Multiple races exist in Dungeon Meshi. The five major races are Tallmen/人間 (baseline humans), Half-foot/ハーフ フット (Halflings), Dwarves, Gnomes and Elves, but a few other species also exist which we won’t get into here.
I quite enjoy the absurd humor so far. I also find it a bit easier to read than 鋼の錬金術師 for now, there’s also a lot of vocab but less slang, very casual language and tricky grammatical constructions.
You’re missing the first kana. It’s このたび (with no punctuation after, mind). And it’s a comma after より. And also a と at the end before it disappears behind Laios’ head.
I’ve tried a couple of times to start reading manga in japanese but I feel very discouraged when I don’t understand 1 small thing and having watched the anime is definitely helping me with that, which is awesome, very happy to join the club!
Yeah reading stuff you’re already familiar with is definitely helpful. You don’t feel like you’re missing out if you struggle to understand a tricky section.
A thing I did a lot when I started too is just finding an English translation of the work to “cheat” with if I really couldn’t make sense of something. I did it a lot with videogames because you can usually find “longplays” on youtube that you can follow along as you play the Japanese version.
This was what my e-dictionary was coming up with but I couldn’t find anything to show it as an alternative. It’s the first time I’ve ever come across either of those Kanji before.
Yeah that “extended shinjitai” stuff is always a bit messy because it’s so inconsistently employed and you will rarely encounter those forms in reference material who stick to the official forms.