#laios does need to think about humanity outside of his personal friends and party a little more

[batshaped]

i paused reading chapter 76 to make this LOL

[holmsister]

I think one of the things Dungeon Meshi is definitely about is how different people deal with being an outsider/marginalised/neurodivergent/what have you and basically what im getting at is that Kabru is TEXTBOOK "high functioning [insert diagnosis here]". Its that how they say it still? Don't care.

Basically. This man shows up and you listens to him talk and see how his party treats him and you think. Oh this is a cool guy who has his shit together. And then after like two pages you find out that he has constant flashbacks to Utaya that make him completely freeze, anxiety attacks, thought spirals, is incapable of analyzing his own feelings, is a stuttering mess when the stakes are high, has never done a chore in his life, keeps putting himself in triggering situations and re-traumatising himself, and the icing on the cake is when you read the extra material and it turns out he regularly forgets to eat and lives in a depression nest of dirty clothes and self-medicates insomnia with alcohol and also is 22. Which also kind of puts Misilril not wanting to let him go in another light - yeah for sure she's controlling and infantilising and also its not like she was really helping his issues but also she was not entirely wrong in her judgement. This man does NOT know how to take care of himself. He knows how to do the bare minimum so when he shows up at work the next day he can fool his coworkers into thinking hes got it together enough. For a bit.

He is DEEPLY unwell and he knows it but he is carried by the desperate wish to avoid another catastrophe. If he stops for a moment he KNOWS he'll collapse so he doesn't.

I also think this is why him acting nurse to Mithrun is such an important part of his arc. Its like. This person who has spent all of his adult life focused on a single objective disregarding everything else is faced with what happens when you do that for too long. And the result is a wet tissue of a creature who looks like he doesn't know where he is most of the time.

He is a man on the brink. I have no doubt he felt relieved when he decided he could trust Laios - not even in a Labru way, straight up because he knew he could not keep going like this.

But also like. Of all the characters in the manga, I think Senshi and Kabru are the most lonely ones. Except Senshi seems to be OK with solitude - for sure it's not entirely healthy to be alone for as long as he was but he definitely did well enough. He is very good at taking care of himself. Meanwhile Kabru *knows* a lot of people but can you really say he has friends? Rin, maybe, arguably, but even she does not seem to truly know him, you know? He keeps himself hidden from everyone. I think the only time we see him entirely honest is when he says to Laios that he wanted to be his friend, and hes so shocked when it comes out, you can tell he did not mean to say it. And differently from Senshi, he does NOT fare well alone. He likes people, he needs people. Again compare with Mithrun - he has like a squad of people taking care of him. If Kabru had a breakdown of that size can you say his party would go out of its way to help? Im not sure. Not because they're bad people, but because he's simply not that intimate with any of them.

Idk man it just struck me all of a sudden. Laios is weird and offputting and doesn't care about other humans the way Kabru does and YET he is infinitely more successful at building deep, meaningful relationships and taking care of himself as well. I think this is part of why Kabru is so fascinated with him as well. He can tell Laios has something he doesn't have. Wait this is turning into a whole another post I'll write this next time.

[britcision]

This, this, so much this!

I think it also pairs really nicely with how Laios is set up in the story; we spend almost all of our time early on with Laios and the party, establishing who this awkward guy really is

And then we begin seeing through the perspectives of others, first outsiders who knew him (Namari, Shuro, arguably Kabru) and then outsiders who don’t (the Canaries) and the way these people have all decided he’s potentially the most dangerous enemy of humankind who needs to be destroyed

And we really got the inverse of that with Falin, seeing her only through the memories of those who loved her most

Even Kabru’s crew only really mention her and Laios as a unit, despite having individual takes on the others

So we’re presented with the Perfect Falin, sweet and kind and just the most wonderful person you could imagine, the kind of person it’s worth going to the dungeon and eating monsters to save

And, just like when strangers assume Laios is dangerous because he doesn’t give a fuck about humans… it’s not the whole picture

Falin is messy, physically and emotionally

All of her magic is innate, so she couldn’t teach Laios as well as Marcille could, and we see in Marcille’s flashbacks that it gave her trouble at school

She got results by doing things “wrong” (especially the mini-dungeon terrariums) and… yeah, she didn’t get along with people well there either

Marcille’s firmly implied to be her only friend, and Marcille wasn’t even a student; she was a researcher who happened to be in a some classes Falin took

The other refrain we hear about Falin is so telling; she’s “just like Laios”

Laios, who we learn very early on is often interpreted as sinister and weird even by people who know him well

People who know Falin pretty much all adore her (sorry Laios) but people who don’t… don’t seem to think about her

Kabru barely mentions her by name, while displaying a kinda invasive knowledge about everyone else except Laios, because he’s lumped the siblings into a single unit - “the little sister went to the mage academy” is about all he has to offer on Falin herself

(He also managed to interpret the Toudens giving money to friends who got too hurt to go dungeoning and being taken advantage of as a sign that they don’t care about people, but this ain’t about him)

I do think, on the whole, Falin is a good, kind person. Prioritizing people she knows over people she doesn’t isn’t a character flaw, it’s just human, just as Laios said

But giving us all these bits and pieces, these other details about how she is a bit off-putting, she does freak people out, and even her making the healing painless despite there being serious risks… it makes her a more complete, well rounded character, despite being almost entirely absent from the series

(Chimera Falin is decidedly different from the Red Dragon too, Thistle comments on it specifically, and she takes on a caregiving role almost as a default; she cradles him in her arms rather than scruffing him like a cat or lifting him onto her back, offers him food, and in general is just… not just obedient

All the monsters obey Thistle by default, they follow his will, but Chimera Falin displays worry and distress in a way that’s most stark when he fills that kitchen with dragons… and none of them really pay attention except when he yells at them)

I think that scene about the healing with Falin and Marcille is actually super important, because it does highlight another side of Falin and what we think of as kindness

Of course everyone wants to be healed painlessly and feel better

And Falin definitely doesn’t tolerate seeing other people in pain well

But I think the major takeaway from that comic is actually that while she would never say it the same way, Marcille does agree with Namari about Falin to an extent

Falin has a soft heart, and it makes her take more dangerous risks than someone colder, someone closer to “perfect” who was just aiming for the best possible outcome

It’s the typical “kindness is a weakness”, but with a much more mature and nuanced spin that Dungeon Meshi excels at

Falin is kind, which is not the same as good, or perfect, or even right

She’s often misunderstood, and makes decisions with her heart more than her head

She cares so much about not hurting others herself, not even monsters if she can avoid it, and still doesn’t even seem to notice that she makes people uncomfortable

And when push comes to shove, she will choose to make her friends happy and safe at any cost

With an absent, aspirational character it’s very easy to wind up presenting them as the Perfect Innocent, someone with no flaws who Clearly doesn’t deserve their fate, who Must Be Saved From Their Noble Self Sacrifice, and it is so powerful that Dungeon Meshi absolutely refuses to do that

Falin is human, she’s complicated, messy, flawed, and it’s still worth risking everything to save her

She is so loved, and worthy of that love, not despite all of her quirks and mistakes but because of them

Because if we don’t love each other, if we were calm and selfless and only ever did things for the greatest possible good and not our personal feelings, we lose our humanity

If Laios, Marcille, and Chilchuck had given up on Falin, they couldn’t have saved the world

While Falin is the driving motivation for the plot, the story isn’t actually about her, and Laios pings on that pretty early on; “if she wasn’t eaten by the dragon we wouldn’t be having this great adventure”

She could have been a flat, simple Maiden to Rescue From The Dragon

But she’s not, and that makes her a far more interesting character

I want to talk about why I think this is the one of the most important Falin panels:

So, Falin is really nice, right? It's one of the first things we really learn about her. She's kind even to the monsters of the dungeon - choosing to ward the party rather than fight spirits and cause them needless harm.

In the above early flashback in chapter 11, we see Marcille fawning over Falin's kindness, calling her an angel. Namari calls her soft-hearted. We see Falin choose not to fight even when a zombie attacks - instead she resolves the confrontation with a hug. After the flashback, the first thing Senshi says is that Falin "sounds like quite the person," which Marcille strongly affirms.

At this point in the story, all we have seen of Falin are these impressions; she is a healer, an angel, a caretaker with an infinite well of kindness towards everyone she meets - both friend and foe.

And honestly, that remains most of what we have to go by to understand her. The only times we get to see Falin on the page, alive and just herself, are in the opening and closing pages of the story and in the brief period of time after she is resurrected.

Nonetheless, we do have some more details to work with. For one, there is the scene that The Panel is from - a short memory in chapter 75, when Marcille flashes back to while she's dying. In that scene, Falin prepares to teleport them all out, and says that she's sorry "if there is a person at [their] destination." And that's when we get The Panel.

If you teleport someone or something into another person, the person teleported into is likely to be, at minimum, severely injured. They could die.

We can see a lovely little horrifying example of exactly why in one of the Daydream Hour doodles:

So, hmm. That's not... that's not SUPER nice. Certainly not displaying the same "kindness to all, friend and foe included" we saw represented earlier. On a basic level, this adds some nuance to Falin's kindness. We see it break a little, when pushed to the limit. We see her chose to protect the people she loves above all else.

Which makes sense! As Laios says when the Winged Lion accuses him of similarly being motivated more by his friends' safety than everyone else in the dungeon, "...most people, aside from virtuous do-gooders, would feel the same way."

So, we can take The Panel as simply showing a moment of weakness for Falin. A time when she was pushed to her limits, and that "most people" selfish side of her shone through.

However... I think there's a little more going on with Falin than just her being an angel 99% of the time, except just that once. I love The Panel because I think it helps us understand that Falin isn't just motivated by kindness - she also has a desire to avoid seeing people in pain.

Isn't that the same thing?

No, no it very much is not.

Let's look at a short comic from the Falin section of the Adventurer's Bible, because I think it illustrates this point perfectly. The group is complaining about how much Marcille's healing hurts, and comparing it to Falin's, which "doesn't hurt a bit." Marcille retorts with the following:

Now, the punchline of this comic is that, despite Marcille's sentimental assertion that she's "thinking of [them]" by letting her healing magic hurt, they all still prefer to be healed by Falin.

But hey, this wouldn't be the first time that Dungeon Meshi hides a very real character beat or insight in a gag, so let's think about this somewhat seriously.

If Marcille is right (and she knows a fair bit about magic, so we can assume that she has at least somewhat of a point), then what Falin is doing isn't kind. I suppose if someone specifically requested to not feel the pain, it could be kind, but that's not really what happened here. She is the one who felt badly about the others being in pain, and she is the one who decided, without telling them or giving them a choice in the matter, to take away that pain.

Both Marcille and Falin are healing the party, but Marcille is doing it in a way that accomplishes the task in the most straight forward way, without any additional interference. Falin is going out of her way to perform the healing in a way she is more comfortable with. A way that avoids pain.

Going back the The Panel, I don't think its a coincidence that the only time we see Falin (well, non-chimera Falin) willing to do something that could hurt someone is when any potential pain will be far away from her. If she got someone hurt or killed by teleporting the party to the surface? Not only would it be far out of her sight, but she'd be dead before she had to deal with any consequences of that action.

Falin is not a confrontational person. She doesn't push when Marcille won't tell her the truth about the resurrection, and she comforts Laios about her own death - both of those things happening in the only full chapter she is alive and conscious in the whole story.

We also know that she considered accepting Shuro's proposal, despite not having any special feelings towards him, and that Falin never explained to Marcille that she wanted them to share a meal together. When she brought Marcille various foods at the academy, she just accepted Marcille's confused rejection and gave up.

And lastly, we know that she is still in contact with her parents, despite the neglect and abuse she suffered at their hands. Although the way someone chooses to handle contact with abusive or bad family is a complicated topic, which I don't want to overly simplify, I do I think this fact gets at the heart of how she handles conflict.

So many people that Falin loves have hurt her. There are understandable hurts, like Laios leaving the village, or Marcille not understanding the food. And there are bigger, far less justifiable hurts - like her parents neglecting her throughout her childhood, and sending her away to be alone at the magic academy.

It doesn't seem like Falin has ever confronted any of it directly.

And the unhealthy aspects of this kind of avoidance of pain and confrontation is one of the things that the story of Dungeon Meshi is all about. We see Laios grapple with it before he goes to kill Falin, and we see Marcille acknowledge it at the end of the story, when she tells Laios that she has come to terms with Falin's death:

Eating is a part of life. Consuming other living things is a part of life. It isn't really possible to avoid that pain - you can only hide from the truth of it. You have to be selfish everyday. You have to eat - to choose to live. To choose to take up space.

And this is something Falin embraces, too. She comes back to life, after all.

We see her choose to come back to life.

And how does she make that choice? She eats. She consumes, and then she is asked a question by the manifestation of hunger itself:

Do you want to eat more?

There is a double meaning in the Winged Lion's final words on the next page.

When I first read this, I took it as him saying: life is cruel. You will suffer. You will feel more pain.

But perhaps, especially for Falin, this also means: you are choosing a path where you must cause pain. Where you must consume. Where you must take, and must be selfish. Because eating is the special privilege of the living, and it is their burden, too. In order to stay alive, she will need to keep eating.

And she chooses that. Chooses to be selfish. It's why her resurrection scene is so important, and it's why The Panel is so important. Because Falin coming back isn't the ultimate reward for all of the party's hard work.

It's her choice. Just like it was her choice that started everything in the first place. But this time, she doesn't choose to accept causing pain for the sake of Marcille and Laios. She does it for her own sake.