No food this episode, should have went with empty stomach…

When I took a bite I have missed days of counless sweat and tears of underpaid animators. I will need to rewatch this episode.

The whiplash from cheerful ED was something else.

Of course Senshi got to have an adamantine knife. Of course. And since it’s an actual cooking knife instead of a weapon, he maintained it properly - unlike his battle axe.

The battle against the dragon was cool. Not the sort of battle you’d expect from fantasy, but that’s typical for Dungeon Meshi. And their battle plan went wrong, wrong, wrong, then finally right, if I didn’t read the manga I’d expect it to go wrong all the way.

Overall great episode. It was really fun.

We open on yet another statue of a winged lion… And then it’s straight to kiting the dragon.

I fucking loved this episode. Trigger has always had an affinitiy for blood and gore, just look at Kill la Kill and Edgerunners, it still cought me off guard seeing Senshi cough up blood, Laios lose a leg, and then Marcille run around healing the gang while ignoring her blood-soaked hands.

Felt like seeing Akkos arm torn off, trigger has flawlessly maintained the wholesome lighthearted tone so far, only carefully teasing what’s to come and somewhat downplaying the one instance of bad luck with Marcy’s encounter with the undine.

The digging around in the dragons innards continues the downward spiral in tone…

I’ve been promising it for a while, and the episode ends on the tone of the show taking a dive off a cliff, revealing that as the dragon did not hibernate after its meal the way they usually would, Falin was by now very, very digested.

I recently posted some manga pages that were cut from the anime, which feature exposition on the fact that the effectiveness of resurrection magic rapidly diminishes if more than one thirteenth of a persons body has been lost. Falin is far beyond that point, which may not be landing for some anime-only watchers.

And this episode is ominously titled “Red Dragon 1”.

For once I’m not even a little hungry after watching the episode. Ouch that was an awful cliffhanger.

Oh, cool, so they’ll be able to bring Falin back, no problem, right?

…right?

(don’t actually answer)

I just finished catching up after being on vacation the past couple episodes. This episode was a thrill ride in both a great way and a dreadful way.

I often gush about the Trigger animation in this show (and it was excellent once again this episode), but I think the thing that stood out to me most from this episode was the OST, or rather, the lack of OST. Many of the most important and tense moments this episode are when the OST completely disappears:

• When Marcy drops the building on the dragon and we are all waiting to see if the plan worked or not
• When the dragon’s head is directly over Laios and Chilchuk while they hold still only for Kensuke to give them away
• When Senshi shatters his axe against the dragon, losing the last of their weapons (until he pulls out his cooking knife)
• Amazingly, the whole time from when Laios had his leg chomped initially through the end of the dragon and up until the ghost appears in his dream sequence
• From the first cut into the dragon corpse all the way until they find that the stomach is empty

I have no idea what the directorial intent behind the choice to limit the OST in this way might be, but I think it is really effective. As media consumers, we are so used to big action sequences being accompanied by big scores as well. Think of any Marvel or Bond movie as an example. However, here they strip all that scoring away during the peak moments of action, leaving you with the great Foley work and the excellent VA work (lots of heavy breathing this episode). As a viewer, we feel that something is missing; that something isn’t right. So, when Laios gives his big hero speech to Marcy, we aren’t reassured, we already know subconsciously that this isn’t the grand finale that Laios thinks it is because the whole episode hasn’t been scored as a grand finale.

I think this is also what makes the transition to the ED feel so jarring. The whole episode has had either a lack of OST or a rather subdued one (literally ending on something akin to church bells), and then the bass comes in with a super happy ED literally titled Party!

As everyone else noted, what a great episode!

The little details, like Laios tying Kensuke to his hand as he’s about to get launched at the dragon’s head, to keep Kensuke from running away again.

Then all the things they’re able to do with the mithril cooking knife…

As they’re carving their way through to the stomach, I’m thinking how are they going to refrigerate all this meat?

I hope they went back and were able to recover the adamantite pot lid

Dungeon Meshi - episode 11

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