Please add to it when you have time because I don’t always have any
Characters and Concepts
Characters and concepts
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.
Senshi irritates me so much in this chapter. He disregards the advice of their traps expert - who has put his life on the line to acquire that advice - then when he’s called on it, he turns into an absolute brat. The guy’s meant to have survived in the dungeon for over a decade, but with an attitude like that, I don’t see how - though, granted, almost all of the traps inexplicably activate somewhere remote from the trigger, so if he’d been alone, he would have been just fine. Then he gets all patronising. “Oh, I’m allowed to ignore the trap-clearing expert because I’m the chef.” And then “Oh well, since you’re such an expert in traps, let’s see you cook without instructions.”
And let’s not even talk about trying to catch oil in a wok held vertically. That’s just gonna go everywhere, like a spoon in the sink.
Though, I was amused by the rather understated reaction panel at the bottom of 121. Chilchuck goes “Your specialty is cooking, mine is traps, Marceille’s is magic”, and then there’s Laios in the background going “… what about me?”
Not all the way through the chapter yet, but … I read it differently. Like, because Senshi’s been living in the dungeon for who knows how long he’s completely lost the (healthy) fear that other people have for things like giant cleaver traps. (Not to mention that apparently boiling oil doesn’t hurt him.) So it’s mostly just the humor of opposites interacting: Chilchuck who is very serious, conscientious and careful VS Senshi who is a clumsy stubborn and kinda indestructible old guy who sees a boiling oil trap and thinks “ooh, tempura!”
Anyway, old guys do tend to be fairly set in their ways and frequently act patronizing about it, but I dunno, like, that’s their whole shtick? And it doesn’t necessarily make them malicious. But yeah, it can definitely be annoying So I’m not exactly DISagreeing either haha.
Everybody in this manga acts boneheaded so I didn’t find senshi’s performance this week any worse than basically every single thing Laios has said or done from the start.
Exactly, and I’m finding it increasingly annoying. I feel this manga is just not for me because the humor also isn’t working for me. But I’ll stick with this volume because it is good practice for reading furigana-less Japanese.
I think we saw this issue with the anime as well; the show is very, very slow to get started (though from memory we’re actually only on episode two or three at this point? The last three chapters were combined into one episode, so the pacing is a lot faster for this bit) and I honestly think it doesn’t really begin to sell itself on its own merits until, like, four volumes in when it begins to expand beyond the formulaic ‘meet monster, kill it, turn it into food’. So if you’re not sold on the elevator pitch of ‘realistic-ish dungeon ecosystem’ + ‘food’, and especially if you don’t like the characters, it’s a hard sell.
Like, everything before that is necessary because the way it all adds together and natural and interesting consequences evolve out of stuff that is otherwise de riguer in a dungeon crawling experience is absolutely fascinating, but I think a lot of people kind of fall off before then unfortunately.
/edit that said, I think the next two chapters are a bit of a taster (so to speak) for that kind of less episodic and more considered world building
The humor works for me. As has been pointed out before it reads more like a bunch of friends role-playing in a D&D session than a serious tale like FMA. Death is not that big of a deal and therefore less of a threat than it ought to be in similar stories. As such characters acting recklessly and selfishly does not bother me too much. In fact it would be quite odd if the tone was very serious given that people get resurrected left and right.
This particular chapter was a bit light on twists and turns though, and as such a bit forgettable. We didn’t even get a new creature and as soon as I saw senshi looking pensively at the fire trap I knew where this was going.
I personally think Meshi is closer to the madcap insanity of a good Dungeon World or Blades in the Dark game than D&D, but to each their own dice rolling game of choice
- Week 6
(Not to mention that apparently boiling oil doesn’t hurt him.) So it’s mostly just the humor of opposites interacting: Chilchuck who is very serious, conscientious and careful VS Senshi who is a clumsy stubborn and kinda indestructible old guy who sees a boiling oil trap and thinks “ooh, tempura!”
I dunno, like, that’s their whole shtick? And it doesn’t necessarily make them malicious. But yeah, it can definitely be annoying 
So I’m not exactly DISagreeing either haha.
