#meshy

[shadowtraveled]

"mithrun is the only real monsterfucker in dungeon meshi" is objectively the funniest bit you can get out of his everything, but in all seriousness i think his attraction to his love interest is deliberately overstated—and that makes sense, because romantic jealousy is a classic and digestible motive, which is explicitly what kabru was aiming for in condensing mithrun's backstory, and also because until chapter 94, mithrun wasn't willing to admit to the true nature of his desires.

but because romantic envy is both classic and digestible, it probably isn’t a unique enough or complicated enough desire to tempt a demon’s appetite. mithrun’s wish, as far as we can figure from kabru’s reduced retelling, was to have a life in which he had never become one of the canaries, and that carries like 3857 implications and desires within it. that’s delicious. his love interest acts as sort of a red herring to his motivation for making it, though. (side note: i'm saying "love interest" here because, keeping in mind that i barely speak japanese on a good day anymore, "想い人" is something i'd usually take as just kind of an old-fashioned and romantic way to refer to a lover, but in context i wonder if both the connotation of yearning and the vagueness are intentional, and i think this phrasing gets those aspects of it more effectively. anyway.)

mithrun considered his love interest to be untrustworthy. there was a minute where i thought that comment might be about a similar-looking elf (yugin, one of his squad members), but comparing the two…

the "sketchy" arrow is definitely referring to the elf we know as his love interest—the bangs go toward her right, she only has the one forehead ornament, and, most notably, her ears aren't notched.

every time she’s given a full-body depiction in his dungeon, she’s drawn as a chimera, with the body of a snake from the waist down. (side note: the “what if a dungeon has chimeras before reaching level 4?”/“then the dungeon lord is unstable” exchange just being mithrun grilling his past self alive is so funny. he’s so. but anyway) there are a couple things about this.

first, the snake part of the chimera appears to be modeled after some species of coral snake mimic

which, in the biology-for-fun manga, i… doubt is a coincidence, especially with the added context of the “untrustworthy” comment. the dungeon’s conjured illusion of mithrun’s love interest was a harmless copycat of a venomous original. for whatever reason, he felt this person was a threat and made up a "safe" version of her to be in a relationship with, and while it’s definitely possible to be attracted to or even love someone you find to be toxic and/or intimidating, when you take that into consideration alongside the configuration of her body, you get some interesting implications.

which brings us to our second point: if we assume that mithrun was not in fact fucking a snake, then sexual attraction, at least, was so far removed from his idea of a relationship with this person that he did not even bother to keep her dungeon copy human enough to maintain the illusion of the option of a sexual relationship. this is somewhat echoed in the depictions of their interactions, which also imply a frankly unexpected romantic distance. she kisses his cheek and he doesn't seem to react; she's at the edge of a narrow bed with only one set of pillows, on top of his blankets while he's underneath them.

the kiss is particularly interesting because it seems to contrast the text. kabru's narration tells us this was everything mithrun could have asked for, but mithrun is there looking unreadable to pensive, likely because this is right before the panel that makes it clear things in the dungeon are beginning to go wrong.

walking through this backwards for a minute, we have the physical barrier of his bedding and the spatial separation inherent in a bed made for one person, the emotional barrier of his mounting anxiety getting in the way of his ability to enjoy the affection he sought, and... the snake, which historically carries the connotation of temptation, yes, but also mistrust, barring physical intimacy. okay. ok. if a dungeon reflects the mentality of its lord, all of this might suggest that mithrun was not able to have any real desire for a relationship with this person. his unwillingness to be vulnerable or let another person in was insurmountable. but in that case, why was she such a focal point that she remained to the end, after his dungeon had stopped creating iterations of his friends to come and visit him? why would he get so upset over her meeting with his brother that he became lord of a dungeon about it?

well. mithrun's brother was also interested in her, probably genuinely. and mithrun had to win.

you have an older brother who your parents completely ignore, probably in part because he is chronically ill/disabled and almost definitely in part because he received a ton of recessive traits that resulted in rumors that he was an illegitimate child. you are aware, most likely because those same parents fucking told you, that you actually are an illegitimate child. but they keep you around because you had the good fortune of looking just like your mother. what can that possibly teach you but that you, like your brother, are disposable?

it's utterly unsurprising that mithrun, under these circumstances, developed a pathological need to be better than everyone around him. people don't keep you otherwise. i'd argue this is also why he says he looked down on everyone he knew while milsiril claims his dungeon reeked of feelings of inferiority—he sought out people's worst traits and prioritized them in his mind to protect his already extremely fragile sense of self-worth, and all the while he tried to be as likable and high-performing as he possibly could be. his parents disposed of him anyway, but even then he tried to keep up the performance. he was kind to everyone. he never once lost to a dungeon.

when he saw his "love interest" meeting up with his brother, what he saw was himself being replaced by a person his parents had always treated as worthless, and if that was what they thought of the child they'd kept, what value could anyone possibly see in the bastard they'd given away to die? mithrun and kabru tell the story like he wanted to win this unnamed elf's heart, but it was never about being with her. it was about cementing his worth, proving that he didn't deserve to be thrown away.

and so it's particularly cruel that his demon discarded him, too. but maybe it's also particularly gentle that, in the end, there was someone who refused to even consider giving up on him.

kui laid it out in three panels better than i could hope to.

yeah. it's love. you wanted to be loved, even when the only way you were able to understand it was through the desire to be wanted, and you wanted that so badly that the idea of being consumed felt like the promise of finally mattering to someone.

[marblejack]

Happy late BD Mithrun he is gettine visited by his brother and they are getting bonding time cause they're mending their relationship stfu no you're crying

[anitabonghit420]

This shit really meshed me up 😎

[sunb0rn]

mahal talaga ako ni meshy. di ako rereplyan niyan *kahit siya una nag chat* o mag seseen man lang nang ilang buwan pero mag hheart sa story ko HAHAHHA

[metaphoricallyrose]

Support group

[yeepof]

I understand that tall men are our POV characters, but surely being like a foot taller than everyone around them would have some occasional consequences

[ninoacca]

top 10 anime betrayals

[livingthedragonlife]

laios is perhaps the only character not to get the "they mentioned their favorite food once and the fandom makes it their whole personality" treatment. his favorite food is cheesecake and absolutely nobody cares

[queenoftheantz]

Here are my Dungeon meshi stickers! I basically thought "hey. lots of people will have cute food themed stickers. And that good and well, but I want that serious stuff too!" So I decided to make a series for the main gang based on sense of self instead!

[sabertoothwalrus]

I literally don't know what possessed me to make an 11 page comic over these sad old men! bon appetit <3

[nortimer]

me when I wake up at six am for my five hour shift and my boss begs me to stay for nine hours instead

[shadowtraveled]

goats are frequently used as imagery to represent demons/the devil/etc and are one of the recurring animals referenced in the ars goetia's physical descriptions of its demons (as are lions, including a winged one), so i think having the demon appear to mithrun as a goat is useful narratively—his backstory establishes the nature of the demon as an ontological evil. it appears first as soft and small and white—almost like a lamb, which is similarly loaded imagery in the opposite direction—and grows huge and hungry and definitively goatlike. this tells you that the demon will first try to convince you of its innocence, but that the more it gives, the more it takes. by the time you recognize its true nature, it's too late.

but it isn't quite an ontological evil, it's just a living, starving infinity that will do anything to be fed. and the connotation carried by the image of a goat does not begin and end with the devil; as animals they're known for their voracious appetites.

when mithrun tells kabru his backstory, that is the audience's first introduction to the demon, the first confirmation that it even really exists, and having that sort of dual imagery sets the story up on both sides. we know now that we cannot trust the demon. later, we'll know that it's a creature driven by hunger like any other.

i think it tells us something about mithrun's personal arc too, though, particularly with regard to the revelations that mithrun is a deeply insecure person, that his true "last" desire was for it to finish him, and that he, like the other dungeon lords, missed the demon because it gave him love. a goat will eat anything, but his still spit him out.

[squidsmeister]

Yknow how people say they picture senshi and it helps them cook? I think I’m doing something wrong (DO NOT DO THIS)

[beanstalk-nicholas]

that horse drawing meme but its falin

[inkeyjay]

Falin, Oil on paper and digital