Delicious in Dungeon

Episode 23

Episode 23 of Delicious in Dungeon is a wild ride of heavy topics and hilarity.

We lead with the emotional bomb drop of Senshi's backstory and motivation. This was a tough one, as it is a haunting story in and of itself and recontextualizes everything about the journey the party has been on thus far. Senshi is more than just a guy who likes adventurous eating searching for the answer to a question he has been struggling with his entire life. Did he actually eat monster meat, or was he involved in cannibalism? Thus, his search began, and he has been trying to answer that ever since.

The second half of the episode is more silly town hijinks. Having all the party members randomly reroll their ancestries is a funny concept, to be sure. All of it is played for laughs, and it is genuinely funny, particularly for Senshi and Chilchuck. I don't know how to describe it, but somehow, Chilchuck simultaneously feels older in his original and tall man form.

In terms of how it was handled, I think I like it overall. It feels poignant and heavy, appropriately so, and getting to know more about Senshi is obviously important. Seeing Senshi weep hit a lot harder than I expected it to, and it's clear the bond he has forged with the party is permanent. I think the only major issue I have with how this was handled is how short it is. I'm surprised this resolution did not take at least the entire episode to work through. Sure, it's the norm for narratives to be half the runtime, and we got a bit from last week already. But it is a huge tonal shift to go from "I'm worried I ate my original party members, and that trauma has informed everything we've done thus far" to "lol, I'm a bishounen elf now." I would have preferred the team let the emotional beat for the scenes with Senshi play for the entire episode to avoid the sudden emotional whiplash.

Rating:

Grant is the cohost on the Blade Licking Thieves podcast and Super Senpai Podcast.

Delicious in Dungeon is currently streaming on Netflix.