#dunmeshi anime vs manga

[dunmeshistash]

The Falin gag that was cut from episode 15

I love her <3

[wheatormeat]

Rereading old haikyuu chapters, here's a bunch of silly Akaashis

[figofswords]

i know ive made myself the #1 izutsumi stan in the eyes of all of my friends and probably some of you online people but what if i became a mithrun stan. there is something about him that compels me. i just want to *clenches fist* put him on the drying rack. lovingly stick him into a tupperware for later. make him into. a broth of some sort. do you understand

[aiai-cafe]

seeing discourse pass by on the periphery is so crazy like what do you mean a majority of the fandom hates kabru?????? that boy is the most character ever?? hello??

[evadingreallife]

I feel like i have the mob countdown going on in my brain and when it's filled i'll finally go read the dunmeshi manga.

[guideaus]

sorry for the crop, these are screenshots from old posts i've made, anyways... idk how anime gets made, and i get it's probably hard to replicate the manga's original style, but i kinda wish that some manga got adapted with studios that could actually replicate the original style, or at least do something similar with the atmosphere. whether its a good or bad studio, it seems like they dont keep the original vibe.

tsukasa's first pov with jun yokada has him describing him as oppressive and then the scenes shown of the trailers with him in it so far don't really come close to that, and it's a shame

[gravellymistaken]

I feel like the dunmeshi fandom is kinda having an issue where manga readers vs. anime only are clashing bc the manga readers have already experienced the story and have had time to digest everything (lol), including what they did and didn't like about the characters. While anime onlys are getting the knee-jerk reaction of seeing it for the first time, and I feel like ppl are forgetting that the story is unfolding in REAL TIME to them.

[britcision]

Not gonna lie, we’ve been watching YuYu Hakusho alongside the release of Delicious In Dungeon and uh

It’s been illuminating

Like on the one hand hoooooooboy you can taste the 90s animation techniques (and the Netflix version is somehow more strobey and seizure bait, and they’ve fucked random chunks of audio?? I have the dvds I can prove they’ve fucked around)

On the other hand… yeah, it really, really highlights what people have already been talking about with the Delicious In Dungeon - the pacing issues, especially with going shot for shot from the manga instead of embracing their own medium

Cuz I will stand by YuYu Hakusho being the best anime version of a manga I’ve ever seen. It’s true to the manga, but keeps up the pacing and fleshes things out by leaning more into the side characters, and particularly our audience surrogates, Koenma and George

The fights all pace well because we cut to the people watching them, so it’s not just repetitive punch punch punch shots (although we do get those)

Whereas this week’s episode of DunMeshi in particular…. Really suffered from skewed pacing on that fight

They had way too much time just standing around talking, both with the harpies and in between Falin’s attacks, and I’d bet even an anime-only fan could pick out which shots were literal panels in the anime because nothing moved to flow between them

Those shots of the separated groups especially; this is anime, not manga. Those people could have been moving, interacting, doing things instead of panning over a still

I get that it takes more time and money but this was a really significant fight and it does make me worry a little for season 2, because the red dragon fight also had some pacing problems (although to a much lesser degree) and season 2 is when the combat pops off

I really do appreciate them wanting to do a faithful interpretation of the manga and sticking close to Ryoko Kui’s vision, but anime is its own medium and by sticking too closely they’re not taking full advantage of that medium

You have more time to fill in an animated episode vs a manga chapter because your characters literally move and flow, and three panels of action happen in a second

They’ve been folding two or three chapters into each episode, but this week’s especially (ep 17) really played too close to that two chapter timeline, instead of taking out the important story beats and the time to fill and working out how to pace around that instead

(Funnily enough though, they actually nailed the exact same kinda pacing issue in the exact same episode for the Laios and Shuro fight; that one was fucking great, it was clear that action was ongoing even while we focused on other people, and it had good weight and emphasis despite being largely offscreen, just like the harpy fight should have been

I. Guess. They coulda put more work into that than the Falin fight? Cuz it’s a huge character moment but for fuck’s sake Chimera!Falin SHOULD be the bigger one! We the audience got hints but this was the REVEAL)

Honestly just… the 1000% disinterest in the harpy fight was jarring, and it leading immediately into the Falin fight that was basically stop motion without the time lapse didn’t help

Cutting to Marcille and Shuro on the shirt tear was fucking great though, chef’s kiss, someone out there is still watching over us, I just hope they work out a happy medium soon

I get that there’s lots of iconic and fantastic panels in the manga, I made a complete summary of every single chapter, but the anime shouldn’t be showing them as stills

The characters should be moving in between them, not snapping from one face to the next like a slide show

In a perfect world I’d also love some more little character asides and things a la YYH, but there just isn’t the same easy audience characters to cut to

But but but

Thistle reacting a la Koenma to some snippets of the bullshit in his dungeon would give me fucking LIFE he can’t be watching all the time for obvious plot reasons but I want him to find a veggie golem

I want him to see the kraken and find some leftovers and be searching for Delgal and plotting their dinner and wondering why he can smell something delicious and what is it and can he make that

Move the background stuff that got cut from the Tances’ episodes, cut to Namari and the twins hanging out and talking about leg guards, there’s SO MUCH supplemental material

It might be less one for one to the manga but it’d stop the weird dragging out and give us something more, something extra to appreciate the anime on its own merits

It’s nice to have an anime experience that is very close to reading the manga, but it’s something really special to have the anime shine and add to the experience on its own

Anyway next week is the shapeshifter and I’m so hype for that and wondering if they are gonna include just a smidge of meta knowledge since Kui did tell us whose impersonations are whose 👀

[staenless]

The urge to encourage people to watch the witch hat anime so that it's successful and gets a full adaption vs the urge to gatekeep the anime to manga readers only because I just KNOW (from dunmeshi) that people are going to have the most dog shit takes and push the main characters to the side in favour of the "gojo clone" (shut the fuck up shut the fuck up shut the fuck up shut the fuck up)

[thenixkat]

So since I know the Dungeon Meshi anime does a lot of stuff wrong, is there anything it's better at? (I plan to read the manga once I'm done reading the series I'm currently on, so until then I'll just think of the anime as a badly done overview. )

Ok, so Dungeon Meshi is the first adaptation of a manga that the animation studio, Studio Trigger has done which is unfortunate for the reasons of this is the first thing these people are cutting their teeth on adaptation wise which means knowing what to cut from a story for pacing reasons vs how that effects the plot and tone are very much noticed. Plus changes to the story due to the ideas and biases of the people doing the adapting.

Studio Trigger created BNA/Brand New Animal which you've watched and Promare which I spent a period talking about on my blog as well as some other things. They're very good at animating action scenes! Not very good at story telling. And also like to include fanservice shit like, I'm pretty sure that several seconds log scene of preteen!Falin's butt in the tunnel taking up the entire view was from whoever is on their animation or art team that likes to do obnoxious and gross fanservice shit with the female characters.

I will say the anime is an ok adaptation, but some of the hits due to cutting and altering stuff def show. The action is good, the music is fun, the animators have the advantage of working in the art style of the late manga (which looks lovely) as opposed to the art style in the early manga where the mangaka was still figuring things out.

The only three things I think the anime changed for the better thus far are:

The dialogue change in the ghost icecream chapter/episode where Laios' wording makes it more clear that he thinks that if he was the one who got eaten none of his friends would be in danger because he thinks that they don't like him enough to try rescuing him.

Making the underground lake glow. The lake is supposed to be infused with magic and glow but the mangaka drew mirror-like reflections on the water in the manga that really wouldn't be going on if the water was admitting its own light.

The framing of Laios finding Falin's remains was so much more impactful, a real gut punch wham shot even without the cut conversation that would make it more clear why finding Falin's body in such a state would be so very bad (tho that cut convo still would have really enhanced the impact)

When you get to reading the manga I say go for finding and reading the extras and supplementary material if you can. A lot of the extra tidbits are fun world building stuff tho I do still have complaints about a few things with the Dunmeshi world

[clownkiwi]

actually if i had to sum up my thoughts & feelings on studio trigger, its that theyre the best studio to approach to make an adaptation of a pre-existing work. as we've seen with how dunmeshi & cyberpunk were received VS kill la kill & bna. largely because they dont have to worry about writing it as much since theyre written by outside sources

even if the gridman anime was written in-studio, it still had to have been overseen & approved by tsuburaya the whole way through to fit with the same quality of their other productions. and you can tell that trigger has been more open and accepting of adapting works rather than making original properties because dunmeshi & cyberpunk pay the bills & keep their studios lights on

(this is why gainax had shut down, they were largely reliant on their audience they gained from evangelion to like their other original works rather than openly adapting manga or novels)

[dunmeshistash]

Dungeon Meshi Chapter 22 - Above ground

"The longer you spend in the Dungeon, the more desensitized you get about your own death. You start thinking that if worse comes to worst, you'll be resurrected. But that way of thinking is the most dangerous thing of all. If you die in an area where nobody passes through, then that's it for you You must never let go of your fear you've gotta survive no matter what it takes "

An important part that was mostly cut out from episode 10. I wanted to share with more people who might have missed it.

[ubercharge]

im not sure if anyone asked you yet, but thoughts on the dunmeshi anime?

thanks for asking! sometimes i forget i exist here as a person cuz i just log on to queue random stuff without making posts 💀

it's pretty rare for me to watch an anime without ever reading the manga, and there've been stellar adaptations recently. ONK, kisekoi, BTR, frieren, CSM just to name a few. in a landscape where we're used to being disappointed as readers who have a frame of reference before watching a show, i had very, very high hopes for the dunmeshi adaptations that weren't quite fulfilled.

i'll dump everything under a cut since i actually have a lot to say, sorry if you were expecting it to be brief 😎

the lines in the artistic style are good, nicely translating the characters into animated format. really no notes there. definitely a nicer comparison for char designs between manga and anime vs. tonsuki and tensura who both have incredible manga styles that the anime stumble over (though in the latter's case, i don't think they were aiming for it sadly)

the shading has been fine, but weakened by the colour choices. some of the dungeon scenes (e.g., living armour stuff) are lit with a medium blue which helps to sell the idea of the scene being in a place not lit by fire (and contrasts it with the making camp & cooking scenes), but the lack of dark shading flattens some of these very well-drawn images.

the earlier chapters don't have the same level of detail as newer ones, but the art style is still fantastic - it's expressive with high contrast and shows action and impact perfectly well. manga will often times have a naturally easier way with contrast due to it being in black & white, but i don't think that means anime should just give up on contrast in favour of playing ineffectively with colour.

here's a night shot of fern from frieren. the choices made here allow for the shading to stand out from the flats and give her more definition overall while still being relatively simple (just flats + shading)

when dunmeshi has more "normal" lighting conditions, it does a lot better. similar to fern up there, there's about the same amount of difference between the flats and shadows, so i really wish they did a better job on the dungeon scenes since they're going to have to deal with non-torchlit scenes plenty. i won't argue that the living armor scene certainly has some kind of a sickly, alien mood to it, but tl;dr i think it should've had darker shading if not also being less green. this largely applies to every other blue-green lit scene they've done.

looking at kui's coloured drawings in the ed gives me an idea of what could've been and it makes me sad to lose out on colour choices more similar to that (even if they obviously can't have her level of detail on top of it)

some of the backgrounds haven't been too interesting but some have been good, overall it's probably fine. plus you can only draw and detail repeating bricks so many times before the viewer gets bored of looking at them anyway, i guess.

the animation is really fun and expressive. it's trigger, so they don't keep scenes stiffly on-model when they want characters moving around. this is good because it helps to sell both action and comedy moments!

the music overall i haven't really cared for? the BGM has not been particularly moving, interesting, or memorable - mostly generic. and i've seen too many fantasy shows for my own good, so i might be harder to impress (but i even remember tenken had a good BGM song or two to make a fight dramatic and that show was barely above average at best)

i'm biased not being particularly into bump, so i would've selected a different artist for the OP (i actually did like the bump OP from SxF though, come to think of it). before anyone makes a wisecrack based on what i've watched lately, no it doesn't have to be yoasobi.

i maybe feel the ED song would've been better for the OP, i don't like the largely peaceful bit of the OP with very still visuals. the OP is where you reel people in! it should be an eye-catching hook, representative of what to expect with some extra sauce on top.

the ED is great, total bop. it's a fine time for slower visuals as an enjoyable wind-down from the episode, so less or no animation is no big deal. plus kui's art is absolutely gorgeous! it all perfectly fits that "end of work" fun and lighthearted mood they were going for.

i largely enjoy the voice acting. i would've personally gone for a less "old man" voice on senshi because he's really not that old for a dwarf, but they obviously wanted to make it clear he was the older, wiser, knowledgeable character.

this might be my own personally most blasphemous opinion, but i would've picked a different VA for falin. i want to make it clear i absolutely adore saori hayami - she's incredible and one of my faves. with that said, her voice fits the character, so maybe it's just because i've heard her too often which is not her fault by any means! i love the voices for laios, marcille, and chil.

it seems netflix's subs go off of the official EN TL of the manga, which makes sense, but i've talked about how i don't like it more than ehscans' TL (which is one of the single best TLs i've read for a series, official or otherwise) and that holds true for the anime ("mad sorcerer" is cooler AND less clunky than "lunatic magician"). i prefer less localisation stuff and/or quirkiness in my subs and more direct translation for both manga and anime.

as for the changes/additions they've made to the show, some of them have been alright and some i didn't care for. they really want to sell marcille as the funny joke character which is why they had her being chased by the basilisk instead of having doni & fionil like it was in the manga which was better for the pacing and had good impact vs a funny clip of marcille running back and forth.

i don't dislike when adaptations add or change stuff, but placing them cleanly is important. dunmeshi is already really funny! i don't think it needs help being funnier by reaching for the cheap laugh. when laios sees two people running for their lives from a basilisk and he just goes "wow that's a bad way to run from that monster", it's already lowkey hilarious - all the more so followed by marcille telling mr. monster-know-it-all to go rescue them if he knows what's up and him rescuing them by making himself big and chicken squawking real loud (which embarrasses marcille and chil, but c'mon guys, at least his idea worked!). i feel like the comedy in laios' funny hero moment is undercut by forcing the marcille butt of the joke moment in the anime.

dunmeshi is already incredibly good at just about everything it does. i feel if an adaptation wants to add or change something, it's often better amplifying a strength or shoring up a weakness in the source material. BTR adds a lot to the source (not hard considering the source is a 4koma) and makes already funny things even funnier. the "we should all get social media" scene is elevated to iconic status with the visual of bocchi glitching out + the VA's inhuman screech. i can't say where i'd really want to change or add stuff to dunmeshi, since it really feels so good and whole, but i'm sure there's room in the process of translating manga panels to animated scenes, and i think the direction overall could've been better (comparing most shows to BTR isn't fair i know because BTR is directed & adapted so well it's hydrogen bomb vs. coughing baby territory)

i've mostly said negative stuff, but i don't want it to sound like i hate or even really dislike the adaptation. i think when it comes to a series you really love, you want to see the best adaptation possible within reason, and the disappointment of stuff not being quite what you were hoping for is amplified by so many other recent adaptations being so good.

dunmeshi does not have a bad anime by any means, but a lot of that is thanks to the source material's quality. if they do another season, i hope they have more time/budget/whatever because i think a lot of the parts it does have are good parts! but in this case, i wasn't hoping for good; i was hoping for great.

trigger makes great shows with wacky storylines (in some ways, the same one wacky storyline, but that's a different discussion) and dunmeshi, being directed by someone who's worked on a bunch of trigger stuff (largely sci-fi leaning), maybe needed some more direction from people who've worked on fantasy stuff? i can't say for sure what would've been enough to take the show over the top, but though i generally don't hope for much from adaptations, i really did have higher hopes for this one than it ended up achieving.

overall it seems i'll end up scoring the show a 7 or 7.5 when i finish the season, though there's certainly still room to wow us all. whatever you feel about the adaptation, whether you liked it or not, whether or not you've read the manga, feel free to comment your thoughts below or in my inbox. let's keep it free of manga spoils for anime-only watchers, though!

[lylahammar]

the best fandom for proof that people will hype m/m up over everything, is in the game Honkai Impact 3rd, m/m between bland self-insert protag and a char who appears for 1 mini chapter, is more popular than almost every other f/f ship, including one called Bronseele where the two girls literally kiss on screen

I don't know anything about that game, but just to be clear in my post about the dunmeshi fandom catastrophizing over m/m vs f/f I swear I wasn't trying to say it's not a problem for any fandom 😅 I think some people maybe misinterpreted my meaning but I was just saying that it's not something to be afraid of in the dungeon meshi fandom currently (it very well could be in the future, but we just gotta combat it by making a lot of f/f art 💞), but it definitely is a problem in a lot of other fandoms (especially in terms of anime/manga)

[qrowpilled]

if I wanted to get into dunmeshi would you recommend I watch or read it?

I'm definitely biased bc i read it before the anime came out and i think its always fun to experience the source material first but really its up to whichever format you prefer i.e if you're more someone who likes to read vs watch...personally i would definitely recommend checking out the manga though bc the art is fantastic and ryoko kui is like. a master at what she does. plus if ur speedy you can get all caught up and be in the know about things anime onlys arent >:3c

[mochlus]

I first read dungeon meshi around 2018 and it's been one of my favorite manga on the planet ever since and I gotta say it does feel pretty bittersweet seeing it take off for a lotta reasons. Bc like, of course it deserves this popularity, it's been my favorite manga for six years for a reasos, it's amazing. But seeing fandom discourse around it makes me want to explode. I posted about it on my anime blog already but seeing people focus on shipping and nothing but shipping (shipping OF ANYTHING. The yaoi vs yuri fight makes me want to start killing. I like shipping but the discourse in dunmeshi fandom is fucking awful.), or even only on themes of neurodivergence, and completely ignoring all other themes--the incredibly important ones of ecology and the relationships between people and nature and life and eating and life being eating, themes which saturate the series and lend themselves to its most important, most impactful scenes and lines--it sucks to see man! I've been into the monster manga for six years only for it to blow up and people ignore the fucking monsters! That's how it feels! I know that's just a bias in what people post about and not how people actually engage with the series but it still gets to me.

And the rest of the bitterness comes from that like. The classic nerd feeling, you know, of your tastes being belittled until suddenly everyone finds out what you like is actually good. Seeing dunmeshi be loved by people who wouldn't hesitate to make fun of my other interests--interests which are the reason I was willing to give what was once a relatively niche manga a try in the first place--just makes me feel defensive and possessive about it all. Like, "I've been here so much longer than you, you're not allowed to like this thing I've always liked!" feelings, you know. I know those feelings aren't productive or even based in reality, but they're hard to shed. Especially when I tried to rec the hell out of dunmeshi for years only for even a lot of my friends to just not give it a second glance until it became popular... :/ it's not like I blame anyone, I know sometimes a thing coming out just prompts you to get into something that's been on your radar. But. You know. Bittersweet.