Dungeon Ecosystem in Dungeon Meshi Works Incredibly Well

Summary:

• Dungeon Meshi’s worldbuilding has been praised before.
• Every time there’s a new monster, an explanation follows.
• Dungeon Meshi’s world feels natural and believable.

You don’t really expect a series about cooking monsters in a dungeon to have exceptional worldbuilding, but Delicious in Dungeon (Dungeon Meshi) is here to surprise you.

Fans have been praising Ryoko Kui, the author of the Dungeon Meshi manga, for ages, pointing out how much thought she put into the series’ world and monsters, and the more episodes of the anime air, the more we realize how right they actually are.

A lot of interesting monsters

First of all, there seems to be an infinite variety of monsters in the series, and not even one of them is left unexplored and unexplained by the story. And what’s really surprising is that the anime does it in such a seamless way.

A lot of Dungeon Meshi things are explained through cooking, because of course! It’s a fantasy comedy about cooking monsters, after all. And this allows the series to tell you a lot about the structure of said monsters and go deeper into their functions and operation.

Each monster is given much thought

Episode 5 introduced treasure insects, which already sounds like a bizarre thing. They mimic the appearance of a wide variety of treasure and jewelry, and some of them can even look like crowns.

When Dungeon Meshi characters encountered them for the first time, it seemed impossible that they would be able to eat the insects, but the series surprised us. And the new episode gave us even more perspective on these peculiar creatures.

Turns out that treasure insects can prey on mimics, who were introduced in Episode 6. Such insects crawl into a mimic’s chest and lay their eggs there. Their larvae then devour the mimic. That’s why it’s so easy for a clueless adventurer to find a chest and mistake it for a treasure, which leads to them falling prey to the insects.

That also explains why our party members found a chest full of treasure insects in the previous episode. And this is just a tiny example of the incredible work that the mangaka has done on the worldbuilding of the series.

There are connections between everything in the story, all the living beings have their ecosystem, and a working one at that.

All of that makes the world of Dungeon Meshi feel so alive and believable, even though it’s a fantasy one, full of non-existent monsters. This attention to detail and eagerness to explain even the tiniest things and concepts are what makes the manga and anime so enjoyable.