The anime

Overall, I'm pretty impressed with the anime so far. The style remains intact with the adaptation, which is good considering Ryoko Kui's art style is one of the main draws. The voice acting is good (I'm watching the English dub), though I think Marcille's actress has room for improvement. And the food, oh my god the food. It looks absolutely incredible, and the fact that they really take their time to prepare it and show in depth how the cooking process works is great. I was afraid that the cooking itself would take a back seat to the action, but I'm happy to report that they put all of the time and effort they possibly could into it.

I do have a couple of nitpicks, I think the anime focuses a lot on Marcille instead of on Laios, making the screen time feel a bit unbalanced, and as mentioned before I'm not huge on Marcille's voice acting, but I'm really glad they didn't give her a super annoying voice. I'm also not huge on some of the changed dialogue, Marcille calling some adventurers "newbs" in the year of our lord 2024 is a crime.

All in all, a really strong start, there's some room for improvement but, frankly, nothing's perfect, and I'm excited to see the rest of the manga adapted as well.

This episode was a riot, I laughed a ton throughout the entire thing. The manga is pretty funny, but honestly the anime pushes it a lot further and does a great job. I laughed every time Marcille brought up the dog when talking about pulling the mandrakes out, and even though I wasn't sold on her performance earlier, the sincerity every time she says "that poor dog..." was incredible. This episode has a ton of cooking in it, and the comedy and character building is on point.

The food this time around was also pretty great, and deciding to put three of the meals into one episode was a good call, since there isn't a ton of padding surrounding them, and it also means that Chilchuck, Marcille, and Senshi all get to shine. The only one who's a bit left to the wayside is Laios, but I know that the Living Armor arc is pretty Laios focused so I'm not too upset about that.

I love this arc in the managa a lot, so it was pretty great to see it in action- Laios being extremely unhinged is hilarious as always, and the reactions are just absolute gold. I also really like how they portrayed Laios' intellegence in this episode- I feel like fandom has a pretty bad habit of sorting people into archetypes, and more often than not he's labeled as a "himbo" despite not being stupid.

I have a couple of nitpicks (as always), I thought the framing of Laios' first death in the manga was way better. You have him cutting off the head of the armor, and the next panel is just showing that he's already been stabbed, almost like he didn't even notice. The panel is really striking, but I feel the impact was lost in the adaptation. I also think Laios' internal monologue this episode was pretty overbearing, and ruined the tension a bit, since we could've easily gotten where he was going if 50% of it was cut (show don't tell, etc.), though this is a general problem with anime internal monologues.

Overall though, it was a great episode, the action was a lot of fun and it was pretty cool seeing Laios' thought process throughout. The animation was dynamic, and it was really cool seeing that scene from Laios' childhood fully animated in a really cool artstyle.

It was great seeing Senshi get a spotlight episode, and the Golems are a really cool idea. I love that Senshi is such an integral part of keeping the dungeon in check, not asking for a reward or anything in return. The fact that we see just how much effort he puts in is pretty incredible- there really aren't that many people who would willingly clean bathrooms for no payment, but here we are.

I'm also really happy with the portrayal of the orcs- their designs are so unique and they translated really well to animation. Especially the baby orc, who looks absolutely adorable. I also really want to try that bread- I found a recipe that tells you how to make it, and I even went out and bought some yeast, so I might do it some point later.

Kabru is here!!!! Kabru!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In all seriousness, I'm really glad he and his party are here, they look great and it's pretty funny to see how arrogant they are. Claiming that the 3rd floor is the farthest they, and anyone else, has gotten is an absolute riot, especially considering they die right afterwards.

The Falin focus on this episode is perfect as well. I love her as a character, and seeing how badly the party misses her, both on a personal and utility level is heartbreaking. The flashback is also really well animated, and I love how much everyone seems to understand how useful Falin is. I find that a lot of the time, when there's a trope of a woman being killed or kidnapped, her absense is shown with just "I miss her" "she's so kind" "I love her". With Falin though, she was kind, lovable, interesting, and very powerful as a magic user. It's clear why the party valued her so much.

The food in this episode looked amazing, just as a side note. The bugs looked weirdly delicious, and the sorbet was beautiful. Really makes me wish a lot of these foods were real, I'd love to try them honestly.

About half of this episode is taken up by Laios dicking around in some paintings, which is perfectly fine by me. The whole sequence is hilarious, especially when he claims he couldn't eat any of the food because "the vibe was off". The most important part of this whole thing, though, is Thistle. He's finally here!!! I really like his animated design, though I do wish he'd kept the purple clothing, since it's thematically consistent. But it's great to see him animated on screen, and I can't wait to see more of him as we go along.

The real money here though is the second half. I've really found myself enjoying the Chilchuck segments of these episodes a lot, and I think it's because he can't actually fight. Since his skills are in stealth, all of the problems he gets caught up in need to be solved with intellegence and subterfuge. Him triggering the traps to try and kill the mimic was a great sequence, especially with the killing blow coming from the trap that initially got him into this mess. It was also really cute that he got caught in the room because he was worried about the treasure bug.

There were a lot of really nice touches in this episode, seeing Chilchuck's experience with mimics, and also seeing him repairing the clothes that were ripped was really great. You can see that these characters have a lot of history in the dungeon, from the way they act and know how to prepare. Usually in anime if a character's clothes get ripped, they're fine by the next scene, but showing them being repaired sets up that this is how these characters work. Clothes get ripped, they have to be fixed, and even if they don't show it on screen every time that implication is always there. It really helps ground the characters in a sense of realism, like these things are actually happening.

This episode was really nice, honestly. Senshi's arc this episode was done really well, with him being able to accept some magic being used, since it really was the only way. It's especially cool that once he was open to it, he started thinking about it in a more lateral way- using water walking on the kraken to hold in place was really smart, and the entire fight scene was really well animated. I loved how, once stabbed, the kraken lost all the spots on its body, and then all the colour. It was a really nice touch. I also loved how Senshi let Marcille wash his hair so that the magic could work on him. It was really special seeing how much Senshi appreciated Marcille's hard work, and how he wanted it to be used properly.

The food in this episode looked amazing as well, the grilled parasite had me craving grilled teriyaki eel so bad, it was actually crazy. I always get so hungry when watching these episodes, which isn't exactly a hot take but it is very true. They always make it look so appealing, even when the food is like, barley porridge.

Oh man, this episode is incredible. Marcille and Falin are such a great pair, I love seeing them in school together. I love how weird Falin is, the fact that the other students don't like her is pretty obvious but it's clear that she doesn't really mind all that much. You can tell she's just happy to have some freedom and be able to explore, and her doing this leads to having a better understanding of magic and dungeons than Marcille, who's done years of studying.

I really loved the Undine fight as well, though it's generous to call it it a fight- it was more of a Marcille beat down. The Undine striking her leg, with the water going clean through was brutal and visually stunning. There are some anime injuries you can just walk off, like being slammed into a wall, but something going right through your body is not something you can shrug off, and the anime shows Marcille's agony perfectly. The fact that they were so unequipped to handle it really shows how much the party is lacking without a secondary magic user, making Falin's absence even more palpable than ususal. You might think you have a perfectly balanced party with two figters, a rogue, and a magic user, but the moment one of them is taken out, you realize you're totally screwed.

Namari is here! I absolutely love how she's been translated into the anime, in all of her glory. The voice actor does a great job , the deeper voice really suits her. The conflict between her and Marcille is great as well, Namari knows that she can't go on quests like this without a stable income, but Marcille struggles with the idea that this is just a job and that they aren't even friends. Namari overall is such a great and well rounded character, even in this episode you can see that she's brash and impulsive, but really does care about her friends. It's not her fault that she needs money to live, and you can tell she does want to go help. When she takes the pan lid from Laios to help Senshi catch and cook the Undine, it's absolutely awesome, and shows off her strength well. It's pretty funny that despite technically being the largest race, tall-men aren't actually all that strong especially when compared to dwarves.

Having some new characters come in to where our main party is is great, because you get reminded that eating monsters is very taboo in this world. You almost forget it, since everyone has been adjusting to the absurdity, but you realize very quickly that everyone thinks these guys are absolute freaks.

Everyone looks great in the frog suits. I love how silly they all are.

In all seriousness, this is the calm before the storm. The red dragon fight is imminent, and the tension is palpable. I really like that the first half of this episode was a bit silly, while the second half was a lot more serious, with them making their last meal before fighting it, and planning on what they have to do. I've read the manga, so I know where this is going. We are about to leave the fun slice of life portion of this story, and the pacing is about to become breakneck (well, at least compared to the pacing so far).

Probably the most gut-punchy moment was when Marcille states how glad she is that these monster meals will end soon and she'll be able to go back up to the surface. She doesn't know what's coming.

TBD

TBD