Last weeks thread - 14 Comments
Dungeon Meshi is a well liked manga, and an adaptation by Studio Trigger is now airing. If you haven’t picked this one up, consider joining us. Both for fun and as a way of contributing to activity on Lemmy.
Episodes are available to stream on Netflix.
A lot happens this week. Falin re-appears, several people die (and get resurrected), and Laios and Shuro have a soft falling out.
Kabru reaps what he has sowed.
Yet another group opts to return to the surface after encountering Laios and his friends, leaving our core quartet to again head even deeper into the dungeon.
They have a mission again. Not to simply save Falin, things have changed, to achieve even that they must conquer the dungeon itself.
Remember not to spoil anything if you’re a manga reader, but feel free to elaborate on tidbits of lore that may not be coming through in the adaptation.
Oh. Uuuh. The Harpy’s didn’t have nipples in the manga. So that’s different.
This might be the best face Chilchuck has made in the whole series.
We are getting more and more into the very meat of this story. Falin has been transformed into a chimeric beast to serve the Mad Sorcerer, and though she’s clearly still in there, she is not in control.
The adventurers get absolutely slaughtered. Both Laios and Shuro are completely frozen by the situation and Kabru of all people seemingly ends up saving the day.
Maizuru is even more done with everyone's bs after dying. She looks so cute with annoyance on her face, and without her lipstick :D
And I can’t help gushing a bit about how much I love the fight between Laios and Shuro. It’s such a great character moment for both of them. Laios throws a slap without even thinking, when Shuro accuses him of not taking things seriously. Shuro himself hasn’t even been eating, and is falling apart because of it.
But Shuro is also right, Laios needs to have a plan, and he needs to be trying harder. They both learn something about each other, and Shuro realizes he doesn’t so much hate Laios, as envy his freedom and honesty. He’s shackled by responsibility and position in way where simple, honest relationships and enjoyment of life are out of reach. And for Laios it’s effortless.
I’m not sure Shuro could have allowed Falin to remain the person she is, the one he loves, if she’d agreed to share a life with him and gone home with him. It’s pretty clear to me that she’s the kind of person nobles clip the wings on and put in a box for safekeeping. It’s why Shuro loves her, and why being with him would destroy that about her.
The moment with the retainers going starry eyed at Shuro showing them care might seem funny at first… But it stops being funny pretty quickly when you realize he just left one of them for dead and that the reason they aren’t used to being apologized to, is that they are property to the Nakamoto family.
AND MAAN. KABRU HAVING TO SLEEP IN THE BED HE SHAT IN IS JUST NNNGGGHGHH!!
And yet again, we are down to four. This marks the end of what I’d consider the first “part” of the story. From here on out, our main group won’t be running into other people, they are too deep in the dungeon.
And boy… If you thought the character writing has been good so far… We’re about to get to the good part.
The rate of adaptation has solidly settled in on two chapters per episode. If the current pace continues, this run will end on chapter 51 out of 97. I’m not sure that’ll be the case, I could see some of these next chapters being a 3-per-episode or even a 1-per-episode deal, but I’m a little worried the season might end very in-the-middle-of-something. The manga doesn’t really have a clean halfway point.
That Chilchuck face killed me. He is normally a pretty collected guy, but he just went full looney tunes there.
I was wondering about this. After this episode I actually had the thought that this point would make a lot of sense for a season break. It really felt like a big finale to one phase of the story and just the beginning of the next phase.
Indeed, at this point the series goes back to establishing things in preparation for the next big goal. First there was the red dragon and saving Falin. We’ve now seen that accomplished, and what it has led to.
Now there’s a new far-off goal. To conquer the dungeon itself and to bring its magic too heel so they can deal with Falin, for better or worse. The next several episodes will feature bite-sized mini-arcs much like the first few episodes of the series, setting up the world, exploring the characters, and moving the locale deeper into the dungeon.
The reason that chapter 51 cut-off worries me is that it’s just a bit AFTER the story again gets back into bigger stuff, which would be a fairly unsatisfying point to be left waiting for more.
A part of me is left hoping that the 24 episode count is a semi-bait-and-switch. And that like Netflix sometimes does with series they fund, S2 has already been ordered and has been in production for a while, meaning the wait between seasons is six months at most.