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©Ryoko Kui,KADOKAWA/Delicious in Dungeon PARTNERS
Episode 18 of Delicious in Dungeon is a wonderful return to form for the week-to-week adventures of our beloved goofballs.
I’m glad to see the show return to a standard episode this week. After multiple weeks of major plot developments, sudden arrivals of new cast members, and big lore drops or upsets to the status quo, it is nice to go back to what the series started with—four goobers going deep into the dungeon in search of gold and good eats.
A big part of why this episode works so well is the character stories told within it. As I mentioned last week, I struggle to take the show seriously when the emotional beats are built upon a foundation of death having meaningful consequences. This week involves equally absurd magical shenanigans – monstrous shapeshifting creatures who can mimic your likeness instantly is no more or less ridiculous than revivification magic – but the impact is much different. The absurdities of revivification magic undermine the character’s fears and reactions to a known quantity, whereas the absurdities of the shapeshifters are an opportunity to reveal characters’ thoughts and feelings in novel ways.
The setup is a perfect excuse to have the characters reveal their thoughts and feelings about one another in creative ways. The shapeshifts are a contrivance, of course, a fabricated challenge that doesn’t stand up to literal scrutiny, but who cares? It’s a way to make you realize what the characters think about one another and themselves. For example, everyone’s mental image of Laios being so radically different from the norm that it is easy to weed out the goobers from the real thing is a hilarious detail. In contrast, with the others, a few versions are closer to reality. Similarly, this gets inverted when Laios ends up having to pay attention to details to figure out who the real Senshi, Chilchuck, and Marcille are, but the focus is not on physical details as much as personality traits. All of this is funny, fun, and an absolute joy for the entire runtime while reminding us of a few fundamental truths and having us reflect on our perceptions and mental images of people in our lives.
I also appreciate this as someone who runs plenty of tabletop games. I’ve created many similar scenarios, creating character-based puzzles that are as much about unique and impactful roleplay as they are silly excuses to crack a few jokes with friends. All around, this was a terrific episode.
Rating:
Grant is the cohost on the Blade Licking Thieves podcast and Super Senpai Podcast.
Delicious in Dungeon is currently streaming on
Netflix.
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