#quintessential dungeon meshi

[art-heap]

I haven't seen this one anywhere and it's in the true spirit of Dungeon Meshi

[homunculus-argument]

I think the main charm of Dungeon Meshi is that dabbles with the age-old question of what most quintessentially separates us from the animals:

The ability to look at something beyond your understanding and asking yourself: "I wonder if it's still going to be poisonous if I sautée it?"

[ifitwerentforthatmeddlingkid]

One world and character building aspect of Dungeon Meshi that I really like is the way it explores different race life spans. Like, we see elves in media as being the quintessential long-lived race, the race that has a tendency to outlive everyone else and therefore has a habit of infantalizing other races. Dungeon Meshi certainly explores this.

But the other less talked about aspect of this long life is the fact that elves take longer to mature, and as a result, an elf child seemingly stays stagnant compared to their shorter-lived peers. We see this explored especially with Thistle. He was raised in a tallman court, and outlives his enslaver/ father figure. He would have outlived his brother figure too, if not for the power of the dungeon. He was a child who was perpetually exploited for generations worth of time. We also see it with Marcille, though hers is a special case of growing erratically on top of growing slowly. In both cases, they struggle with relating to their peers because their peers surpass them far too quickly.

The elves are isolated and typically only associate with other elves, but how can you expect them to fully relate to and integrate into a social system that constantly passes them by? It's hard enough to keep in touch with childhood friends when everyone grows up, goes out into the world and builds their own family and life. Imagine all of your friends getting jobs, getting married, having kids and grandkids, retiring, and dying all before you hit puberty. How profoundly lonely would that be?

[introsquirrel]

One thing I love about dungeon meshi is that in one of the first chapters, Marcille has a flashback of Falin saying that Laois does a VERY good dog impression. This fact not only is proven right several times throughout the manga, but Laois wins against the Big Bad ™ with a quintessential dog behavior. Like literally the move that wins the fight is a behavior every dog owner knows intimately.

It's so excellent that this vaguely insulting fact about Laois that is said so off-handedly is such a pivotal aspect to the story. You'd never Look at that fact and go, "I bet this is a REALLY important aspect to his character that will be the deciding factor in a battle". If anything, because Falin is protrayed a bit of a space case at that point you'd just assume Laois did a passable dog impression that Falin was impressed by regardless.

Now THAT'S good character writing.

[transmasculineswag]

Transmasc Swag Polls- PRELIMINARIES (FUCK SHIT DAMN IT UHHHHHH)

This round will eliminate the LOSER. The two characters with the most votes have a guaranteed spot in the polls, so choose whichever one suits you.

Propaganda and other info under the cut.

Why are these characters in the prelims?

I have publicly talked about having all three of these characters in the polls at separate points, so it didn't feel right to me to just quietly drop one of them. Otherwise, Chilchuck would've been kicked out since he wasn't actually submitted during the submission round

Canonicity Levels-

CHILCHUCK: Gender Tomfuckery

VASH: OOPS! Accidental Trans Man, Subtext/ Coded

LAIOS: Because I Said So

MEDIA?

Dungeon Meshi (and other related media), Trigun (and other related media look I'm not typing every one of them out)

BIG SPOILERS FOR DUNGEON MESHI, AS WELL AS THE TRIGUN SERIES IN GENERAL UNDER THE CUT

CHILCHUCK PROPAGANDA-

[Pollrunner's Note: As he was not submitted, I will have to take a crack at it until someone writes their own propaganda]

He is constantly infantilized by both his employers and people who are (technically speaking) much younger than him, both because he is short and because he has the appearance of a kid. Despite this it is clear from very early on that he is one of the more mature characters in the party, and is the series' Union Man. He has three grown (biological) daughters and is Very Much Divorced.

VASH PROPAGANDA-

Literally every single other member of his species (besides him and his brother) are female and referred to as she/her. Vash has scarring all over his body including heavily on his chest. Also, in the Stampede adaptation, Vash has the quintessential transmasc undercut. The Jesus allegory of the most fucked up queercoded twisted biblical tragic space western ive read in my damn LIFE.

[Pollrunner's Note: We're not even going to get into everything going on with him and Wolfwood I don't have enough space for that lmao...]

LAIOS PROPAGANDA-

Hes autistic and im autistic and autistic people love to be trans! also he has a complex about wanting to be a monster. Augh.

[Pollrunner's Note: Not a lot of propaganda here but I seeded a lot of commonly headcanoned autistic characters into these polls out of spite for... well. If you're autistic and trans you probably understand already don't you. It's self care and self love for me actually :) ]

[gotouhitori]

So a thought just occurred to me about the demons in Dungeon Meshi. (Probably other people have noted this before, but why let that stop me from saying it?)

If memory serves, all the demons (or more accurately, manifestations of the demon) that we see take the form of an animal particularly known for eating things. The lion - carnivore and widely viewed as the supreme predator. The goat - infamous for eating all sorts of things that most other herbivores can't or won't. The pig - the quintessential example of being both omnivorous and having a large appetite.

[morallygay]

There is also something to say —which many people love to mention— about how, as a general rule, there are many more male characters in fiction than female ones, they are better written and relationships between men are more numerous and better written too than relationships between men and women, and god have mercy between women (the bechdel test exists for a reason).

That obviously influences the disparity between the amount of m/m works and f/f works on ao3. Bla bla bla you’ve heard it before, you get it. Skip the next paragraph if you don’t need to be convinced bc it’s just a piece of evidence to show this that I thought of.

The fact that when dungeon meshi, a quintessential example of a show that doesn’t have those problems, became big on here, the biggest ship was wlw, is good evidence of that. If the female characters were not 1. existent, 2. well written and 3. had (existent and well written) relationships with each other, but instead all the important and well written relationships and characters were male, I think we all agree that the biggest ships would all be mlm and people would mostly talk about male characters, just like is typical of most fandoms, because the source material is misogynistic to a certain degree. This would be the tendency even assuming the fandom hypothetically wasn’t misogynistic at all.

But as others have pointed out, and which I absolutely agree with and have noticed, there are plenty of poorly written male characters/relationships and well written female characters/relationships and that doesn’t stop certain people from seeing and elaborating depth in male characters/relationships while always using the above point as an excuse to not care about female characters/relationships. Basically sometimes people use the above point as an excuse for their misogyny.

All 3 of these facts are true:

If a relationship is well written, people will tend to be more interested and invested in it over a relationship that’s practically not or/and poorly written, regardless of the type of relationship it is (m/m, f/f, m/f,…) <-this makes sense and is normal

People will tend to be interested and invested in the types of relationships (m/m, f/f, m/f,…) they have a personal preference for, regardless of how well written they are <-this makes sense and is normal

People can, because of misogyny, be less interested/invested in female characters (and relationships) regardless of the first two points. <-this is a problem. it’s misogyny

*This poll was submitted to us and we simply posted it so people could vote and discuss their opinions on the matter. If you’d like for us to ask the internet a question for you, feel free to drop the poll of your choice in our inbox and we’ll post them anonymously (for more info, please check our pinned post).

[suudonym]

Every anime/manga rec so far have been great! I'm hooked on Made in Abyss rn. If its possible what are some of your other anime/manga recs?

I’m glad you’re enjoying it!! I for one am all but literally bouncing in my seat because tomorrow is friday and friday is made in abyss and I am looking forward to it

other recommendations, hmmmmm let’s see what I can come up wiiith

(genres are gonna be all over the place, sorry about that)

among anime that I eagerly looked forward to new episodes of, I’d recommend re: zero first and foremost. it’s a “normal guy ends up in an alternate fantasy world” story but it does the trope SO MUCH BETTER than the trope usually gets done. there were already like five episodes out by the time I finally gave it a try and boooyy am I glad I did because it’s just a phenomenal story, very painful, top marks from the pain-loving me

if it’s anime that I looked forward to, then I can’t not mention natsume yuujinchou. the sixth season aired last season with new episodes on tuesdays and as early as thursday I’d be like “TUESDAY IS COMING IT’S ALMOST TIME FOR NATSUME.” natsume is what I call a warm and soft anime - it just feels good to watch it. that said it is six seasons long and it’s episodic with pretty much no overarching plot (though there is some subtle and natural character development that’s just HEARTWARMING) so a lot of people find it too boring but if you don’t mind the episodic nature then it’s so… so good

speaking of warm I also greatly enjoyed amaama to inazuma and udon no kuni no kiniro kemari / poco’s udon world. I say them in the same breath because they have a LOT of similarities: yuuichi nakamura (voice of karamatsu) plays a mild-mannered guy awkwardly bumbling his way through single fatherhood to a young child. the thing that makes them very clearly different stories is that in the former the child is the main character’s four-ish-year-old daughter, his wife recently deceased, and in the latter the child is a three-ish-year-old magical shapeshifting tanuki. for amaama to inazuma there’s also an ongoing manga which I would almost be inclined to recommend over the anime (the art works a lot better imo) if not for the fact that the little girl in the anime is voiced by an actual little girl and it’s so endearing

if you like osomatsu san (and if you’re engaging with my blog it feels safe to assume that that’s the case) then I recommend handa-kun for it’s extremely relatable protagonist and general hilarity. if misunderstandings as a tool for humor is up your alley then handa-kun is the alley itself. hardly anybody watched that show and to this day I cannot understand why. (actually it’s probably because it was a prequel to the similarly underrated barakamon which I also wholeheartedly endorse. there are a few references to it in handa-kun so on one hand if you’re interested in watching barakamon it may be better to watch it first for the sake of those references but on the other hand handa-kun has a very different tone from barakamon so it may feel a bit weird watching it after barakamon unless you leave a gap in between)

another criminally underrated one is alice to zouroku. my god did I enjoy that one, it’s a found-family story featuring a young girl with extremely limited worldly experience and a grouchy old man with a heart of gold (ngl I based the explosive engineer in tata on this guy after the first episode because I was so deeply intrigued by the unusual character archetype). it goes through a few shifts in genre and leaves a looot of loose ends but imo it is SO WORTH IT for the really wonderful themes along the way

so that’s what I can come up with for recent anime, and for older/less recent anime the first thing that comes to mind is definitely steins;gate, which is pretty highly acclaimed so I’d be surprised if you’re not already familiar with it. BUT, what gets talked about much less is robotics;notes, which I also very much enjoyed. as you can tell from the semi-colon it’s by the same author as steins;gate (and I THINK, I might be wrong but I THINK it’s also the author of re: zero?) and there are parts that stick out very vividly in my mind, so vividly that I also distinctly remember sitting in the school cafe talking about these parts to a friend because holy shit

I also will never miss an opportunity to scream to the sky about hyouka because MY GOD I loved hyouka and it was so beautiful and so interesting and yes it’s kind of slow and quiet but it’s a highschool slice-of-life pseudo-mystery with a focus on characters and character development so of course it’s gonna be a bit slow and quiet. also the main character is voiced by yuuichi nakamura so, y’know, lil bonus there for those who are as deeply attached to karamatsu as I am

and! tales of the abyss. play the game if you can (it’s for ps2 and has a 3ds port) but if you can’t then the anime, while not necessarily what you might call pretty or well-animated, is an admirably faithful adaptation for being limited to two cours. the protagonist is one of the most deeply human characters with some of the most realistic and thoughtful character development I’ve seen out of anything ever and I will never stop recommending it, but do play the game first if it’s within your ability because it is, naturally, much more thorough in its storytelling and also is very rewarding by nature of being a game

back to anime that’s just anime (and boy is it anime), I’ll always enthusiastically endorse shirobako, the quintessential anime about anime, specially about anime production. I’ve heard that it was supposed to have four cours but due to scheduling conflicts it was cut down to just two and I will never know peace knowing that I could have had twice as much shirobako as what I got

and now that I’ve been through aaaaaall that how about some MANGA

there’s three right off the bat that I very very VERY highly recommend but I’ll do em one at a time for the same of organization. first, I’ve said it before and I’m still waving my arms in the general direction of the promised neverland if you’re not already reading it. if you’re more of an anime watcher than a manga reader you just wait a while and I have no doubt in my mind that an anime announcement will spring up

next, I’ve actually been wanting to recommend this one for a really long time: dungeon meshi. it’s sorta like d&d meets shokugeki no souma - a party of penniless dungeon crawlers crawl through a dungeon trying to save the main character’s sister, and because they’re penniless they cook and eat monsters. it’s CRIMINALLY funny and extremely well-illustrated and the plot has been seriously heating up lately and there aren’t nearly enough people reading this manga

and third is to you the immortal / to your eternity / fumetsu no anata he (not sure which is the more accurate translation of the title). a strange immortal rock has the power to take on the form of things that have a big impact on it, and by experiencing bigger and bigger impacts the entity gains a sense of identity and purpose, plus a whole bunch of forms that he can shift between at will. it’s by the same author who did koe no katachi (which I also highly recommend, both the movie and the manga are really really great - though the manga covers much more than the movie)

I would also recommend yotsuba& / yotsuba to but I don’t want people to think I have a type (I do have a type, it’s family themes. lay them sweet sweet family themes on me). I’m honestly really surprised that this one’s still never gotten an anime. a soft and fluffy story about a single dad raising his extremely energetic small daughter

there’s probably a loooot more, especially manga, but I have completely run out of energy and that’s a pretty extensive-feeling list as it is so I’m gonna leave it as it is for now. hope something in here piques your interest!