While Ryoko Kui’s Delicious in Dungeon Volume 3 maintains its ironclad premise of RPG murderhobos that turn their adventures into a gourmet tour, the tale nonetheless continues to evolve, with this volume in particular giving us glimpse of things off the beaten path, not only through a flashback to the greater setting outside the dungeon doors, but also by bringing back someone who knew our heroes before they were dungeon gluttons.
Sharpeyed readers will recognize Namari as one of the adventurers that left our heroes in the opening chapter of Delicious in Dungeon Volume 1. Since then, while she’s deepened her descent into the dungeon, working as hired muscle for her new, amoral associates, she hasn’t changed her mercenary character, and finds their passionate pursuit of tasting all the offerings on the monster menu a little weird.
Even the reader can see that our heroes’ pursuit has become a fanatical one. Though Laios would tell you he’s questing to save his sister, we no longer believe him, for it is obvious that he is driven by the tantalizing pursuit of monster meat. The panels in which he mourns his sister are much less persuasive than the panels in which he drools over imagining how the terrors of the dungeon taste. Moreover, he’s not alone; in a flashback to her time as a student of magic, we realize that this is not the first time Marcille entertained the thought of a dungeon as a kind of agricultural engine, though her inspired idea was not to use it as a meat farm, but to cultivate exotic herbs.
The best thing about Delicious in Dungeon continues in this volume: though this manga aspires to be nothing but pure entertainment, that does not prevent the characters in it from acting intelligently, discussing their setting, and having ideas that are sensible in the context of their magical environment. This is fun with an intellectual side, as if the author, having established the rules, the board, and the playing pieces, was playing a pleasant game with his readership.
Delicious in Dungeon Volume 3 is on shelves now, and if you can’t find a copy, you can buy it through this list of booksellers on the Yen Press website.
Yen Press sent the review copy.
