characters, we get a pretty blonde elf who turns out to be into the most fucked up magic imaginable and a shy human mage who ends up being freakishly OP. even if you don't like the way these characters are treated, you can't deny that it's at least different.

8. Laios - wrong. just... wrong. you don't qualify this one so i'm led to assume that you think this is a given which i simply cannot fathom. he's weird, he's goofy, he's almost certainly autistic, and he loves his sister. do i think he's a perfect character? of course not. no character is perfect. do i think he is quite a good protagonist? yes, yes I do.

came across a youtube review of dunmeshi by a youtuber called lily orchard or something and. it's so bad

literally how do you miss the point so bad."entire series premised on the joke of anime drawing good food"? what? what are you on about