6 Reasons to Devour Delicious in Dungeon, Our New Favorite Manga Treat

All the Fun of an RPG for Half the Price!
Ever wish you could enjoy your D&D campaign as a black and white comic? Well now you can! Delicious in Dungeon has all the classic RPG features: your knight, your mage, your healer, your slimes, your orcs, and your elves. Explore dungeons, win treasure, slay beasts! The series takes the JPRG-style setting that’s deluged the market in recent years—think Sword Art Online, Grimgar of Fantasy and Ash, or Konosuba—and retains the gamified mechanics, fantasy setting, and adventure, but adds a ridiculous foodie twist.

Leave the Kids at Home
Delicious in Dungeon is a seinen manga, meaning its target demographic is older than the spirited shonen creations that tend to dominate the Western market. That Kui is writing for a 20-plus audience is obvious from a quick look at the ages of her characters, who are all unquestionably adults with fully-formed personalities, who treat their dungeon crawling more as a day job than a grand world-saving adventure. Not that we don’t all love an impetuous shonen scamp, but it’s nice to see an elf worried about paying the bills once in a while.

Merry Band of Misfits
A traditional dungeon party obviously calls for a spread of skills and classes, and Kui makes the most of her ensemble cast by giving her characters personalities that clash as much as their abilities complement each other. There’s Laios, the straight-shooting leader of the band, a well-balanced fighter with a keen strategic mind and a hidden weirdo streak a mile wide. There’s also Marcille, the slightly neurotic elfin mage; Chilchuck, the curmudgeonly but loyal halfling lock-pick; and finally Senshi, a rough-edged dwarf who also happens to be something of a monster-cooking savant. Watching this ragtag cast bounce off each other is as much a source of humor and conflict as watching them take a run at a particularly ornery orc.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
In a manga about cooking monsters, there have got to be monsters (duh). Kui populates her dungeon with all your favorite fantasy fauna—we’re talking slimes, living armor, basilisks, man-eating mermaids, and yes, fire-breathing dragons. Kui’s creature design is one of the artistic highlights of this series, which is saying something, as the art is already a highlight in and of itself. As a manga that focuses on farm-to-table (er…dungeon floor-to-adamantine cauldron?) meals, Kui has thought through the dungeon ecosystem in rather ingenious detail, introducing capsule-farm golems (their mud is perfect for growing veggies) and scavenging treasure insects that fuel the dungeon circle of life. 

Real Fake Recipes
Delicious in Dungeon is a fantasy adventure manga, sure, but it’s primarily a food and cooking manga, and it takes this role fairly seriously. Most chapters introduce a new monster and, ergo, a new dish, and Kui does not skimp on cooking technique. Even if you can’t find cockatrice at your neighborhood butcher, the principles surrounding its preparation are surprisingly culinarily sound. Kui even thoughtfully provides an ingredients list and nutritional breakdown for each preparation, so if ever you find yourself with an excess of dragon bacon, you won’t be without guidance.

Secrets to Be Revealed
Delicious in Dungeon is for the most part an episodic manga composed of short adventures ending in a shared meal of dried slime or a lesson in the household economies of kelpie-derived soap. But just as Kui has put a considerable amount of thought into the ecology of her dungeon wildlife, she’s clearly done some tinkering with the dungeon mechanics as well. As the manga progresses, our characters are increasingly wading into seemingly shallow streams that turn out to have much deeper currents—the magic of the dungeon, the politics of explorer bands, and secrets in our heroes’ pasts. Don’t get me wrong, this series is 90 percent a hilarious romp through basilisk omelets and boiled mimics, but hints of more serious questions add a welcome depth of flavor to a delicious meal of a manga.