Chef’s Table meets Baldur’s Gate in Netflix’s first anime banger of 2024
Do you like food? Of course you do. How about Dungeons & Dragons? You dabble, yeah? Maybe played a fantasy role-playing video game or two? Never? That’s cool, too. You’re still gonna want to check out Delicious in Dungeon.
Based on the beloved and recently concluded manga by Ryōko Kui, the new Netflix anime is a loving, faithful adaptation of one of the most charming fantasy stories in recent memory, a series that cares just as much about food (likeChef’s Table) as it does fun tabletop-style adventuring (like Baldur’s Gate 3). The story follows a party of adventurers in a world where a mysterious dungeon has appeared, with a spectre delivering a message that unimaginable treasure awaits those who descend into its depths to defeat the wizard lying at its heart.
Laios and his friends Marcille and Chilchuck are one of many such groups making regular expeditions into the dungeons, and we meet them in a moment of very bad luck as a dragon kicks their asses and seems to swallow their friend, Falin. Fresh out of resources to mount a proper rescue and very hungry, Laios hatches a last-ditch plan to make it back to the dragon and save Falin: They eat their way through the dungeon, finding and cooking edible monsters to sustain them as they journey deeper without supplies.
That’s kind of it! With just one episode currently available (Delicious in Dungeon is the rare Netflix simulcast) the series can leave the viewer with the impression that it’s pretty slight. Given how faithful an adaptation Studio Trigger is making here, it will almost certainly get better. But that doesn’t mean the show isn’t without its charms from the start.
As it stands, Delicious in Dungeon is a great D&D-flavored hangout show, one that insists on
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