Even before the tonal shift, “Delicious in Dungeon” was already a delightful fantasy comedy. With its focus on food and survival, it captured an aspect of “Dungeons & Dragons” we don’t normally see on the screen. The characters have to not just fight monsters but find places to rest, manage resources, map their way around so they don’t get lost, and other relatively small things that you don’t think about but used to be essential to the game and the genre. Plus, the food recipes look delicious (for the most part) and they are detailed enough to be replicated at home.
Halfway through the season, however, something changes. What is meant to be a major milestone for the characters turns about as joyful and successful as when Edward and Alphonse Elric try to bring their mother back to life using human transmutation — meaning, things go terrible, horrible, no good. This is where the show becomes more of a proper fantasy epic, an adventure full of danger and darkness, with a bigger scope that now includes warring factions and even ancient conflicts all impacting the story of this one group of people navigating a dungeon.
But what makes the tonal shift work is that it was always part of the show, it’s just that the characters are so indifferent to the dungeon’s brutality — in part because the magic that created the dungeon makes it so death is rarely permanent — that they are shocked when they catch up to their environment and realize how messed up and dangerous things actually are.
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