Pass the Monster Meat, Milady!

Episode 5

I've noted before that either there's something else going on here that we're not aware of yet, or the writing in this series is pretty clumsy. And no episode that's yet out epitomizes that more than this one, which had us learn more about the side effects of eating monster meat.

Melphiera has arrived at her new home, and we've learned about Aristide and his soldiers'/staff's previous experience with monster meat. Namely, that it was treated as a last resort, because of the stomachaches it caused. This is something we've seen mentioned in previous weeks as well, but this is the first time it feels like it got more than a brief mention. So basically, the people in Melphiera's land won't eat monster meat for religious reasons, and while Aristide's staff is hesitant, they're still at least willing to try. They're much more open minded, not unlike Aristide himself. Sort of.

Up until now, Aristide has seemed pretty interested in monster meat, so it's weird that this week he seemed so weirdly hesitant to eat it. We know how he feels about Melphiera, and her cooking. Is being pouty how he processes jealousy? Was he trying to save face or something? Hard to tell, but it seemed so unlike the Aristide we've known thus far, who probably would've happily tried it. I don't want to keep falling back on “the writing is clumsy and full of overthinking” but scenes like the one where Aristide was being so moody about eating monster meat really do make it hard not to think about. And that sucks, because this series has a fun concept, and its protagonists usually have an adorable chemistry with each other. This show has the capacity to be so much better than it is right now.

As though to further demonstrate this, there's the whole matter of Aristide's magic toward the end of the episode. Melphiera is assuming it's along the same lines of what happened to her mother, who was ultimately poisoned by it. The root cause, Melphiera admits, was eating monster meat. And, again, this series is just massively overthinking things. Do we really need so much conflict? Because all I'm getting from this is that eating monster meat is a supremely terrible idea, and that Melphiera is putting people in harm's way—to say nothing of the animism the people on her family's land believe in. It'd be one thing if Melphiera was pursuing finding ways to eat it anyways to help feed the hungry (something the series mentioned briefly happened once, but we haven't heard much else about this), but she doesn't seem to have any particularly lofty goals. From what we've seen, she just likes it, and wants others to like it, too. There's also a streak of wanting to vindicate her mother, who also liked monster meat. Still, nothing that feels terribly justified. The more we learn about monster meat, the more it looks like eating it is an objectively bad idea. By extension of that, Melphiera just becomes a more confusing, arguably nonsensical protagonist by the episode.

Another thing this episode epitomizes are the visual shortcomings of this series. It could look much worse, sure, but we got quite a few blobby, and slightly misaligned eyes and faces this week. This series should be thankful that the character and monster designs, not to mention the settings, are pretty simple. While it's not to say it hasn't been obvious until now that the visuals for this series aren't exactly a feast for the eyes, more ornate designs definitely would've exacerbated it. And given this series' premise, it just as easily could've had more detailed looking monsters, especially.

This is probably the weakest episode we've had yet, because this is the episode where I think the half-baked writing has been at its most apparent. This series has such an innate charm to it, so it's so frustrating to see this series, time and time again, create conflict for conflict's sake, and to not even think it through. Right now, I think the dynamic between Melphiera and Aristide is the biggest thing this series has going for it, so hopefully we'll see it lean into that more next week, since I'm losing hope for the storytelling.

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Pass the Monster Meat, Milady! is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.