What Delicious in Dungeon can teach us about food, the world and everything

Delicious in Dungeon is an anime adaptation of Ryoko Kui's popular manga series; the first season is now available to watch on Netflix. There are 24 episodes available to stream now, with a second season in the works. Studio Trigger, the production company behind the anime, is known for its strikingly beautiful art and animation, and they’ve made Delicious in Dungeon a visual feast.

But the characters in Delicious in Dungeon are after a different sort of feast. On the surface, it’s a show about a group of Dungeons & Dragons-esque adventurers defeating monsters, earning riches, and eventually confronting the dreaded Mad Mage. However, it becomes much more when the cleric Falin gets eaten by a red dragon after saving her brother Laios from its flames. Falin ejects the other members of the crew — Laios the fighter, Marcille the elf wizard and Chilchuk the halfling rogue — from the dungeon with an escape spell, and now they must find a way to make it back to save Falin before she is digested.

The problem is, the party lost all of their equipment and resources when they were defeated by the dragon, meaning that they have no food or supplies, and no money to buy more. Laios is enthusiastic about trying to eat the monsters in the dungeon, but comes close to poisoning himself on the first dish he tries to make. That’s when the crew meets Senshi, a strange dwarf who lives in the dungeon and is an expert on its ecosystem. He helps Laios, Marcille, and Chilchuck cook their first meal and goes on to join the party. From there, Delicious in Dungeon hits its stride as a show that celebrates humor, originality and the culinary arts.

One of the most remarkable things about Delicious in Dungeon is how tasty it makes the food look. The dishes that the party cooks are extremely original takes on ones we might see in our everyday lives, with ingredients changed so they make sense within the context of the show. Scorpion & Walking Mushroom Hot Pot, Mandrake and Basilisk Omelets, Big Bat Tempura, Living Armor on the Half Shell, Fresh Golem Vegetable Lunch, Exorcism Sorbet, Tentacles and Kelpie Meat Stew Simmered in Undine, Dragon Tail Soup with Roast Red Dragon...These are but a few of the mouth-watering meals the characters in Delicious in Dungeon tackle.

Declisious in conservationism

Still, the point of the show is not to make you hungry for someone else’s cooking. Rather, it aims to inspire viewers to take a closer look at their eating habits, embracing the virtues of simplicity and hard work in making sure everyone is fed.

Senshi is usually the one to impact these lessons. Though he initially dazzles the party with his cooking skills, we eventually come to see Senshi as an ecosystem steward more than anything else. Everything that he does has the greater wellbeing of the dungeon in mind. Everything he cooks is treated with the respect of someone who has an intimate knowledge of what a creature’s death means for the greater cycle. A good example of Senshi’s wisdom comes when he sees Marcille blowing up huge swathes of fish when the party reaches the dungeon’s water floor.

He explains that killing so many of the tender creatures that form one of the lower rungs on the food chain causes a lack of medium-sized monsters who rely on them as a main source of nutrition. Such a vacuum leads to strange, unstable occurrences in the Dungeon’s depths. His wisdom is soon proven accurate when the party is attacked by a massive kraken.

Senshi is an ecosystem-builder in the unlikeliest of places. He farms the soil on the backs of massive earth golems. He spends hours preparing the meat of the creatures he kills to create beautiful yet simple dishes that reflect the local flavors of the dungeon. He risks life and limb to make sure he, his friends, and the greater ecosystem within his beloved environs can survive and — on a good day — even thrive.

Why does he go through the trouble when he could find everything he needs above ground? Because the nearby town is full of people who need money and society to survive. Because they wouldn’t know what parts of a giant scorpion you have to remove before boiling it so as to not poison yourself. Because all of that stuff puts barriers between you and what you need to flourish as a living, breathing organism.

What Delicious in Dungeon reminded me about how we treat food

In many ways, Senshi is as potent a practitioner and thinker in his world as farm and stewardship scholars like Wendell Berry and Akiva Silver are in ours. It’s all about perspective. What’s more, for Senshi, it’s all about love for the majesty of the greater cycle around him and how he can better fit into its rhythms.

While Marcille is extremely skeptical of eating monsters at first, even she comes around to Senshi’s way of thinking, especially when she remembers the day she and Falin became friends. In Episode 8, "Raspberries; Grilled Meat," Falin shows Marcille a small dungeon where she goes to escape the anxieties of wizarding school. When a slime monster emerges from the water around the small island where the girls are resting, Marcille prepares an explosive spell to kill it. However, Falin stays her hand, since the slime is able to break down bat droppings and turn them into mana, which fuels the magic of the dungeon and keeps the ecosystem healthy. Plus, slimes won’t enter areas with sunlight, so the girls are safe.

This scene cuts to the heart of what Delicious in Dungeon is all about: a full-throated endorsement of getting to know one’s local ecosystem, so we can be a better steward of its many interlocking systems. It turns out that such a message has everything to do with food.

Taking AP Environmental Science in high school is what first inspired me to become a vegetarian and take a more active role in the way I consumed food. In college, I studied Environmental Policy with a focus on food systems and ended up working on my favorite professor’s organic vegetable farm to supplement my studies. These times were some of the most exhausting yet fulfilling of my life. They were days spent under the beating sun followed by still evenings eating the fruits (and vegetables) of my labor with valued friends. Yet in the years since, as I’ve pivoted away from farming and embraced writing, my relationship with food has changed. 

On a busier schedule, dinner is something to be done quickly. Hopefully it tastes good, but the point is that it’s done, so that I can get back to my computer or spend a few fleeting moments with loved ones before rushing off to an evening activity. Ingredients come from the grocery store in sterile packaging. The kitchen sometimes feels like more of a factory than a hub of creativity. This is the way that moneyed interests — the very same moneyed interests that Senshi is trying to avoid by living his life in the dungeon — would like us to experience food for the rest of our lives. Living and dying by the hand that feeds us.

But, since watching Delicious in Dungeon, my love of food systems has been reinvigorated. I feel inspired to cook, and time spent in the kitchen feels like an act of respect rather than a tedious waste. Additionally, I’ve felt more connected to the missions of writers and farmers that I looked up to in college more than ever before. It’s clear to me that all it takes to start a movement is excitement, and these days it’s important to use media and culture’s common touchstones to communicate meaningful information. Delicious in Dungeon is doing just that; using the popular artform of anime to help kickstart curiosity and joy in engaging with food and where it comes from.

The show has the potential to inspire a new generation of chefs, farmers, and ecosystem stewards. The curiosity that it instills in its viewers encourages them to get closer to food. Since one of the only commonalities between people from all walks of life is that we need to eat, this is a powerful message of community. An anime inspiring the next generation to be curious about their environment, careful with their impact, and zesty with the flavors they create in the kitchen? All told through a dungeon-crawling story?

That’s pretty freaking delicious.

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and Twitter account, sign up for our exclusive newsletter and check out our YouTube channel.