room-surprise · 3 months ago
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New Ryoko Kui interview dropped!!!
(This is a quick and dirty translation made using machine translation, and which I've lightly edited to add clarity. I'm not fluent in Japanese so I may have gotten things wrong. I'm sure others will do a better job later.
ADDITIONAL CONTEXT: This article is from a Japanese gaming magazine, like the previous interview in Famitsu, so they focus on video games and don't discuss other influences, even though they do get mentioned and are clearly pretty major.)
Kui was able to write "Dungeon Meshi" because she was not good at eating food and participating in human relationships. In this interview, we dig deeper into the influence of games, and how Ryoko Kui focuses on things she likes and dislikes while writing. [Writers of the Gaming Generation]
Dungeon Meshi.
This manga is attractive for its unique theme of "dungeons, defeating monsters in the labyrinth, and cooking them," as well as the unique characters, detailed human relationships, and deep worldview depicted in the labyrinth. It is currently being made into an anime, and adventurers from all over the world are fascinated by the world of "Dungeon Meshi."
So I thought , "I wonder if this work was drawn by someone who loves food and people." The depiction of such delicious-looking food and the construction of delicate human relationships and characters. Surely, it must have been drawn by someone who absolutely loves it.
However, in reality, the author, Kui Ryoko, says that she "is not good at either food or relationships."
So why was he able to continue drawing things she was not good at?
During the roughly 10 years of serialization, Kui has continued to confront "things she dislikes." This interview delves into Kui's unique creative techniques... and at the same time, it also delves into her "favorite things."
That's the "game"!
Those who are familiar with the subject may already know this, but Kui is also a big gamer. And it seems that "Dungeon Meshi" is heavily influenced by RPGs such as "Wizardry."
As a result, this interview turned out to be "I asked Kui a lot about her likes and dislikes." Likes and dislikes. They are the source of all interests and curiosity.
So how do we use this knowledge in our creative endeavors? How does this knowledge manifest itself in Dungeon Meshi?
How were those charming characters and the deep world created? We spoke to the original author, Kui Ryoko, and the editor, Masaru Hiroi, about things they could only talk about after the series was completed.
This is a game with the volume of a great labyrinth. I hope you will explore it all the way to the final floor!
Dungeon food. It's eat or be eaten. There is no superior or inferior, to eat food is simply a privilege of the living. Dungeon food. Ah, dungeon food.
First, I want to ask about how Kui first encountered video games.
--What are some influences from games in Dungeon Meshi? What was your first game, Ms. Kui?
Ryoko Kui (hereinafter referred to as Kui): I played traditional RPGs such as [blank?] and "Final Fantasy."
I think the first game console I ever played was a Famicom, which my parents won in a lottery . So before I knew it, we had a Famicom at home. I think my parents bought me the Super Famicom and PS1 after that...
After that, I took a break from games for a bit around the time of the PS2, but around the time of the PS4, I was finally able to buy games with the money I had earned myself .
--Why were you able to stay away from games around the time of the PS2?
Kui: I was too busy with exams, so I thought, "Well, I shouldn't be playing games," and left. When I started living alone after that, I couldn't play games because I didn't have a TV. My computer was also a Mac. [Macs aren't compatible with many games.]
--What was the trigger that made you think, "I want to play games" again?
Kui: I think the biggest thing was starting the serialization of "Dungeon Meshi."
Fantasy stories all have different settings, but at the same time, there are also things they share in common. For example, if you want to create a fantasy work, but you only know "Dragon Quest," it will end up resembling "Dragon Quest." It's scary to copy the setting of only one work.
So I just wanted to play a ton of different fantasy games and get an idea of ​​what the most common general understanding of fantasy is.
--Did you start playing it while you were still developing the concept for Dungeon Meal?
Kui: That's right. If I'm going to talk about "eating food," I have to play a game that has a system for eating food .
So I was interested in "Dungeon Master." However, at the time there was no easy way to play "Dungeon Master" on a real machine, so I played "Legend of Grimrock", which can also be played on a Mac.
["Dungeon Master," is a computer RPG released in 1987. Time passes each time you take an action in the dungeon, such as moving, fighting, or resting, so its biggest feature is that the game progresses in real time according to the player's actions. "Legend of Grimrock," is an action RPG released in 2012. It has a game design similar to "Dungeon Master."]
Until then, I had felt that overseas games and games played on PC were too difficult, but I felt like I had overcome one obstacle there. I thought, "Oh, this is pretty easy," and started playing a lot of different games.
-- Those two games are quite heavy even among RPGs, I think, so did you actually have that much difficulty with them?
Kui: No...I would say that my impression is more that best-selling games are easy to play (laughs).
I'm not that good at games myself, so I usually play games that allow you to adjust the difficulty on a super easy setting. So, games that allow you to lower the difficulty are always a lifesaver.
-- I've heard that apart from RPGs , you also like games such as "13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim" and "Paranomasite FILE23: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo ." Do you have a favorite genre, Mr. Kui?
Kui: I guess I'm just not very good at games that require you to use your brain through trial and error.
But in RPGs, if you just level up and keep tapping, you can win and progress in the game. Also, in novel-type games, if you read the text, you can progress. By this process of elimination, I quite like RPGs and text-based games .
Personally, I like games like Disco Elysium the most, which are text-heavy, top-down, and have maps to explore.
...Even I think that's a pretty negative reason (laughs).
Everyone: (laughs).
Hiroi Masaru (hereinafter referred to as Hiroi): But, Ms. Kui, you have really played quite a lot of games, haven't you?
Kui: No, the reason I'm able to play so much is because I play in a pretty callous way ...
I often buy a game, play it, and then just don't play it. So there aren't that many games I complete... I only complete a few a year. I play around 40 games, and if I complete 5 or 6, that's good.
When I asked if I could draw at Comitia, I got scolded.
-- Have you had any exposure to fantasy outside of digital RPGs?
Kui: I think it's not just games, but also the fact that I've always loved foreign fantasy novels . I was given books like "The Neverending Story," "The Lord of the Rings," and "The Chronicles of Narnia."
-- Dungeon Meshi gives off an atmosphere of Western fantasy like gamebooks or tabletop RPGs, rather than the typical Japanese fantasy games like Dragon Quest.
Hiroi: I think I went to Kui's house before the series started. At that time, we were discussing the name of a sci-fi manga called "Drawing Inside the Brain," which I had rejected many times.
Ms. Kui said she wanted to serialize this sci-fi manga... and when he was on the fourth draft, he said, "No, this isn't going to work," and when I looked at the scribbled notes next to her desk, she had already drawn the original version of "Dungeon Meshi" ! (laughs)
Kui: ……………No, I don't remember much (laughs).
Everyone: (laughs).
Kui: But I had wanted to draw a manga about exploring a dark dungeon, like Wizardry .
Since I was in elementary school, the manga I drew in pencil in my notebooks were all fantasy stories about swords and magic, so I had always wanted to draw a proper fantasy manga. However, there weren't as many fantasy manga in bookstores at the time as there are now, so I wondered, "Maybe fantasy doesn't sell."
Hiroi: At the time, there were a lot of people in their teens and twenties posting fantasy illustrations on online communities for artists, such as pixiv, and Kui was one of them.
I thought, there are so many people who want to write fantasy, so if she writes a fantasy aimed at this generation, it might sell.
And when I saw Kui's notes, I thought to myself, "Let's make a straight-forward fantasy manga, without making it weirdly twisted."
Kui: I originally thought of making this "dungeon exploration manga" as just a hobby... When I asked Hiroi if I could draw it at Comitia first, he got angry.
[Comitia is a comics convention in Japan for original self-published comics.]
Everyone: (laughs).
Hiroi: I said, "If you're going to draw at Comitia, then make sure you draw it as a proper serialization!" (laughs)
However, at that time, Kui had already published two collections of short stories, and they were being reprinted. In other words, she had a certain number of fans even before the serialization began.
So I decided, if Kui creates a pure fantasy for those fans, we can't fail badly. If it doesn't work, we'll just learn that fantasy is difficult to sell after all.
--By the way, were there any discussions between you and Ms. Kui about the fact that fantasy doesn't sell?
Kui: I remember vaguely talking about how fantasy manga doesn't sell well and how difficult it seems. I don't know much about light novels, so that might have been there for a while.
However, since a lot of fantasy manga were coming out around the same time, it was probably a "transitional period ." Maybe it was just when people started to feel more and more like they wanted to draw and read fantasy.
Not everyone is that interested in the things I like
-- I feel that "Dungeon Meshi" is a title that has breathed new life into the fantasy genre. How did you go about creating the setting and world when dealing with fantasy?
Kui: I try to think, "Not everyone is that interested in the things I like."
I like to think about pointless settings endlessly, but there are times when I think , "When this setting is actually made into a manga, people probably won't be interested in this story." So I try to include things that will make people interested, and cut out things that will distract people as much as possible.
For example, in "Dungeon Meshi" I initially wanted everyone to speak various languages. On top of that, I wanted to make the characters "only able to communicate with each other in one language"... but Mr. Hiroi said "Don't do that" (laughs).
Everyone: (laughs).
Kui: Even when I'm drawing it myself, I think, "It takes more than six panels to explain this setting...", and if I explain the setting more than necessary, it slows down the pace of the story.
Moreover, since "Dungeon Meshi" was a monthly serialization, unlike a weekly series, there wasn't much time for extraneous stories. Specifically, I had to draw one episode of about 30 pages per month.
In that case, there was no time to add in settings like "Actually, he was thinking about this behind the scenes" or "Actually, he can speak two languages." So, rather than there being any clear choices, there were quite a few times when "there was no time to do things normally." If it had been a weekly serialization, I might have included more.
--Does the scene where Chilchuck yells insults in his own language feel rather "forced"?
Kui: That's right (laughs).I thought, this only takes one frame...it's my chance [to include information about language]!
--So you haven't thought through all of these "fictional languages" yet?
Kui: If Dungeon Meshi were to be my life's work and I were to spend my whole life creating this world, I think it would be more fun to think about it...but initially, I thought that Dungeon Meshi would end in a few years.
Hiroi: Initially, I said, "It'd be nice if it continued for about five volumes" (laughs).
However, Kui's first draft really had a lot of material... so the editors cut out a lot of it. I understand that it's the parts the readers want to read, but I cut out the parts that deviate from the main story. So it's a battle between the "author who doesn't want to be cut" and the "editor who wants to cut."
--By the way, what kind of discussion took place between the "parts you want to cut" and the "parts you don't want to cut"?
Kui: There were a lot of them every time, but I can't remember them specifically now...it was just small, unimportant details that got cut.
In the scene where the hams made by the Red Dragon go back into the pool of blood, I remember saying, "You don't need these," and they were about to cut them off, but I remember desperately stopping them by saying, "We'll need them later!" I'm glad they weren't cut off.
But once I think of the setting, I want to include things, and then they get cut out, so at first I didn't want to expand the world too much.
I also wanted to complete the story within the dungeon. I didn't want to reveal the name of the country, and I didn't want to give the characters surnames. But in the second half, Hiroi-san told me, "The world is too small, so you should make it bigger," and I was like, "Are you sure?"
--Mr. Hiroi, why did you say that?
Hiroi: As the story progressed, it became clear that "Dungeon Meshi" was no longer just about saving a sister in a dungeon. So I decided that it would be unconvincing if the story had no involvement with the outside world, since what was happening in the dungeon was something that would affect the fate of the whole world.
For example, in real life companies, the more important a decision you make, the higher your superior's rank becomes, right? When I thought about it that way, I felt something was off about the idea of ​​Laios and his friends deciding the fate of the world on their own. "How can they make that decision without anyone knowing about it?"
The fact that the Canary Team was there meant that there must have been a system of reporting, contacting, and consulting here, because that's how "society" and "organizations" work.
In short, I think we were thinking about the situation and asking, "If an organization were to get involved in saving the world, how persuasive could they make it given the society that exists in the story?"
Kui: Well, the plot hasn't changed at all.
From the beginning, I had intended to write a story about saving the world, but I also thought it was possible for the world to be saved by only a select few people in the dungeon who knew the circumstances. Changing it was what Hiroi-san thought would make it more persuasive.
When I was drawing the first half, Hiroi told me, "You don't have to decide anything yet." I was in a hurry to move the story forward and explain the world and story setting, but he told me, "It's better to limit it to introducing the four main characters until about the fourth volume." But in the second half, he said, "Introduce more people and expand the world."
Everyone: (laughs).
Hiroi: Kui-san was like , "That's not what you said originally!" (laughs) But both had meaning...
Kui: I was the one saying, "If we expand the world there, the story will never end, right...?"
After drawing it through to the end, I realized that the balance between holding back and expanding didn't work the way I had expected. I think this is one of the reasons why the serialization of "Dungeon Meshi" took so long.
-- But there are a lot of characters in "Dungeon Meshi," and the relationships between them are complicated. I heard that you also created the relationship diagram for "Taikaishu" [※3] ...
Kui: No, I haven't made one [I didn't do that?]!
[Taikaishu is a full-color web comic by Funako Tsukasa that began serialization on a website in 2005 and is still ongoing. Its unique worldview has earned it a loyal fanbase, especially on the Internet.]
-- Eh? Is that not the case?
Kui: To be precise, I just created an account on the fan wiki.
When I started reading "Taikaishu," I struggled with the complex setting and the large number of characters...and I thought "it would be easier to read if there was an explanation or a list of characters."
So I searched for a bulletin board where readers were sharing their thoughts and asked if there was a summary, but they said there wasn't. So I thought, "Maybe if there was a place where someone with more knowledge could summarize it," and I just made a wiki account.
So I didn't actually edit it. It seems like I've been given credit for someone else's work, and I'm sorry about that...
Dungeon Meshi was created from a sense of guilt about food?
-- "Dungeon Meshi" started off with the catchy theme of "cooking monsters," but little by little the darker aspects and deeper world were revealed. Was the structure of "little by little revealing the darker side" something you had in mind from the beginning?
Kui: I thought I needed a theme to serialize it so I thought I'd try "food education." There were a lot of gourmet manga at the time, but I felt like there weren't many that focused on food education.
-- Considering that the theme is "food education," it makes sense that the nutritional value of the dishes in the story is clearly written down.
Kui: With the theme of "food education," I also thought up a rough outline of the story. Rescue the kidnapped princess, defeat the evil wizard, defeat the final boss, and become king... the framework is pretty simple.
But when I actually tried to proceed with the plan, I realized, "No, this story can't be done so lightly..." At first, I thought I could draw it in a more light-hearted manner.
Hiroi: At first, you were trying to finish the fight against the Red Dragon in one episode, right? I was like, "is that possible?" (laughs).
Everyone: (laughs).
Kui: When I tried to actually tell it in one episode, it ended up feeling like a very brief summary... In order to tell the story I wanted to tell, I had to tell it more thoroughly than I originally thought.
-- Did you have any special thoughts about the theme of "food"?
Kui: No... well... if I had to choose, I'd say I have a strong grudge against food.
Since I was a child, I was a very picky eater, and mealtimes were a pain for me. I hated eating in front of other people, and there was a time when I hated seeing other people eating, so I would look for toilets that were rarely used and eat my meals in the toilet.
When I was doing it, the word "toilet meal" didn't exist, so when the term actually appeared in society I was so happy, thinking "everyone was doing it!"
[Toilet Meals are a social phenomenon in Japan.]
Everyone: (laughs).
Kui: I was thinking, "This is so terrible, right...?" but it was a relief to realize that other people were doing the same thing.
--So what made you choose the theme of "food education"?
Kui: My parents, who were struggling with my picky eating, taught me many things, including the "triple eating" method, but it was no use and I continued to be a picky eater into adulthood. My parents had instilled knowledge about food education in me, but I was not able to put it into practice.
[Kui might be talking about Triangular Eating but I'm not sure.]
So the only thing that remains is that I feel an enormous amount of guilt when it comes to food and eating...
Hiroi: If you think about it objectively, the series starts off on a very negative note.
Kui: But now I've gotten over the habit of eating with other people... or rather, I've come to like it. My editor takes me to lots of delicious places.
--When I was a student, I was trying to leave my udon bowl at school, but my teacher found out and made me eat the packet of udon by myself. There was no soup, and it was really hard to eat the udon by itself.
Kui: It must be tough. I tried to hide it, but my teacher found out and I got really angry.
Hiroi: I've tried to hide it in a drawer before. Then, something dried up came out of the drawer... (laughs bitterly).
How can I draw things I hate?
-- Or rather, is it the fact that you're not good at it that gives you a higher level of insight into the food?
Kui: I think it's because you're interested in it that you either like it or dislike it. Inevitably, you spend a lot of time thinking about it.
Since "Dungeon Meshi" depicts a lot of food, one might think "Do I like eating?", but in fact there are many times when I draw it because I dislike something .
--Aside from food, do you also draw things that you dislike?
Kui: Maybe. For example, human relationships, modern times, fashion...?
-- Perhaps the relationships between the characters in "Dungeon Food" are portrayed so delicately because the author is not good at dealing with human relationships?
Kui: I've always been very curious about things like, "(This person is usually so cold, but has such a charming smile in front of other people)" ...
I feel the same way, but I think people are different in the way they show their true colors. I think it's strange that it stands out to me...
-- I have a simple question. When you draw something you hate, how do you feel? No matter how much you hate something, do you find it fun to draw it?
Kui: The events in the manga don't directly involve me, so I don't dislike the things I'm drawing as much. Also, when I draw while looking for the good parts, it can lead to new discoveries.
Also, I think it's scary to draw only what I like.
In my work, the important thing is "what to capture with the camera," and there's no need to go out of your way to capture filthy things, but at the same time, I think the world will look bigger if you keep in mind that "there are a lot of inconvenient, dirty, and unpleasant things outside the camera." That's the feeling I have when I paint/create manga.
When playing a game, if I have to choose between a game where I only feel like I'm in the world inside the game screen, and a game where I feel like there are lots of people living on the other side of the screen, and that the people in that world could travel anywhere they wanted, I think the latter is more fun to play.
I'm always thinking about how to express that "sense of the vastness of the world" ...and I personally like games that have "a world" to them.
-- Do you ever incorporate elements from the game into your manga?
Kui: On the contrary, I think that is a part that cannot be adopted .
The best thing about games is that each person has a different experience. Games that have lots of endings are also a result screen for what you've done up until that point. When I see something like that, I think, "That's so cool."
Personally, I think that's the game's greatest appeal, and something that could never be replicated in a manga that doesn't have players.
If you're so busy, when do you play games?
-- I'm personally curious, how do you find the time to play games? Even though you're busy with your work as a manga artist, you play quite a lot of games.
Kui: I often use the Steam Deck before going to bed or during breaks between writing manuscripts. In fact, I almost only use the Steam Deck now. I keep it by my pillow, so I can take it and play before going to sleep, or during breaks...
--Is Steam Deck really that convenient?
Kui: I recommend it. The screen is small, but it can run Cyberpunk 2077 .
Also, personally, I've gotten tired of having to turn on my PC to start up a game...with Steam Deck, I can just turn it on and it starts up instantly, even when I'm lying down. How do you writers usually play games? There are times when you have to play games for work, aren't there?
--When it comes to work, I calculate backwards how long I'll be playing before I start playing...If it's a game that can be completed in about 60 hours, I usually estimate that I'll play for 3 hours a day and complete it for 20 days in a row.
Hiroi: It's a lot of work!
Kui: That's amazing... You really are a gamer.
I've always thought that I have a talent for playing games ... but I'm not really good at that. If I'm given a game that's a little difficult, I get tired of it right away, and I'm not very good at trial and error. The range of things I can enjoy is very narrow.
I wonder if game developers around the world are also struggling with the question of "Should I make my games accessible to a wide range of people, even those who aren't particularly gamers?" or "Should I make games that are challenging and can be played deeply?" The same problem exists with manga, too.
When there's a game that I can't play well, I feel happy because it means the creator decided that there's no need to pander to people who can't keep up.
-- By the way, when you play games, do you do it as a normal "hobby"? Or do you play more often to find material for your manga?
Kui: Of course, a big part of it is that I play games as a hobby, but it is alleviated by the fact that playing games might be useful for my work (laughs).
Even if I'm not that interested in a game, if I think "it might be useful for work," I'll find the courage to buy it, and no matter how expensive a gaming PC is, I can still buy it if I think of it as a work tool. So the hurdles for many things related to games are lowered for the reason that it's "for work."
--So, when you read manga, do you feel like you're reading it for work?
Kui: In my case, manga has become my job, so when I read it I can't help but think of work.
However, I still enjoy gaming as a hobby . That's why I don't want to lose this hobby... and I don't think I'll be able to enjoy it as much if I get involved in games as a job, so I don't take on any games-related jobs.
Does the depth of the world come from the fact that it is "not decided"?
-- I heard in advance that "Dungeon Meshi" was written with a clear awareness of "what should be explained" and "what shouldn't be explained," so could you tell me more about that?
Kui: Having read a variety of fantasy novels and games, I thought that the "moment of discouragement" was the "repeated use of foreign words." When you write something like "XX of XX of XX," if there are three or more katakana characters, there is a high chance that it will be skipped over by Japanese readers.
That's why I try to refer to town names as "the neighboring town" whenever possible, and refer to characters who appear in flashbacks as "uncle" rather than by their full names, so that readers can understand without having needing exposition.
The magic used during battles in "Dungeon Meshi" is depicted in such a way that you can "understand what kind of magic it is just by looking at the picture."
-- What other aspects of Dungeon Meshi are there that you deliberately left out of its concrete settings?
Kui: Numbers and language are the settings I avoided touching. For example, just by deciding the month of birth, it is first determined that there is a moon in this world. From there, it is also determined that there is gravity.
What's more, just the concept of a "birthday" means that there is a division into a "year" and that the world is determined to have a 365-day cycle. It quickly becomes complicated.
But on the other hand, if I were to set the details and make it something like "This country's currency is 1 gold, which is worth 5 yen," it would be a burden on the reader. When reading the work, the reader would be forced to convert it into "1 gold = 5 yen" in their minds every time. That's why I try to write it with "readability as a priority" as much as possible.
However, if you're creating a "fantasy" in the truest sense of the word, it would be better to create something that corresponds to that world's calendar or metric system in order to really immerse yourself in that world, so it's difficult to get the balance right...
-- I think that style of "deliberately not giving explanations" is quite amazing.
Hiroi: I think that 's definitely partly because "Dungeon Meshi" is a silly title.
The "mindset" of the reader is a little different...I think that from the very beginning, the reader is made to recognize that "this work isn't going to say anything too difficult."
Kui: Also, we had to give a bit of thought to coming up with the character names.
For example, the main characters in Wizardry are given names that correspond to their professions, such as "Warrior" or "Wizard." The "Senshi" in Dungeon Meshi was taken from that ... I named him after thinking, "I want that person to play an active role."
That's why I wanted the overseas version of Senshi's name to be "Fighter", but I was worried that overseas readers would be like, "What does that mean...!?" so I kept it in my head.
--The character names in "Dungeon Meshi" tend to be around 3 or 4 letters long and fit nicely.
Kui: If the name gets too long, it won't fit in the speech bubble...It's generally said that a line in a speech bubble should be about 7 to 8 characters long to be easy to read.
So "Chillchuck" is really long... I actually thought that the abbreviation "Chill" could be used more, so I named it that way, but it didn't work out so well, so in the end I just kept calling it "Chillchuck". Even I was thinking "that's long" while drawing it (laughs).
Everyone: (laughs).
Kui: Anyway, there are quite a few manga-like circumstances where "maybe four characters would be enough."
--By the way, are there any rules for naming the characters in "Dungeon Meshi"?
Kui: It's not detailed, but there are "settings within the story" and "meta-settings that are just for my own enjoyment."
For example, [if Dungeon Meshi was a game] the Shuro party has names that would be given by a certain type of player. When playing a games, some people give their characters themed names that follow self-imposed rules. In that sense, meta-wise, the Shuro party is played by a player who names their characters with a plant-based restriction.
Also, since the player likes girls, the party members are all girls, and so on... (laughs).
Hiroi: Oh, I didn't know that!
Kuon: ...While it's fun for myself, I also create characters by asking questions like, "Why is the party mainly made up of women?" or "Why do they all have similar names?"
However, even if I revealed these settings in the story, it wouldn't have made the story any more interesting, so they are merely "settings that only exist in my own mind."
-- What are some specific examples of "settings that you deliberately didn't reveal"?
Hiroi: I still remember when I said, "I want you to depict the elven kingdom in more detail," Kui replied, "That's going too far."
The dwarven country was depicted quite a bit, so I personally thought it could have been shown a little more...
Kui: I felt that if I depicted that, it would limit the reader's imagination.
There are definitely "lines that suggest something might happen," and when it comes to parts that are better left to the reader's imagination, I often choose not to draw them.
Also, even when we present settings that readers think they can just skim through, they often try hard to remember them...
It all started with the manga "Eating soba through your nose."
--Let's go back to the topic a little. How did Ms. Kui and Mr. Hiroi meet?
Hiroi: I think we scouted her.
I saw a short story that Kui had posted on Pixiv and sent him an email asking if I would like to draw a manga. I remember that he had a really funny four-frame manga called "Eating soba noodles through your nose ." It was about a character eating soba noodles through his nose and crying out in pain... I think I was drawn to his drawing ability, which made me feel like "Wow, that looks painful" when I saw it (laughs).
And from that point on, we have come to this point.
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[This may not be the exact comic that Hiroi is talking about, but it's a comic Kui posted on her blog about someone eating soba through their nose.]
Kui: Oh, is that so? Isn't it something like "Shugaku Tenshi" [※4] ?
Hiroi: No, that's not true! The manga about eating soba noodles through the nose was made before "Shingaku Tenshi". By the way, that manga was planned to be published in "Rakugakihon" , but when I asked Kui-san "Can I publish this?", she was very against it...
Kui: No, that's fine, but... I didn't think other people would find it that interesting.
Everyone: (laughs).
Hiroi: But that was more than 10 years ago...
--By the way, was Mr. Hiroi the first publisher to contact you?
Kui: Before that, an editor at East Press had contacted me. I was originally publishing fantasy manga that I had drawn as a hobby on my personal website. I compiled them into a self-published original comic and exhibited it at Comitia, and they asked me, "Would you like to publish this long manga as a book?"
However, after the editor asked around to various people, it seems he was told that "this will be hard to sell"... so the plan was dropped. Instead, it was decided to release a "short story collection" of short manga that had been published at the same time . This is "The Dragon's School is on the Mountain: A Collection of Works by Ryoko Kui" published by East Press.
I was contacted by a few other people as well, but the two people I still keep in contact with are Mr. Hiroi and the editor at East Press.
-- When you went from drawing short stories and web comics to starting a commercial serialization, did you study anything like "how to draw a serialized work"?
Kui: I learned almost everything about how to draw manga from Mr. Hiroi and the editors and writers at Harta .
I had absolutely no understanding of whether panel layout was good or bad, so up until the middle of the serialization, I would rearrange the storyboards one panel at a time, and I would get lectured like "Don't put a panel like this here."
I was also impressed when I was shown original manuscripts by other artists. They look beautiful in print, but the real thing is even more impressive. This is what it means to be good at drawing manga.
It didn't finish as I expected
-- Speaking of "serialization," you mentioned earlier that you initially intended to end it at about volume 5. Did "Dungeon Meshi" continue longer than you had anticipated, Ms. Kui?
Kui: First of all, I didn't really understand what a "serialized" comic meant, so I didn't even know how much of a story I could get done in how many pages. So, I thought I could wrap up the story nicely in about five years, in five volumes.
But I never quite got around to finishing it. It was so hard... (laughs).
Hiroi: To be honest, when I first heard "Volume 5,"I thought to myself, "(Are you kidding me...?)" I didn't say it out loud though (laughs).
--Honestly, even as a reader, around the time of the fight with the Red Dragon in volumes 4 and 5 I was starting to feel like, "Huh? It seems like it's coming to an end soon..."
Kui: From the beginning, my goal was to "defeat the Red Dragon at the halfway point." However, I was supposed to fight the Red Dragon in Volume 4, even though it was supposed to be 5 volumes. So I thought, "Huh? It's not over yet," and I gradually lost interest.
By the time I got to around volume 10, I felt like no matter how much I drew, it would never end. I didn't want to drag it out, but no matter how much I drew, it just never seemed to finish.
Hiroi: Even from an editor's perspective, it seemed like Kui was getting very anxious from around volume 10 onwards.
-- Having finished the long-running serialization of "Dungeon Meshi," did you experience any changes in your mindset?
Kui: I think it was great to have the experience of learning that it would take 10 years to draw a story of this scale. And when I think about my lifespan and how many more works I can draw... it makes me dizzy.
Hiroi: I feel like I'm constantly fainting...
-- Ms. Kui, are there still any works you want to draw in your mind?
Kui: Not that much. But I love drawing manga, so I want to draw a lot. I don't know if I'll have the stamina to continue for another 10 volumes, but I want to continue working as a manga artist somehow.
But maybe... I don't think it will sell that well next time...
Hiroi: Stop! Don't say that!
Everyone: (laughs).
Kui: In that respect, "Dungeon Meshi" sold well, so I was able to draw what I had imagined to the end. Next time, I think it would be better to consider the opposite scenario of "if it doesn't sell" and make it shorter.
That's the next new challenge.
-- In addition to the expectations for your next work, do you feel any pressure?
Kui: In my case, the first collection of short stories I published was fairly well received. For a manga I drew for the first time, that's about it.
That was a relief, but at the same time, I felt that "Ideally, the reputation of my next work will also steadily increase, but there will definitely be ups and downs." If the reputation of the next work is bad, will I be able to continue drawing without getting discouraged? I realized that the "battle with myself" had just begun , and I was terrified when I read the first volume.
What game has cute illustrations, in your opinion?
Kui: This is a completely different topic, but you 've played SaGa Frontier 2 , haven't you? Aren't the pixel art in SaGa Frontier 2 really cute?
--The pixel art in SaGa Frontier 2 is...the best!
Kui: The illustrations in "SaGa Frontier 2" have such exquisite balance... if you try to express that in a picture, you can't reproduce that cuteness. It's like "exquisite head-to-body ratio."
-- In your opinion, Ms. Kui, are there any games that have cute illustrations?
Kui: The first one that comes to mind is definitely SaGa Frontier 2. Also, I still remember how cute the character designs were in Final Fantasy Tactics.
But back in the day, I used to trace characters from FF7 . I thought, "There are so many cool designs in the world..." (laughs).
Hiroi: Nomura (Tetsuya)'s drawings are amazing, aren't they?
Kui: I traced Cloud and Aerith on tracing paper and quietly said to myself, "So cool..." and got really excited. I noticed something while I was working on the "Dungeon Meshi" anime...basically, games and anime are made by many people, aren't they? So I always thought, "Many people must be giving various opinions to make them."
But when I got involved, I realized that one person's power is quite large. This was quite surprising. I thought that there were multiple people who wrote the script and storyboards, and that each person had their own responsibility, but... the power of one person is quite large.
──No matter how much the work is divided up, it's important to have a director or supervisor who brings it all together.
Kui: Yes, in the end, it depends on the power of the person who takes the lead ...
However, at the same time, I think that the division of labor between scriptwriting and storyboarding is something that would never be possible with manga. In the end, you have to create everything in one person's mind, so "bias" inevitably arises. So personally, I don't like the idea of ​​it becoming a "world created in one person's mind."
Hiroi: However, not only in manga but also in novels, the individual author's personality is strongly expressed. I wouldn't go so far as to say "ideology"... but the person's way of thinking is strongly expressed.
Kui: Speaking of which, people who create games alone, such as indie games, are amazing.
It's often said that manga artists "come up with everything, from the art to the story, all by themselves," but I don't think they can compete with independent game creators who create the music, programming, and art all by themselves.
Moreover, even more than manga, no one can give their opinion until the game is completed. If you think about it that way, making a game by yourself is really a "one-man battle." At the same time, what I like about games is that there are quite a few "works that are not made with much consideration for cost" ... I enjoy it a little bit.
-- Do you ever think, "I want to make a game?"
Kui: I once bought RPG Maker , but it ended up being a complete failure... (laughs).
Everyone: (laughs).
Love for "classic RPGs" was a major influence on "Dungeon Meshi"
-- I'd like to ask you, Ms. Kui, since you play a lot of titles on Steam and other platforms, have you ever had any problems playing a game?
Kui: Simply put, a "game that doesn't work" is a problem (laughs).
This sometimes happens with games made by individuals on Steam... they don't have any reviews, so there's no way to deal with it other than contacting them directly. There have been a few times when I've been stuck and wondered, "What should I do?"
Other times, I'll buy a title that just happens to pop up at the top of Steam's rankings. Sometimes I'll play it thinking, "The graphics are kind of cute, so I'll give it a try," only to find that it's incomplete beyond the framework.
--So now people are playing titles that aren't that major.
Kui: Also, when I played Planescape: Torment, which is said to have influenced Disco Elysium.
While playing, I came across a character who was suffering from a terrible curse that made his whole body smell and become sticky. A quest was triggered to ask the NPC who had cast the curse to lift it, but when I asked them to lift the curse, I ended up being cursed with a curse that made me have constant hiccups ...
So when I was walking around the town, the "hiccup" dialogue started popping up all the time. What's more, every time it happened, I would freeze up for about 0.1 seconds. All the dialogue was filled with "hiccups." Anyway, it was a troubling curse.
I had no idea how to deal with this either, so I decided to just kill the NPC who had put the curse on me. The NPC also challenged me by saying, "Maybe if you kill me, the curse will be lifted?", so I tried killing him, but... it didn't lift the curse at all (laughs).
Everyone: (laughs).
Kui: I thought maybe the quest would progress in other places, so I walked around here and there, but the curse was not lifted after all. I was really curious, so I looked back at overseas information exchange thread online, and I found someone had written a lecture that said "You know what happens if you kill an important NPC without thinking about it, right?"
So I realized that this curse can never be lifted again. Even if I wanted to rewind, it was an auto-save, so I had to go back almost to the beginning... I was really... in trouble!
-- But "Planescape: Torment" hits a pretty impressive spot. Was it something that just happened to catch your eye while you were browsing Steam?
Kui: I originally liked games in the same genre as Baldur's Gate, so I think that's how I got into Planescape.
Also, I saw information that a huge amount of text in Planescape was translated by one person... I'm not very good at English, and games like Planescape have a lot of text to begin with, so I'm at a loss if it's not translated into Japanese .
However, when extraordinary people like those who make Planescape use their precious time from their lives to accomplish great things, I feel very grateful.
-- So, Ms. Kui, do you prefer games that are closer to the classics?
Kui: That's right. The first game I played was The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and it was so much fun that I searched for "games similar to Skyrim" and played a lot of the games that came up.
All of them were completely different games from Skyrim, but they were fun. However, I don't like "old games". I think that newer games are generally more polished and well-made.
-- Wizardry, which influenced Dungeon Meshi, is also a classic work.
Kui: When I was a child, I saw my father playing Wizardry V : The Heart of the Maelstrom. As time passed, I remembered that there was a game called Wizardry. The game I played at that time was Wizardry VI: Forbidden Pencil.
I also played Wizardry V , but it was hard to see the map unless I chanted a spell. I was directionally challenged, so even though I had a guidebook at hand, I couldn't progress.
--By the way, were you more interested in making a manga out of "Wizardry" than the tabletop RPG "D&D" ?
Kui: When I was researching fantasy, "D&D" was often mentioned... but I had never even heard of "TRPG" before. First of all, you can't play it without friends, and I was shocked to find out that lots of people have friends they can play with like this...!?
Everyone: (laughs).
Kui: So when I looked up TRPGs on Wikipedia, I couldn't imagine that people actually played this kind of game. I was more confused and thought, "How can people really role-play in front of other people?"
After that, I watched replay videos on YouTube and it was only then that I understood how games like D&D worked.
Games, manga, novels. What is the purpose of all creative works?
-- What was the last game you played?
Kui: Recently I played a school management game called "Let's School." It's made by a Chinese company that also made "My Time at Sandrock."
Hiroi: You really like that kind of game, don't you? (laughs) Oh? Haven't you played "FF7 Rebirth" ?
Kui: I'm thinking about playing the remake of FF7 once it's completed.
Hiroi: No, no, if we don't do it now, we'll never finish it! It'll be a long time before we do it!
--Honestly, I also thought it would take about 10 years for FF7 Rebirth to be released.
Hiroi: I thought it would take about that long too... I really wanted it to be completed while I could still see. So, please do it!
Kui: Once it's finished...I want to play it all at once (laughs).
--Do you and Ms. Kui often talk about games?
Hiroi: Ms. Kui sometimes says, "I want to talk about this game, so I want you to play it." I played "Red Dead Redemption" because of that. Also, a long time ago, Ms. Kui recommended "13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim."
Kui: Whenever there's a game I want to discuss with someone, I always recommend it to Hiroi.
But maybe I haven't been playing games as much lately. Until now, I've been playing games because I thought of it as "for work," but now that the serialization of Dungeon Meshi has ended, I've been playing less games.
Moreover, I'm not the type of person who gets that into one game...I don't generally play through a game in repeated playthroughs, and I'm usually satisfied once I've finished the story.
Hiroi: Then we have to start [a new ] serialization soon.
Everyone: (laughs).
-- I'd like to ask you personally, do you have any "recommended indie games"?
Kui: I highly recommend "Papers, Please" and "Return of the Obra Dinn."
First of all, "Papers, Please" is a simple "spot the difference" game, so I didn't have high expectations at first. But when I played it, I felt like there was a proper "world" to it . Also, I was curious to see how the story continued.
And "Return of the Obra Dinn" had a great atmosphere. There were hints to solving the puzzles if you looked closely, but there was also a good balance of being able to force your way through, and the music and production were cool.
Hiroi: Come to think of it, you read quite a bit of the novel after the serialization ended, didn't you?
Kui: Ah, you mean "1984" by George Orwell? That was good...
I've always thought that creativity isn't necessary for life... It's entertainment, so it's not essential to life. But after reading "1984," I thought, "I guess creativity is necessary after all."
Humans need stories to experience things that should never come true, to prepare for bad things, and to prepare for understanding other people... You might think, "You should have already learned that when you were younger," but I was deeply moved by this realization.
Anyway, I feel that it would be great if people could learn things they didn't know before through this work.
Hiroi: ...Overall, it just felt like we had a fun time talking about games (laughs).
Kui: We just used the interview as an excuse to talk about the game (laughs).
-- No no, thank you very much for sharing your valuable story! (End)
I think I can understand a little bit about being interested in things you hate.
It's easy to analyze "why do you like something?" when you like it, but it's surprisingly difficult to analyze "why do you dislike something?" When you understand the reason, it seems that "why do you dislike it" is often more meaningful.
Perhaps creative works exist in part to help us understand the things we dislike.
I was able to hear a lot of deep "creation stories" that made me think about such things. Also, Ms. Kui is a huge gamer. Mr. Hiroi also likes games quite a bit. Since serious talk and game discussions alternated, the content may have been emotionally confusing. But I feel like "Dungeon Meshi" has a similar atmosphere.
If you haven't read "Dungeon Meshi," please take this opportunity to read it. It depicts a fun adventure. On top of that, it may help you prepare for difficult things that might happen in your life someday. Of course, it's also extremely interesting as a manga. I think it's definitely one of the best "entertainment" of our time.
Why does the body want to live? What does the mind want?
This is because we have a "desire" to pursue what we like and dislike. In fact, "things we dislike" are just as important as "things we like." By understanding our own "likes and dislikes" through creative works and entertainment, humans can prepare for things that happen in their future lives. Food and creative works are equally important for human growth.
...That said, I'm not sure if it has a nice punchline, or maybe not.
To eat. To experience creative works. These are truly the privileges of life. In order to live, we must continue to eat.
Now it's time to eat. What shall we eat today?
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chippuyon · 5 months ago
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a gentleman and his lady 💗
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sylvrndoodles · 5 months ago
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spacecardiver · 8 months ago
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Chilchuck looks like he didn’t even realize he was just worried about them.
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greseadraws · 7 months ago
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dungeon meshi meets fear and hunger!
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whilomm · 6 months ago
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i like to think that the tentacles in dungeon meshi are kinda like mushrooms or perhaps even lichens in that they are very confusing to identifty and have 200 completely different species that look very similar ("delicious brown tentacle vs BROWN DEATH TENDRIL") and you need to be an Expert to determine the difference between some of the more confusing species and some of them have like 300 different sexes and some of them are actually composite creatures composed of several different species and somehow yeast is involved and also no one really knows half of whats going on with them and in like 50 years someones gonna figure out that uhm actually these are two completely different types of tentacle creatures that arent related like at All they jusf happen to look similar and oh btw that one common house mold is actually a tentacle
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lucky-fy · 7 months ago
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For the Laicion nation (aka, me and three other people)
I had this illustration commissioned (a big thank you to @lunehowls) for my werewolf AU Laicion fic (still a WIP).
The general pitch is as follows :
AU in which Laios never got to meet his sister again, putting his life on a whole other path, a more desperate one. A military deserter with barely a coin to his name, Laios hitches a ride on a boat to one of the elven continents, where he learns about magical tattoos that binds one’s soul to a wolf’s, effectively making them artificial werewolves. Illegal magic be damned, this feels like the answer to… everything.
In the process, he learns about the existence of an illegal fighting ring in one of the elven cities, where beastmen gladiators gather. Freshly tattooed and without anywhere else to go to, Laios decides to head there, where he meets Lycion, an elf and artificial werewolf gladiator. If they first bond over a simple shared meal, by spending time together (sharing the same room in the barracks, maybe the same bed? gasp) they find that they have a lot in common, notably a shared distaste for the body they were born in, a dysphoria partially remedied by becoming a werewolf.
They bond :)
NB: I commissioned another piece, go take a look :D
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ciderjacks · 2 months ago
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learning that getting to the red dragon only took the party 8 days has made me completely reconsider how long regular dungeon jobs would take. And also made me realize that all in all since they were down there for several months(?) (and dungeon jobs apparently actually don’t generally take more than a week or so) means that Chilchucks family 100% thinks his ass died
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leahaart · 7 months ago
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updatingranboo · 4 months ago
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from ranboo :D
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oldmama · 6 months ago
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Just wanted to post this here because… you know… we are all studying anatomy it seems 👩🏻‍💻
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room-surprise · 9 months ago
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Evidence that Kabru from Delicious in Dungeon is Indian, a Masterpost
(EDIT: This post is an excerpt/remix of Kabru's section of my larger essay about the real world linguistic and cultural references Dungeon Meshi. You can read the essay on AO3 here. I also have another post about what part of South Asia I think Utaya is based on here.)
Since Kabru’s first appearance in the anime is upon us, I wanted to write something that compiles all the evidence we have that Kabru is meant to be a person of South or Central Asian ethnicity, or at least whatever the equivalent to that is in the Dungeon Meshi world. 
Ryoko Kui can and does draw people of many different ethnicities, and the way she draws Kabru matches the way she draws other Asian characters in Dungeon Meshi. He doesn’t look Black, or Hispanic, or any other ethnicity because he isn’t supposed to. He looks like a dark-skinned South or Central Asian person, because that’s what Ryoko Kui probably intends him to be.
So let’s go through the evidence! (There are no spoilers for the plot of Dungeon Meshi below, but there ARE spoilers for Kabru's backstory as explained in the manga, and in extra materials like the Daydream Hour and Adventurer's Guide book.)
KABRU’S NAME
The Dungeon Meshi Adventurer's Bible tells us Kabru’s real name is unknown. There are other characters whose real names are only told to us in the Adventurer's Bible and were never revealed in the manga, but then Kabru, Thistle and Izutsumi’s entries simply say their real names are unknown, and though Kui could tell us their true names, she doesn’t. I assume this means that the characters themselves don’t know what their real names are, and that the names they go by are not their birth names, but this is only a supposition on my part.
KABRU THE MOUNTAIN
Kabru (काब्रु) is the name of a mountain on the border of Nepal and India, and part of the Himalayan range. It’s the 65th tallest mountain in the world and it is very snowy and icy, with frequent avalanches. Because of this, even though it’s not the tallest mountain in the world, climbing it is challenging, and is not often attempted. Those few that have managed to climb it consider it a major achievement.
“This prohibitively fearful icefall… had thwarted numerous expeditions, perhaps even the 'thought' of attempting the mountain… Unstable seracs of the icefall, a complex maze of chasms, and delicate snow bridges spanning seemingly never ending, near bottomless crevasses… Each time the members stepped into the icefall, they stood a good chance of never returning.” (Kabru - Mountain of the Gods, Major A. Abbey, Himalayan Journal 52, 1996, editor Harish Kapadia)
WHAT DOES KABRU’S NAME MEAN?
Kabru is a character that is known for being very good at charming people, but who doesn’t express himself honestly, because he’s trying to manipulate the people and situations around him in order to maintain control at all times. I think nobody really knows who Kabru is deep inside, maybe not even Kabru himself, so a remote, hostile, icy mountain that’s hard to climb seems like an extremely appropriate name. 
Some of the oldest English sources I found regarding Kabru suggest that Kabru isn’t the correct local name for the mountain (a common problem in early Himalayan exploration by Europeans) and might just be a descriptor, or that it’s a misspelling. 
This makes the name seem even more appropriate, since Kui’s told us Kabru’s true name is unknown. It’s possible that Kabru was a place-name or a descriptor that Milsiril (Kabru’s elven foster mother) was given when she picked up a traumatized 7 year old Kabru, and she just started using it as his name, and that even he doesn’t remember his real name thanks to his severe trauma.
The fact that people in the real world can’t seem to agree on the mountain Kabru’s name, or what it means, reminds me of the running gag of Laios repeatedly getting Kabru’s name wrong in the manga.
"All the people near the Kabru massif call it 'Kaboor'." (The Alpine Journal, 1921-22 Volume 34, Edited by George Yeld and J. P. Farrar)  “It is also said that the name applies to a peak close to Kinchinjunga on the southeast, and not to the peak known to Europeans as Kabru… [The real name is] Pahung Ri [Pauhunri].” (Appendix I: Place Names in Darjeeling. The appendix says it was “compiled mainly from an article written by Colonel Waddell and published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (Vol. LX, part I, 1891)”) “Kangchen is a Tibetan name… the Sikkhimese use it as the name for the peak called Kabru by Europeans.” (Charles Bell, Dyhrenfurth's Himalaya (Berlin, 1931)) “...Kyabru or the horn of protection. The name is… Kabur… possibly a corruption of Kangbur or the swelling of snow; it might also mean the white swelling (kar-bur).” (Appendix I: Place Names in Darjeeling.)  “Kabru literally means the 'White Avalanche' peak (Ka means 'white' and bru means 'avalanche').” (Kabru - Mountain of the Gods, Major A. Abbey, Himalayan Journal 52, 1996, editor Harish Kapadia)
I’ve seen one other mountaineering article cite the “white avalanche” meaning, and I think it’s plausible since the Appendix says it can mean “white swelling” or “swelling of snow”, which may very well be a literal translation for “white avalanche”. 
WHAT ABOUT UTAYA? IS THAT INDIAN TOO?
Utaya means “raised” or “uplifted” in Hindi, but it’s also a real village and a Japanese boy’s name.
Utaya (ウタヤ) is the name of the village that Kabru was raised in before his mother died and he was adopted by the elf Milsiril. Utaya is located in the southeast of the Western Continent. It’s worth noting that Kabru probably wasn’t born in Utaya, since his mother had to flee from her home to keep Kabru alive, so Utaya may be some distance away from his birth place… Not so far that a woman with a newborn baby couldn’t survive the trip, but far enough that her husband’s family gave up on chasing her. So Kabru was probably born in a close-by area.
In the real world, Utaya (Yakut: Утайа) is in an extremely rural and isolated area with a population of less than a hundred people. It’s located in the Sakha Republic, which is in the Northeastern part of Asia in the Russian Federation. The Yakut/Sakha are a Siberian Turkic people.  
The Turkic peoples are a collection of diverse ethnic groups of West, Central, East, and North Asia as well as parts of Europe, who speak Turkic languages. 
Early and medieval Turkic groups exhibited a wide range of both East Asian and West-Eurasian physical appearances and genetic origins, in part through long-term contact with neighboring peoples such as Iranian, Mongolic, Tocharian, Uralic/Yeniseian peoples, and others. Turkic peoples share, to varying degrees, non-linguistic characteristics like cultural traits, ancestry from a common gene pool, and historical experiences. 
JAPANESE MEANINGS FOR UTAYA
Utaya can be a Japanese boy’s name with several different meanings, depending on which kanji it’s spelled with. In most of the spellings: Poetry, sing a poem, singing, compose poetry
In many of the spellings: The place where the sun shines, it's been a long time, distant, big, to shoot with a bow, to swear, affirmation, question.
The Utaya disaster happened a long time ago.
If Utaya is up in the mountains above the clouds it’s a place where the sun shines brightly.
 Kabru has sworn to himself that he will prevent another Utaya tragedy from happening.
In only a few of the spellings: to mend, feathers, wings, a word for counting birds and rabbits, sort them out, washing with water to separate the good from the bad, roof, house with a roof, a world covered with a big sky, infinite space, song that praises the Buddha, Eight.
Counting birds and rabbits makes me think of divination and also that the people of Utaya were like little birds and rabbits (small prey animals) to the monsters that devoured them.
Separating the good and the bad could hint to the “judgment” of Utaya and the greed of its people that led to their downfall, also sorting through things to separate good and bad is something that’s done with food and other resources.
The Himalayan region is often referred to as the “roof of the world”, with a big open sky above it. 
The infinite could refer to the dimension the demon comes from, or to the sky above the mountains. 
Buddhism is a common religion in the Himalayan region, and eight has auspicious connotations in Buddhism. 
With all that in mind, Utaya as a name for Kabru’s home village is an interesting choice, and adds another layer to his origins, maybe suggesting not just North Indian/Himalayan, but Central or North Asian cultural influence as well. 
It is also possible that the name is just telling us that Utaya is “up” in the mountains, or that it was “uplifted” by the wealth of the dungeon, or even that Kabru was “raised” there… The Japanese name meanings are also extremely fascinating and hint at similar ideas, as well as the tragedy that happened to Utaya.
WHY ELSE DO YOU THINK KABRU AND UTAYA ARE HIMALAYAN?
In the real world, the Himalayan mountain range is an extremely popular tourist destination, and the amount of people who want to visit and attempt to climb the mountains far outpaces the local ability to support it. This makes me think of the dungeon of Utaya and how people overcrowded it in their desire to conquer and exploit it. 
Dungeons as an unsustainable way for locals to make a living that leads to the destruction of their homes when the dungeon inevitably collapses is a major plot point in Dungeon Meshi, so I think the parallel is likely intentional. Characters often talk about someone “conquering” the dungeon, and “conquer” is also the terminology commonly used for climbing a mountain. This terminology obviously has a hostile, imperialist subtext in the real world, since it’s most commonly used by outsiders talking about proving their strength by climbing a mountain.
Also, there are local legends in the areas surrounding Mt. Kabru that there is a valley of immortality hidden on its slopes, which reminds me of the way that the dungeons can grant conditional immortality to the people inside of them.
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This image of Utaya could be showing us a village built on a mountainside. The house shapes seem a bit more Middle Eastern than Nepali/Indian, but it’s not a detailed drawing and the roof styles are a mix of flat and peaked.
CULTURE
In the Daydream Hour sketchbook, Ryoko Kui included a small comic about characters sharing desserts from their home countries. A young Kabru is shown enthusiastically trying to share an unnamed sweet, and he is interrupted by his elven foster mother, who insists he present a type of elven cake instead. We know that Kabru hates this type of cake, and he seems disappointed to have to eat it and talk about it.
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The white balls in Kabru’s dessert are very likely meant to be  an Indian sweet called rasgulla (literally "syrup filled ball"). Rasgulla are a dessert popular in the eastern part of South Asia, made from ball-shaped dumplings of chhena dough, cooked in light sugar syrup. While it is near-universally agreed upon that the dessert originated in the eastern Indian subcontinent, the exact origin is disputed. Rasgulla are as culturally important to the Bengal and Odisha regions of India as Parmesan cheese is to the region of Parma in Italy.  
Rasgulla are also popular in Nepal, where they are called rasbari. 
KABRU’S PHYSICAL APPEARANCE
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Kabru is one of several characters in Dungeon Meshi with clearly non-European features: he has brown skin and thick black/dark brown curly hair. He has almond-shaped eyes with long, dark lashes (fans like to joke that he’s wearing eyeliner). All of these are traits common to people from the Indian subcontinent. His blue eyes are not common for someone with his skin/hair color, but blue or green eyes are not unheard of in that region either. 
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(Indian man with blue eyes)
Blue or light eyes are often a cause for discrimination, like what Kabru experienced as a child. More on this in a moment.
Kabru is 5’7” (170cm) tall, which is short for a Northern European man (180), tall for a Nepali man (162cm), but close to the average height of Indian men (177cm). He has a slender build, which is also common for Asian people in general, and South Asian men in particular.
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Compared to the European-looking tall-men in Dungeon Meshi (such as Laios, Falin, Delgal, Marcille’s father), Kabru’s facial features look more like the other Asian characters, such as Toshiro and his party. 
CAN DARK-SKINNED PEOPLE HAVE BLUE EYES?
Yes. Light-colored eyes are very uncommon in parts of the world where most people have dark eyes, since dark eyes are a dominant trait in real-world human beings. That means that in order for two parents with dark eyes to have a child with light eyes, both parents need to have a recessive light-eyes gene (or for there to be an illness or genetic mutation), and that’s rare in populations that don’t have a lot of light-eyed people to begin with.   
THEN WHY DO SO MANY DARK-SKINNED CHARACTERS HAVE BLUE EYES?
Anime and manga often give characters with dark skin light colored eyes instead of allowing them to have brown or black eyes, which is much more common in real life. It’s a hurtful design trope that makes many readers feel that their natural dark eyes are somehow ugly or inferior to blue eyes.
This trope is used over and over again by authors who want their characters to look “cool” and “exotic”, and for their eyes to be high-contrast to make it easier to show their emotions.
I don’t think this is what Ryoko Kui is doing in Dungeon Meshi. 
UNREALISTIC HAIR AND EYE COLOR COMBOS IN ANIME
In a lot of anime/manga, blue eyes (regardless of skin color) don’t actually mean anything in the narrative, in the same way characters having green or pink hair doesn’t mean anything, the colors are non-diegetic, they don’t actually exist in the world, like the music that plays in the background without an on-screen source. 
It’s an artistic shorthand to make characters visually stand out, instead of giving them all black hair and eyes like most real-life Japanese people… Which is what most anime/manga characters are meant to be: Japanese people. 
Dungeon Meshi has a large cast of characters that are explicitly meant to be non-Japanese. We know this because there’s a group of characters that are Japanese, and they’re drawn differently from everyone else, they wear ethnically Japanese clothing, and have ethnically Japanese names. 
Unlike other series, where eye and hair color don’t mean anything, Dungeon Meshi has no unrealistic skin, hair, or eye color combinations. 
(Except for the elves, who seem to have different genetics than real world-humans. I’ll get into that another time.)
Ryoko Kui must be aware of the dark skin, blue-eyes design trope, because if she gave Kabru blue eyes just because she thought it looked good, surely she would have made some of the other Asian or dark-skinned characters have light eyes. Out of 9 Asian or dark-skinned tall-man characters, Kabru is the only one with blue eyes.
Kabru having light-colored eyes is central to his story, and Kui talks about it.
KABRU’S STORY AND WHY HIS BLUE EYES MATTER
Kabru’s father and his family tried to kill Kabru when he was born because he had blue eyes. Kabru’s mother ran away, and ended up raising Kabru by herself in Utaya. She didn’t try to return home to her own birth family, but instead struggled to raise a child completely on her own with no money or support, which implies she had no other options, due to the fear people of their region have for people with blue eyes.
This is a real thing that used to happen frequently in areas where most of the population has dark eyes, and it still happens to this day.
In a realistic story, this is logically what would happen to a character with dark skin born with blue eyes in a place like the Utaya region. It’s rare for manga or anime to show dark-skinned blue-eyed characters facing this. 
WHAT IS THE “EVIL EYE”?
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The “evil eye” is a supernatural belief in a curse brought about by a person looking at you. The belief in the evil eye has existed since prehistory, as long as 5,000 years ago. It is estimated that around 40% of the modern world's population believes in the evil eye. This concept is most common across the Mediterranean, the Balkans, the Middle East, and Central and South Asia, areas where light-colored eyes are uncommon. 
In areas where light-colored eyes are rare, people with green eyes, and especially blue eyes, are thought to bestow the curse, intentionally or unintentionally. Just one look from a blue-eyed person is often considered enough to inflict a curse.
One of the most famous and widespread talismans against the evil eye is the nazar, a glass amulet featuring concentric circles in dark blue, white, light blue and black. It’s supposed to “bounce” the curse away from the wearer. 
HOW DOES THIS APPLY TO KABRU?
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Imagine Kabru growing up in a village surrounded by people wearing and hanging talismans that look like his eyes, because the people around him think blue eyes are evil. They call his mother a witch for birthing him, and a whore because she doesn’t have a husband. Imagine parents forbidding their children from playing with or even talking to Kabru. People crossing the street to get away from him, or chasing him away by throwing rocks.
I think the reason young Kabru was able to learn how to speak some kobold is likely because he was so heavily ostracized by the other tall-men around him, the only children he could occasionally interact with in Utaya were kobolds, who might not share the same cultural superstitions that the tall-man do. 
This childhood trauma, combined with Kabru’s experience of the dungeon collapse in Utaya, and being raised by an elf that treated him more like a pet than a human being, set Kabru up as a character who has never had a home where he belongs. He has been an outsider from the instant he was born, and every place he has lived treats him as an “other.”
To his father’s family, he was a curse. To his mother, although she loved him, he was a burden. To the people of Utaya, he was a monster. To the elves, he’s a tall-man baby (no matter how old he gets) with funny looking eyes, to the people on Merini Island, he’s a foreigner from the West with elven ways and education. 
CONCLUSION
I wanted to write this because I know some people will see Kabru in the anime for the first time today and think "Oh, another dark skinned blue eyed character! This is a bad character design that is evidence that the author is racist at worst or ignorant at best.” And I don’t think that’s a fair assessment of Ryoko Kui’s work in Dungeon Meshi.
This isn’t to say that Ryoko Kui has never done anything wrong, or that her work couldn’t be more inclusive, or that there’s no way in which she could improve. 
But there are pages and pages of artwork she’s done that shows she cares about these issues, and I think it’s worth celebrating when someone makes that kind of effort with their artwork.
ANYWAY…
If you’ve read this far, you’re very strong hahaha. I hope you enjoyed this essay. I’ll be publishing more soon when I finish my Dungeon Meshi research on the names and cultures of all the characters. Wish me luck!
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possamble · 5 months ago
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Like take for example how she treats healing Laios leg!! We *never* see someone who was healed have lasting symptoms from a heal. It *itches* terribly — Laios looks like he will scratch it raw. The itching implies an incomplete heal — you only itch that bad when something is being regrown or scabbing like when you get tattoos. There’s something that needs to finish healing. This scene always stood out to me— because Falin notices and *heals* it. And that brought up a ton of questions for me (We see her cast magic, was it to soothe the itching? A phantom pain? Why was it itching in the first place? Didn’t Marcille finish the job? Why was he having after effects we never see someone have any before?) and i’m breaking my brain over it because is this an sign of Marcille’s engagement with healing in general? Perfunctory—a means to an end? Morals? I feel like there is something there for us because that scene wasn’t necessary to the plot so why did Ryoko Kui add this interaction? I think how Marcille engages with healing was telling us a lot more than I previously realized because she was in a medical researcher position before coming into the dungeon however when we see how this was practically applied by her was really interesting!! She’s so divorced from feeling empathy for the pain of healing and i think that’s some sort of self-preservation instinct. Idk i just feel like her engagement with healing is so fucking fascinating when juxtaposed with her beliefs on death pls share thots if any
I think what gets hidden in the details about Marcille’s healing is that no, she’s not a talented cleric and healer in the way that Falin is. But Fantasy settings tend to relegate healing towards “holy” and “good” magic that never causes harm—
and Marcille is what you’d get if you put a doctor and a surgeon with a modern, more realistic approach towards medicine in a genre that doesn’t usually allow for that. 
Like, you’ll see surgeons or doctors secretly being incredibly efficient serial killers in TV thrillers everywhere—but a fantasy series with a cleric or healer that’s secretly great at killing is a bit more rare to find(though not nonexistent, admittedly). Healing magic tends to be painted as either a religious discipline that’s not accessible to those who don’t have a tie to a deity or some ineffable force in the universe, or a matter of accessing some natural “life force” that exists in all living beings. 
Dungeon Meshi, of course, loves bending fantasy conventions in the most incredible ways, so that’s not how it works here. The series allows itself to contend with the fact that healing a human body requires extensive and painstakingly detailed knowledge of that body.
The reason that Falin might appear to be a much more talented healer than Marcille is because Kui dresses her up in all the archetypal traits of a Caring Cleric, and that immediately clicks with readers expecting fantasy conventions in ways that Marcille's expertise doesn't.
This isn’t to discredit Falin, obviously. She is a talented healer, as attested to by Marcille herself:
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But the interesting thing is that she does it all on instinct, so it’s not an exact knowledge. Furthermore, she uses the gnomish system of healing, which is implied to rely more on the judgment and knowledge of natural spirits (and therefore takes less mana). So it’s not hard to imagine that she would have less exact knowledge of how the human body operates than Marcille does as a medical researcher. 
And that in and of itself raises questions: In a world where magic can immediately re-attach a limb, why would medical research be necessary? But Dungeon Meshi makes it clear that healing magic isn’t perfect, nor “holy” magic—it’s simply magic, like any other, carefully tailored to operate within the confines of what a human body needs in order to keep living. It’s not able to cure everything, and it especially seems to have gaps in terms of being able to treat illnesses that aren’t immediately solvable injuries.
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And that all ties into Marcille's attitude towards it: It's a scientific and magical discipline like any other that requires careful study. There's nothing inherently good or bad about it—it was made by people, for people, and what matters is how you use it.
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So, Marcille was at the academy, studying the ways that illness happens in a body, and carefully writing new magic to counteract or at least mitigate it.
(How I interpreted this was that she was likely part of research teams dealing with complicated things like autoimmune diseases, cancer, and other things where the body isn’t technically injured by a foreign element, but erroneously harming itself due to internal reasons.)
For me, this kind of explains her approach to pain in healing:
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Honestly, what this immediately reminded me of was that a friend of mine had to have surgery on their throat when they were younger, and part of the procedure was waking them up without anaesthesia right after the surgery to make sure that they could still feel everything. They told me it was the worst pain they’d ever felt in their entire life—but from a medical perspective, it was necessary to make sure that none of the critical nerves in the neck had been affected. 
Sometimes in medicine, pain is necessary because it’s not some uncomplicated and bad thing—it’s a response of your nervous system, and sometimes the only indicator that your body is still working the way it should. And I think this is the mindset that Marcille has, which is why she seems so blase about it—she doesn’t think that she’s actually hurting people, it’s just a necessary part of the healing process. 
And in some ways, she just sees it as a realistic downside of the fact that you have to recover quickly in dungeon situations:
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Normal recovery would take months. Healing magic shortens that to a few seconds. The pain is a result/tradeoff of forcing something that would naturally take a long time into such a short timespan. This all makes sense and is Right and Correct and Normal in Marcille's mind. It's not that she lacks empathy and doesn't care enough about not harming her patients: she doesn't think that it's "harm" at all.
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Not a shred of guilt in that face before causing extreme pain. Contrast this to her constant fussing over Izutsumi on the smallest things—it's hard to believe she wouldn't even be a little apologetic if she actually believed this would be hurtful in a way that matters.
I think this is overall, less indicative of any lack of empathy so much as her incredibly stubborn and sometimes ridiculous way of compartmentalizing things to her own internal rules. I’d even argue that this mindset is preferable in surface situations, where people have the luxury of time. Dungeon healing hurts because it has to be fast and instantaneous—but if you're just treating a broken bone that can be put in a cast with slower healing magic to help, wouldn't you prefer that over an instant heal with the chance to cause brain damage, no matter how minuscule the chance is? Shouldn’t your long-term health matter more than short-term recovery and some pain?
To touch on Laios’s leg injury—we actually do see this kind of reaction to healing magic later on in the manga. When Marcille is teaching Laios how to heal, she ends up bowling him over because her cut gets super itchy:
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but then she reacts positively and tells him that it's supposed to happen, before trusting him enough to try it on Senshi.
So while yes, it was an “incomplete” heal, I don’t think it was particularly telling about her approach to healing. And honestly, judging by the fact that it only distracted him when he was relaxed enough to be cleaning his armour before bed, it looks like she connected all the major muscles and nerves enough not to cause pain or risk re-injury by moving, but just left superficial stuff for Laios’s body to naturally heal. 
Her mindset makes sense in context: She also had to heal Chilchuck and Senshi, while conserving enough energy to immediately start digging for Falin’s body and potentially do a very taxing resurrection spell as soon as possible. 
After that, Falin healed the rest of Laios’s leg injury in a situation where it wasn’t needed, but there were no other high stakes to discourage it. Also, she can’t bear to see others in pain. ambrosiagourmet already did an incredible analysis of how this empathy doesn't really signify perfect altruism so much as Falin's deep discomfort with having to witness pain, so I won't go into that too much—but the important part is, Falin isn't inherently a more caring healer than Marcille. They are both making decisions for the patient based on their own approaches to healing—it's just that Falin's approach is preferable for dungeoneering overall.
(In Marcille's defense, it seems that dungeons are an incredibly specific environment that falls way outside the realm of what's actually taught to mages in most schools. Being a combat-oriented mage actually seems pretty frowned upon.)
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So, in a lot of ways, Marcille is both realistic about dungeon healing (mana conservation by not doing full heals when not necessary, thinking about pain as the condensation of the time it would have taken to naturally heal, etc.) and very unrealistic about it. What she doesn’t realize is that the pain matters: In a dungeon, people have to be up and ready to continue right away, over and over. If it hurts every time, that makes them very averse to being healed, stressed out about getting injured, and affects their performance as dungeoneers.
All that to say… I personally believe that Marcille is very passionate about healing people. Not healing magic necessarily, but medicine as a whole. It’s not just a means to an end—it’s her main area of study only second to her research into ancient magic. And sure, she might have gotten into it because of her fear of death—but what I think people don’t give enough credit to is that her motivations changed from when she was a child. 
You see it here, when she’s laying her dream outright to the Winged Lion: 
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She might be kinda racist herself, hypocritical, and short-sighted (mostly out of ignorance, I’d argue), but at heart, she hates that people hurt each other. She hates that long-lived races look down on everyone else just because of lifespan. She has—arguably very correctly—identified the disparity in lifespans as one of the main causes of interracial strife, and she wants to get rid of it so that everyone can fully understand and relate to each other as equals. 
And in some ways, it’s not even that insane of a dream. 
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Knowing that people used to live as long as she’ll have to, and something changed in the eons since, is it really that weird for her to want to change it back somehow? 
But all that aside—the most important part of this to me is that… originally, she wasn’t actually that hung up on completely equalizing lifespans. She got into medicine because she wanted to, at the very least, close the gap as much as she could in her very long life. 
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She was realistic about it at first. She thought that, by studying ancient magic’s ability to pull from the infinite, she could harness that infinite energy in tandem with medical knowledge to give more life to the short-lived races. 
But as she says it herself, it changed when she realized that she doesn’t have time to gradually unravel it on her own. 
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So, yes. She got desperate. She got crazy. In light of all she did as dungeon lord, it’s easy to assume that she never cared much about healing as a profession, and is just a self-obsessed little girl caged by her trauma and trying to change the entire world to make sure she doesn’t have to be hurt. 
And… she is all that. She's my blorbo supreme but I'll be the first to insist that she is very much a complete hot mess. But my point is that these were very extreme circumstances, and Ryoko Kui has given us all the understated evidence we need to know that she’s actually a very passionate doctor otherwise. This is the girl who freaks out if she’s not useful to other people and not allowed to help:
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Did actually get excited about making safe dungeons for helpful purposes beyond just learning more about ancient magic to fulfill her dream: 
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And in tandem with her own personal trauma—not in opposition to it or to obscure it—cared about making life more peaceful and equal for everyone in the world. Not to mention, she had to have done some insane work to be acknowledged as the most talented researcher at the academy and be allowed onto teams that were researching new healing magics.
TL:DR, I think she has a lot of empathy for people and passion for helping them, it’s just expressed in a way you wouldn’t expect in a fantasy because Ryoko Kui doesn’t fuck around with her storytelling and genre subversion. She might not be a good archetypal healer, but she's an extremely knowledgeable doctor with a point-blank and intense attitude towards healing and medical treatment (see: her strictness about physical touch when teaching Laios about healing).
For me, all evidence points towards her going back to what she was doing before the story on top of her duties as Court Mage, kind of becoming a sort of Surgeon General for Melini as the head of health and safety for the country and whatnot. 
PS. I will admit that there's explicit evidence she's not good at healing here:
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But this was also like... chapter 3. Written years ago. I personally feel that everything Kui has said about Marcille's background since is enough evidence that it was just a one-off joke before she had an airtight idea about who Marcille was and would be, but I'll concede that it's mostly conjecture.
But again, as I said, I believe that while she might not be the best at the heal spell that's used in Dungeons, she's passionate about being a medical researcher and the field of medicine as a whole.
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dunmeshistash · 5 months ago
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Do we know what the relationship between milsiril and helki is? Those panels of her manhandling him for kabru are really funny, they seem close? Saw someone say helki was kabrus foster dad and was wondering if there was a source for that
As far as I know there's nothing about a romantic relationship officially between them (I ship tho) this isnt gonna be very straight foward cause I'm honestly still trying to figure out whats their current relationship.
He was Milsiril prisoner partner from when she was part of the canaries, from their interactions it seems they got along (at least better than she got with any other elf, they're always together and it's shown she pretty much shuts off everyone else, other nobles don't seem to be that close with the prisoners they're responsible for)
Just to explain better in the canaries there's Noble children and Prisoners, each noble is responsible to "keep an eye" on two prisoners and Milsiril was the noble responsible for Helki (unclear if she had another prisoner under her).
After Utaya she requested for him to be freed tho, so he's no longer a prisoner after she retirers. From the comics tho (especially Rin's extra) it seems he stayed with the canaries at least for a little longer than Milsiril, perhaps something similar to Erique? (I think Enrique was released for merit(功労) tho while that's not implied for Helki(報労) so I dont think he would have served as a guard?)
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The same page now points him as an current ex canary tho
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But I think this translation isn't very accurate? The original says
"ウタヤの報労として 赦免、引き受け"
First line is "as a reward for Utaya" then bellow "pardon, acceptance/undertaking" something like that? The translations seems to imply he was pardoned and given to her as a reward? But trying to search on google I think 引き受け seems to have a closer meaning to "taken responsability for"? Something like that is repeated by Fleki here.
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So from my not very clear understanding they were Canary Partners and she vouched for him to be released after Utaya and now he either works for her or they're just friends (which i think its more accurate by how he was laughing at Kabru and how he was joining the canaries on the Rin thing without Milsiril, but I'm very biased about my perception of their relationship tbf)
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If anyone else cares this much about this background guy that has very few lines please share what you think, I'm sucking up all the crumbs
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gothiethefairy · 4 months ago
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apparently some ppl are a little bit upset that ryoko kui said in a modern world, laios would work in minimum-wage retail
but, it does lowkey make sense, if you count for the fact he dropped out of school and later, the army. and if we take into consideration that he's autistic too, he won't find any good jobs so retail is his only option.
i mean, he could be a manager tho. he is a pretty good leader.
but i'll imagine, with the right people pushing him, he takes night classes to at least get a degree. hell, maybe he makes extra cash on the side by doing furry commissions.
but if you imagined him going to school to become a vet or he has a youtube channel or whatever, you can still keep imagining that lol
it's not the end of the world if the author said one thing against the other, you know.
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spacecardiver · 8 months ago
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This is such an autism moment
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