Dungeon Meshi @ani.social MentalEdge @sopuli.xyz 5mo ago

DISCUSSION: Episode 4

Last weeks thread - 9 Comments

Dungeon Meshi is a well liked manga, and an adaptation by Studio Trigger is now airing. If you haven't picked this one up, consider joining us. Both for fun and as a way of contributing to activity on Lemmy.

We now arrive on the third level proper. As it turns out, this is where Senshi lives! He ropes the gang into helping with some totally normal gardening. We also get to learn what kind of person he really is.

Something some of you may have noticed... The foreshadowing has really started ramping up. Many places in the dungeon feature depictions of a winged lion, and it is appearing more and more. What might it mean?

6 Images

Remember not to spoil anything if you're a manga reader, but feel free to elaborate on tidbits of lore that may not be coming through in the adaptation.

13 comments

This episode is just full of lore!! Senshi being the caretaker of the third level, how golems work, people in the dungeon, orcs, what their history is with other races. The story that the chief tells Laios about the master of the dungeon, and that if anyone we're to defeat that mage, they'd be rewarded with all that the underground castle has to offer.

Marcilles argument with the chief is hilarious, and the gang realizing Senshi surrendered to the orcs just so he could make bread, had me dying.
- Marcilles argument with the chief is hilarious, and the gang realizing Senshi surrendered to the orcs just so he could make bread, had me dying.
  
  Discuss while kneading. Rest while the dough is resting. Repeat, and it's done.
A very cool episode!

It seems that Senshi is a vital part of the 3rd floor’s ecology…

I loved the garden golems!

How high level is Senshi where he just kills them casually with one blow? And then he just gets on with farming...

I find it weird that the tavern owner didn’t want vegetables…
- Vegetables are perishable, they rot in a few days unless you have a way to freeze them. Though the carrots would have lasted a while...
  
  The other party we saw on level 1 was eating preserved meats and bread, as Senshi comments. I suspect most adventurers in the dungeon don't see the point of vegetables.
  
  But I suspect the proprietor was insulted that they'd think foodstuffs would be worth trading, adventurers are all in the dungeon for big money, not the pittance you might make by farming.
I liked the moment when Senshi was made as a janitor of the dungeon where no one really appreciates his work, but he doesn't do it for others, he does it for self satisfaction.

The argument between Marcielle and Orc dad was nice. They both had valid narration but the truth was somewhere in between.

I wonder what is the secret ingredient to make a golem. It can't be a tear of a pure maiden as I am guesstimating it would need to be tens of liters in volume.
- The orc chief was pretty quick to blame other species for their persecution.
  
  But we literally see him raid a dungeon tavern, murdering everyone inside. The chief isn't wrong that it might be the only way to feed his tribe, but he doesn't then also get to act as if humans and elves have no reason to fear and shun his kind.
  
  Like always, it is the new generation, unaware of old grudges, who is the most prepared to treat others fairly. The party playing into the kids image of the chief was a big brain move.
  
  Like always, it is the new generation, unaware of old grudges, who is the most prepared to treat others fairly. The party playing into the kids image of the chief was a big brain move.
  
  I loved this tidbit. The older orcs were all suspicious or outright hostile (as the chief), while the kid was simply curious. "Are they playing with mud?", trying to understand their actions based on what a child would do.
- I wonder what is the secret ingredient to make a golem
  
  This is killing me. Her reaction makes me so curious as to what it could be. If we never find out the answer...instant 0/10 show from me. /s
  
  In other fantasy stuff, magic like this often takes a piece of the caster. So I assumed it was their blood. Since Marcielle said she knew how to make one, I doubt its like a piece of their soul, as she doesn't seem like the kind of person who would take a piece of her life lightly.
  
  IIRC it's never brought up again. Marcilles VA nailed the "it's a secret".
For a party that has an elf and a half-foot, both races that seem to have very large ears, it was kind of surprising to see Laios be the one using his hearing to scout his way through the dungeon, but he was very good at it.

When it comes to eating monsters on the third level, when they mentioned skeletons, I was expecting them to make bone broth at some point, but perhaps undead bones don't have the same kind of flavor/marrow that non-undead (dead?) bones have. Instead, we get to see how Senshi farms using golems. I think my favorite part of this sequence was Marcy's farming style, it reminds me a bit of Bakarina when she is farming.

The orc attack came out of nowhere, but it did provide the first hints at how to proceed with the ostensible goal of ~~killing and eating a red dragon~~ rescuing Falin. Making bread from a sourdough starter like they show here is a lot of fun, but I totally get the kid's question of if they are playing with mud. Sourdough starter like that looks and smells pretty bad unless you are used to it.

One other thing about making bread from a sourdough starter is that the bread has a lot of complexity of flavor due to the natural yeast, but conversely, it rises super slowly. Commercial yeast that you buy in the grocery store is super optimized to start fermenting quickly and to ferment at a very rapid pace. The natural yeast in sourdough is much slower and less efficient. However, it results in more complexity and variation of the fermentation output.

My point in bringing this up is that they definitely had a bit of a time skip there while the bread was rising. For context, my sourdough recipe that I use my starter for, has a total rise time of 3 hours and 20 minutes spread across a couple steps. This is the reason most recipes you look up for sourdough bread use starter, but then they also use a packet of commercial yeast as well, it dramatically reduces the time it takes (example from King Arthur Flour that cuts about an hour of time off of my recipe).

I have had a number of instances lately in which I have been able to try to spread the gospel of breadmaking. First, I talked about shokupan in 'Tis Time For Torture Princess, then I ran across a manga series recently about making bread in a brick oven. I hadn't realized until the past month how much bread knowledge I would be able to apply to anime/manga.
- Epic bread info.
  
  The orcs also mentioned the master of the dungeon, previously only brought up by the world introduction in EP1. I'm noticing new things within the context of knowing whats coming, I never realized how well the story sets up later events, being completely wrapped in the "dungeon food" aspect of the manga.
  
  I don't recall the gang ever consuming undead. Considering their bodies are actually rotten, I can't imagine it would work.