The lineart in this episode is impeccable. I was pausing various shots, especially closeups of everyone in the party, Yaad, and Thistle. And the contours are fucking flawless.

Not a single line looks like it was the first stroke of the stylus. The time that goes into that type of thing is expensive. But damn does it make things nice to look at. If only Mato Seihei no Slave had linework like this, if just in the stills.

And… I mean…

This:

I’ve been eagerly awaiting Marcy using her familiars. As you might be able to tell, she’s not exactly an expert on this type of magic… And goddamn, does the sequence make for some of the funniest and most satisfying action so far.

A couple episodes ago we had our first character deep dive in Marcy’s nightmare. It’s time for another, and as you might guess, Senshi is up next.

I keep saying it every week, but I can’t wait for next week.

Chilchuck introduction felt like Alcoholic Anonymous.

“I have a wife, 2 kids and I’m an alcoholic. Your turn.”

Laios preparing Sky fish reminded me of Heterogenia Lingustico. Where to have a proper burial you need to eat somebody.

It’s weird seeing young Senshi without a beard. In fact any dwarves without beards at all. I just assumed this was like any fantasy world and dwarf=beard automatically. Also we see Senshi’s helmet before he acquires it, and before it gets bitten by something.

But it’s even more weird to see Senshi freaked out by anything. I really want to know why he’s scared of griffins.

Glad to be getting some Senshi backstory coming up next episode. Looking forward to hearing more and learning about how he got his helmet (and its signature scratches). It’s pretty obvious that it will be a pretty traumatic tale involving a Griffon.

I believe this is the first time that we learned the Mad Magician’s name, Thistle. At least, if we heard it before I don’t remember it. The villagers might be in for a bit of hurt after helping Laios and crew, but at least our intrepid heroes managed to get out before Thistle showed up.

I think the standout thing for me this episode was the way that the animation was used to bring across both the serious and the silly sides of the show. When Marcy is flopping around while controlling her familiar, it is goofy as hell. When we switch to the familiar’s point of view, it is sakuga city with some stellar action animation. Such a fantastic way to use visual cues to complement the story. As an aside, I have been trying to streamline my clip creation process and quickly cut this clip of my favorite sequence this episode, Marcy’s second familiar.

If somebody out there does stitches, could I request a stitch of the panning shot of Laios creating his dual-headed dragon familiar? He looked a bit scary there for a minute…

Finally, I wanted to talk about Marcy’s skyfish. The shape instantly reminded me of a UFO theory I had heard before called rods. If you were to comb through my post history with enough scrutiny, you would find out that I have a PhD in physics. What that means in practice is that any time friends or family have any questions about something science related, they think I must know the answer. I bring this up because I was asked one time about these “aliens” called rods and what I thought of them. It is a popular enough theory that it has its own wiki page. Something I just noticed looking it up this time is that the theory seems to have garnered some cultural awareness in Japan due to the prevalence of Japanese media in the popular culture section, including Dungeon Meshi.

Dungeon Meshi - episode 22

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Me after almost every episode - " wow that was the best episode yet! "

Also Marcille’s reaction to finding out about Chilchuk’s family had me rolling 🤣 She’s so funny!