The Spring 2017 Manga Guide

Delicious In Dungeon Vol. 1

What's It About? 

Delicious in Dungeon, an original manga by Ryōko Kui, follows the adventuring party of Laios, whose younger sister, Falin, gets eaten by a monstrous Red Dragon right before the group teleports to safety. Since dragons are slow to digest, they have time to make their way back to stage a rescue, but their time—and funds—are limited, especially as two of their party members disband. To save time and funds, Laios sets out with his remaining party, magic user Marcille and picklock Chilchuck, to work their way through the massive dungeon housing the dragon and to sustain themselves by cooking the monsters they defeat along the way. It turns out that eating foraged goods and slain enemies from the dungeon has long been a secret dream of Laios—particularly eating the living armor that was responsible for his first death. Soon joined by experienced dungeon chef dwarf Senshi, the party makes its way downward toward the mighty Red Dragon once more.

Delicious in Dungeon (5/23/17) is available as a paperback for $15.00 from Yen Press and in digital format via comiXology for $6.99.

Is It Worth Reading?

Amy McNulty

Rating: 5

Delicious in Dungeon has the potential to become repetitive, but the entire first volume feels fresh and exciting as the group crafts meal after meal from the bizarre flora and creatures they encounter in the cemetery, caves, forests, and castle rooms that make up this mystical, below-ground dungeon kingdom. The concept is so simple yet so clever when considering how much food an always-fighting RPG party would logically need to sustain itself, and how difficult it would be to afford, preserve, and carry enough food to feed a whole party throughout a long adventure. Eating what they find and kill along the way is abundantly clever, and the interactions between ever-eager Laios, always-reluctant Marcille, and knowledgeable Senshi are often humorous and engaging. Chilchuck, who rolls with the party's new goal of eating their way through the dungeon for the most part, is less memorable, although there's a segment where his skills at evading traps and picking locks helps the party craft a tempura meal that shows that the young man takes pride in his abilities and doesn't appreciate flat-footed Senshi's disrespect of the amount of work that goes into evading traps. Laios’ obsession with eating living armor is especially hilarious—even Senshi, up for eating anything, points out that people can't eat metal—particularly when it actually pays off in unimaginable ways before the volume's end.

All of the nods to RPGs and other classic fantasy tropes add extra flavor to an already engaging tale. The fact that people often die in battle, only to be resurrected by a mage or healer, is particularly humorous, as is the fact-of-life way the characters approach the concept. (Falin, about to be digested, may not be able to be resurrected if they take longer than a month to get her corpse.) 

The art is another stunning highlight of the volume. Kui's character designs would look right at home in any given fantasy game, and she can draw engaging humans just as well as she can a Tolkien-style dwarf. The designs are more cartoonish than realistic, but that suits the events of this volume well. The backgrounds are where Kui's art really shines, though. The details like stone floors and shelves full of random barrels and flasks paint a vivid picture of the party in a dungeon, and the drawing of the castle beneath the earth is especially lovely to behold. The creatures the party faces are more realistic-looking than the characters themselves, which helps create a sense of real danger. While the heroes may only make slow progress on their quest down the depths of the dungeon in this first volume, Delicious in Dungeon is a real treat, particularly for those familiar with fantasy and RPG tropes.

Rebecca Silverman

Rating: 2 

This is a case where I really wanted to like a series based on its premise. Delicious in Dungeon follows the adventures of a group of dungeon divers who both managed to lose one of their members and all of their money, so in order to go rescue her, they have to live off the dungeon's monsters to survive. It's an undeniably fun idea, and I was anticipating a mix of Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? and Food Wars!. Well, that is what I got, but unfortunately the elements aren't blended together particularly well, making this feel like the other two series basically got stuck together with Elmer's Glue. 

You can see that it's trying. Group leader Laios definitely has a weird obsession with eating monsters – he even wants to chow down on the living armor – and it sometimes seems like he's far more invested in monster cookery than actually rescuing the lost party member…who happens to be his younger sister. That's an issue, because they're in a bit of a rush, given that she was eaten by a dragon and they need to get to her body before it decomposes too much to be resurrected. (Apparently you can't resurrect someone from dragon poop. Laios asked.) Laios’ weird hobby is only exacerbated by the addition of the dwarf Senshi to the group, because Senshi's life revolves around cooking and eating monsters to the point that he wouldn't simply give an injured man the life-saving herbs he needed because they were part of the stuffing for his basilisk – the man would just have to stay alive until the roast was done, thank you very much. Between Senshi and Laios, the story barely crawls along, because every few pages it's time for the gang to hunt and cook another big meal.

The cooking is entertainingly serious, with recipes given as if it were possible to replicate them, a definite poke at more realistic cooking series. Marcille, the elf mage, is also a fun element, basically playing the straight man to Laios and Senshi, often to her own detriment. None of this is quite enough to make up for stiff, somewhat insipid character designs and a general lack of movement in the artwork (although the pages flow nicely) and the awkward mix of story elements. Hopefully it will get better as the creator goes on, but right now this isn't nearly living up to its potential.

Nik Freeman

Rating: 1

There are few things in life more boring than sitting through a comedy that you don't find funny. Delicious in Dungeon is such a disappointing execution of a potentially golden premise for a comedy. As a tabletop gamer, some of my favorite stories are those in which a group of players come up with the type of stupid, insane plan that Laios convinces his party to go along with, only for logic to enter into the equation and make everything blow up in their faces. It's right there, Ripe for the Picking: “We'll just eat dungeon monsters to save money on supplies! What could possibly go wrong?” There are hundreds of ways for it to backfire, but gamers are stupid and stubborn, so they'll keep on trying it, expecting a different result. Because they're insane.

Delicious in Dungeon decided this stupid, insane idea was, in fact, a genius, insane idea, and that instead of failing over and over again, the party should five minutes into their journey recruit someone who specialized in cooking dungeon monsters in the most grand and convenient twist of fate possible. But then again, this is also the type of manga that thinks that it's super interesting to go into great detail on how to properly prepare meals using ingredients that do not exist in the real world. I'd have no problem with the manga going a different direction than I expected, but it spends more time being a pretend cookbook than a comedy, and when it is a comedy, there's literally one joke: Marcille is being driven insane. Unbelievably, the manga actually gets better when it takes on a more serious tone in a few points towards the end of the volume, particularly when Laios is trying to figure out the secret behind the living armors’ movements. Of course, saying that a comedy series gets better when it's not trying to be funny might be the single most damning praise you could give it.

It is unbelievable that a manga where the heroes’ ultimate goal is to eat a dragon could be so boring. I was in such a bad mood reading this manga that halfway through the volume I started grumbling over the way it portrayed a basilisk. For a cooking manga, the food that appears in it doesn't look tasty in the slightest. For a comedy manga, its jokes are lacking in variety, wit, or punch. It's a disappointing execution of a potentially great idea.