Delicious in Dungeon (anime)

• Main
• Characters
• Laconic
• Wikipedia
• All Subpages
• Create New

This page needs visual enhancement. You can help All The Tropes by finding a high-quality image or video to illustrate the topic of this page.

Delicious In Dungeon is a fantasy anime about adventurers delving into a dangerous dungeon to achieve objectives important to them. Along the way they encounter a wide variety of monsters and devise ways to prepare them for consumption.

Laios and Falin are a Brother-Sister Team, the former being a swordsman and the latter a mage. In their most recent foray to an island dungeon, Falin pulls a Heroic Sacrifice by letting a Red Dragon eat her while teleporting the rest of the party to safety. Two party members leave above the surface, one to get help from his people and another for a better adventurer gig. Mage Marcille and half-foot Chilchuck agree to stay, the former because Falin is her best friend (and possible lover), while Chilchuck agrees under protest because he doesn't want Laios to die saving his sister. Laios prepares to return to the dungeon, without gear, and feast on the monsters to survive and retrieve his sister's corpse to revive her. A dwarf named Senshi joins them, to teach them how to eat the monsters properly.

Rescue missions aren't as simple, however, in this dungeon. An elf nicknamed the mad mage created it and intervenes if adventurers meddle too much with the monsters there. Whoever defeats the mad mage will win the dungeon and a lost kingdom, though Laios states he's not interested in being a ruler. He just wants his sister back. The mad mage, however, may have other plans in mind...

It was produced by Studio Trigger based on the original manga and first aired in early 2024 to June 13, 2024. It is available for streaming on Netflix here.

A second season was announced in mid-2024.

Tropes used in Delicious in Dungeon (anime) include:

• Acid Trip Dimension: The party passes through one after interacting with the spirit in episode 21.
• Alien Lunch: Most of the food consumed by the party incorporates at least some monster into it, which is seen as weird in universe.
• Animal Eye Spy: Marcella uses familiars to help Senshi in episode 22.
• Animated Armor: Present in the dungeon.
• An Axe to Grind: Senshi wields a poorly maintained axe.
• Art Shift: Done briefly in the living armor episode. In the scene where Laois recalls his memories of the egg sac on a stick, the animation becomes far more fluid, featuring a camera rotating around the characters, a different color palette, and in general a more expressive animation style.
• Attention Deficit Ooh Shiny: Kobalds can be easily distracted, as Laois proves when he gets one to run through a door by throwing a bell.
• Badass Beard: Senshi has a very impressive beard.
• Baleful Polymorph: Those who step into a ring of changeling mushrooms are transformed.
• Basilitrice: A Basilisk features in episode 2, and a Cockatrice in episode 15.
• Bathtub Bonding: Happens with Falin and Marcille.
• The Berserker: Kobolds who smell blood are prone to go berserk, and won’t stop fighting.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: The scorpion in episode 1 are extremely large, about the size of a pet.
• Big Bad: The Mad Mage is this for inhabitants of the island, and dungeon explorers.
• Bishie Sparkle: Senshi has these after he is transformed into an elf.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Slimes have internal organs, but their entire exterior is their digestive system.
• Black Magic: Marcille is a practitioner of this, much to the dismay of Chilchuck.
• Blob Monster: The slimes are blobby translucent monsters.
• Brainwashed: What happens to people who hear the siren song.
• Broke Episode: The first episode - Escaping from the dragon causes the party to loose anything that wasn’t directly on their person.
• Came Back Wrong: The circumstances under which Falin is revived leads to her becoming influenced by the Mad Mage.
• Changeling Tale: Laois says that stories of changelings and children come from the homeland of Chilchuck.
• Chest Monster: Two kinds:
  • A more traditional chest monster mimic, really a crablike monster using the container as a shell.
  • Prominent in episode 5 where the monster isn’t the chest itself, but the contents are individual monstered that look like jewelry or gold.
• Cool Train: The dwarves' automated trolly.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: While it's clear that the mad mage is far more powerful and experienced than Marcille, she actually fends him off for a few minutes while trying to rescue Falin. Thistle has to toss the party into a Death Trap to ambush her.
• Death Is Cheap: Laios discusses his first death in the episode about living armor.
• Dem Bones: A skeleton can be seen in Episode 4.
• Demihuman: Can be seen in creatures such as mermaids. Chilchuck and Marcille are against eating demihumans.
• Does Not Like Magic: Senshi is generally hesitent to use magic.
• Dug Too Deep: Senshi's party reaches the dungeon long before most other characters, save the orcs.
• Dungeon Shop: In episode 1 it is explained that the catacombs near the entrance of the dungeon is heavily traveled, and merchants operate there.
  • Another less savory one exists deeper in the dungeon.
• Eat Dirt Cheap: Possible for normal folks via cooking the coin monsters.
• Eldritch Location: Dungeons in general, but especially the main dungeon.
• Elemental Embodiment: The Undine is a water elemental.
• Emotion Eater: The nightmare spirits are said to feed off of emotions.
• Empathic Weapon: Laois acquires a sword with a living creature inside it.
• Enthralling Siren: These sing to lure people into danger. They get annoyed when Laios wants to sing along with them.
• Evil Counterpart: The mad mage Thistle to Marcille. Both study black magic, and used it to save someone they loved. In Marcille's case, however, what grounded her was the desire to study these techniques so they can benefit others, while Thistle seemed to go deeper and not care about the consequences to others. She also resurrected Falin using black magic because there was no choice, since Falin's corpse was too digested and decayed to get her to a reviving mage in time. Their brief fight illustrates this, where Thistle sends tiny dragon familiars after her and she uses her magic to dispel them in self-defense. And while Thistle uses his familiars to kill, Marcille uses hers to rescue Senshi from a griffin.
• Familiar: Employed by Marcille. She comments that she doesn’t know how the Mad Mage can handle so many at a time.
• Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: The Shadowtail plant implants seeds underneath the skin of a victim.
• Face Heel Turn: Happens to Falin as a result of interference from the Mad Mage, but it's implied to be more Brainwashed and Crazy.
• Fantastic Racism: Orcs don’t like elves and humans.
• Food Porn: The pictures of delicious food are usually very detailed, and often appetizing despite their ingredients.
• For Want of a Nail: Had the party not been hungry and distracted in their fight against the dragon, it may have gone differently.
• Golem: Featured in episode 4 to use for gardening, both as labor and as the garden patch itself.
• Gut Feeling: Senshi recounts that the first time he entered the dungeon, he got a bad feeling when his party discovered the kingdom of gold. He asked if it would be better to return with more supplies so they could do a proper excavation. Because he was the youngest, however, the other dwarves dismissed him. They should have listened to Senshi; a hippogriff ambushed their party, and the dungeon prevented them from escaping. Senshi was allowed to escape when he was the last survivor, by studying the maps he made and befriending the orcs who captured him. To this day, he still maintains that connection to the dungeon, which is why he returned willingly and made it his permanent home.
• Half-Human Hybrid: The demihuman mermaids and harpies.
  • Izutsumi is one as the result of having another soul in their body.
  • Falin becomes one as well.
• Hellish Horse: The Kelpie when aggravated is an aquatic version of this trope.
• Heroic BSOD: Marcille experienced one after hearing the mandrake scream in episode 2.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Falin focuses on whisking the rest of the party to safety, rather than trying to escape the dragon herself.
• Hobbits: Chilchuck is a small humanoid adept at lock picking.
• Human Shield: Tansu uses Namari as one when being attacked by the Undine.
• I Ate What?: Marcille is able to sus out that she probably ate fishmen eggs during the shapeshifter episode.
• Improbable Weapon User: The cooking pot is used as a shield or weapon a few times.
• Impossibly Delicious Food: Most, but not all, monster based food is this for Laios. Others are more objective, but are still frequently surprised by the quality of the monster food.
• Lensman Arms Race: Discussed, long before the start of the series Elves and Dwarves had one, which ended poorly and resulted in them sealing the tech away in dungeons.
• Limited Animation: Occasionally used for comedic effect, such as cropping in on a derpy face.
• Kill and Replace: Said to be a tactic of shapeshifters in episode 18.
• King Mook: One of the living armors is much larger and more decorated than the others which guard it. {{Spoiler|Or rather, the eggs it protects.
• Kraken and Leviathan: A Kraken chases after the party.
• Living Weapon: Laios' sword is a very literal example, in that it is a truly living, organic creature, rather than a sword given Life by magic. Encountering a battalion of living armors (which are, in fact, colonies of mollusk-like creatures who use the armor as a hermit crab would a shell) Ryan’s sword is broken, so after defeating them, he takes a sword from one of them. Well not exactly intelligent, the sword is emphatic and reacts to the presence of other monsters, which proves a benefit for Ryan and his allies later.
• Logical Weakness: There's one way to not get hypnotized by a siren; sing louder than them. If you can't hear them, then they can't hypnotize you. Funnily enough, Laios wasn't trying to do this; his disappointment when the sirens swim away is that he wanted to finish the song with them.
• Man-Eating Plant: Some monstrous carnivorous plants are featured in episode 1.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
  • Senshi's connection to the dungeon, namely that the dungeon spared him after a hippogriff slaughtered the rest of his party, and he has been able to navigate it since. He wonders if it was because he wasn't in it for gold or treasure, but to prove himself to his party, which is why he was the only one not struck with gold fever when they found the lost kingdom. It could also be that Senshi was still a child by dwarven standards, and he had good instincts. Still, only Chilchuck matches him in terms of getting attuned to the dungeon's changes.
  • Yaad thinks that Laios is the one who will defeat the mad mage because he carries Kensuke, the sword with the mark of the lion guardian. The rest of the party and Laios himself doubt this, and Laios will not promise that he is the chosen one. After all, he acquired Kensuke by accident and he admits to the orcs that he would be a terrible leader.
• Medieval European Fantasy: Of the generic sort, the character designs are definitely inspired by European fantasy motifs.
• Mundane Utility: The dwarf uses the shaft of his battle axe for split roasting a Basilisk over a fire.
• Mushroom Man: The walking mushroom monster.
• Ninja: Izutsumi is one.
• Now You Tell Me: Marcille has an outburst after getting injured in episode 15, putting her in a situation far worse then if she had not done so.
• No Party Like a Donner Party: Senshi is afraid of Griffins, because he isn’t sure the last meat his doomed party provided him was Dwarven or Griffin. It turns out it was Hippogriff.
• Older Than He Looks: Despite looking like a human child, Chilchuck is an adult half-foot, and is 29 years old; he even has a wife and three daughters. Amusingly, when he tells the others this, they think he's younger than he looks!
• On-Site Procurement: The party ends up trying to survive on food found from ingredients in the dungeon at the prompting of Laios.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The dragon at the start is of a western style.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Senshi breaks the norm, at least as far as he is concerned. Sure, he's a Proud Warrior Race Guy with a Badass Beard who swings a mean axe, but he has no skill in blacksmithing or mining (having difficulty even telling valuable ores apart) his specialties being cooking, hunting, and farming. This did cause other dwarves to regard him as something of an oddball.
  • Namari plays it more straight, caring a lot more about things like weapon quality, materials, etc.
• Our Elves Are Better: Marcille serves as the party mage.
• Our Gargoyles Rock: Gargoyles are considered tough opponents, and are capable of flight.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: Ghosts can be defeated by holy water, which is chilled on impact.
• Our Gnomes Are Weirder: Tansu claims that gnomes are close with spirits, and so can safely approach the Undine. He cannot.
• Our Goblins Are Wickeder: The forest goblins are mentioned as a type of monster in the second half of episode 1.
• Our Gryphons Are Different: A griffin features in episode 22.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: Two varieties are seen, a more fishlike variety, and a more humanoid variety.
• Our Monsters Are Weird: The dungeon cleaners are a sort of small grey goo animal that rebuilds and maintain dungeons.
• Our Orcs Are Different: The orcs maintain a society in the dungeon after being driven from the surface. They’re violent, yet intelligent.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Zombies are mentioned in episode 4. They can be seen in a flashback to Kabru's village.
• Plant Person: The Dryads.
• Portrait Painting Peephole: A portrait with moving eyes can be seen early in episode 6.
• Rapid Aging: Happens to Laois on contact with the nightmare spirit. Initially only applies to half his face.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Shuro proves to be this; turns out he's a prince in his homeland! While at first he punches Laios and wants to arrest Marcille for using black magic to resurrect Falin, he understands why they did it; as Laios intuits, he would have done the same thing in their place. When saying he needs to report what happened to the Island Lord, he gives Laios a whistle that will give Laios diplomatic immunity in his mainland. And during the actual report? He doesn't report what Marcille did and instead supports Kabru's statement that the elves should evacuate as many adventurers on the first level as they can and seal the dungeon. While Shuro knows that Laios defeating or reasoning with the mad mage to get Falin back is going to be difficult at the least, he knows that Laios is stubborn enough to do it.
• Resurrective Immortality: Played with. Anyone who dies in the dungeon will not have their spirit move on and can be resurrected. The severity of the injury can complicate it, and someone needs to actually find and revive the dead, which isn’t a given.
• The Reveal: The residents of the Golden Country, mainly Yaad, reveal a few facts:
  • The mad mage's name is Thistle, and he was Childhood Friends with Delgal. They were raised together, and were like brothers.
  • The Golden Country disappeared because Thistle turned it into a pocket dimension, where no one would die and aging was rapidly slowed down. No one was happy about this because they didn't ask for immortality or to be erased from the world. Their home also became a Gilded Cage.
  • Eventually, Delgal realized he had to go to the surface for help, and defy Thistle. Several of his subjects helped him escape; Thistle executed them for their insubordination. The reason why he's searching for Delgal? Because he wants his friend back. But Delgal underwent Rapid Aging as soon as he returned to the mortal world, since it had been a thousand years, and used his dying words to declare that whoever defeated the "mad mage" would win his kingdom. So his soul has moved on, meaning Thistle's quest is fruitless.
  • Other subjects tried to do the same as Delgal, but they became ghosts instead and lost themselves, unable to return to the surface or home. It was these ghosts that saved Laios's party from Thistle when he kidnapped Falin, and later served as the gateway to the Golden Country.
  • Yaad is Delgal's grandson. He's the de facto leader of the Golden Country, but is victim to Thistle's mercy depending on the mad mage's presence. Yaad hopes that Laios is the one destined to fulfill Delgal's Last Request, because he carries Kensuke and has been pursuing Thistle to rescue his sister.
• Role Playing Game Verse: Very clearly based on RPGs.
• Sense Freak: Inverted, Tall Men have duller senses then the half foot. As Chilchuck finds after being transformed by the changeling.
• Sirens Are Mermaids: The more humanoid mermaids are sing like sirens.
• Sole Survivor: Senshi may be this from his original party. At most there are one to two others, who’s death is not seen, but is highly implied.
• Standard Fantasy Setting: The setting in general.
• Stepford Smiler: While Laios genuinely is a Nice Guy and The Heart of his group, he has a sad backstory. His and Falin's father was emotionally abusive, with his only Pet the Dog moment being to protect Laios as a child from a ghost in the graveyard while Falin battled with it. Laios tells the others that he didn't do well in school and got bullied, and faced the same atmosphere in the military. After a short stint, he deserted and, not knowing what else to do, went to Falin's magic school to check on her. She insisted on coming with him, and he became worried about both the army and mages coming after them. Hence why they came to the island to earn some money and figure out their future, and why he latched onto Shuro after the latter was nice to him. The others on hearing this are shocked that Laios came out of this with a smile and positive attitude, and Marcille bursts out crying when hearing the full tale. It's implied he still has nightmares about his father, though it's been ten years since he ran away.
• Taken for Granite: Happens to Marcille when they are bitten by a cockatrice in episode 15. They end up getting used as a pickling rock.
• Team Dad: Chilchuck of all people is this to Marcille and Laios. Due to being a half-foot, he looks like a kid, but he's actually 29; only Senshi is older than him species-wise. He also joined on Laios's hopeless quest claiming it was just for his fee, but after the mad mage ambushes them and kidnaps a resurrected Falin, the orcs convince Chilchuck to admit to Laios that he's scared of losing him and Marcille. Makes sense when Chilchuck reveals he has a family, but hasn't seen his children in years.
• Teleportation Sickness: Happens to Senshi after being pulled through an Acid Trip Dimension in episode 21.
• Walking on Water: Marcille has support magic to enable this for herself or others.
• The Walls Are Closing In: Happens to the party at least once.
• Tragic Villain: Implied with the mad mage, aka Thistle, when Yaad reveals his backstory. He was an orphan and outcast from his hometown, who became adopted into a royal family and raised with a human prince. Marcille has mentioned that elves live longer than humans, and Delgal's father being assassinated traumatized both of them as we saw in the Living Painting episode. Not wanting to lose his human brother to old age, illness or any external cause, Thistle used black magic to transform the kingdom into the Golden Country and give its residents immortality. He didn't realize that Delgal didn't want that to happen, and escaped to the surface trying to get help for his people. Unwilling to believe that Delgal's soul has moved on since he died in the surface world, Thistle created the dungeon in an attempt to trap souls there and find Delgal. He doesn't want to face the reality that his brother died, and nothing will bring him back.
• Unicorn: One is seen pulling a cart in episode 21.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Marcille suggests tying a dog to a mandrake, then calling it over from a safe distance, pulling the mandrake and killing the dog. The other party members call her out on it, and Marcille admits she never did it because she couldn't bear to hurt the dog.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Each member of the main cast has a fear of a specific monster due to an event in their past:
  • Laios, animated armor, as his first death came from one of them; he gets over it early.
  • Marcille, slimes. Again, her first death was the result of one, and was both frightening and embarrassing.
  • Chilchuck, mimics. Being the rogue of the group, he's usually in charge of opening chests, and he's been killed by these nasty things many times. He tends to be paranoid about them.
  • Senshi, griffins, for a very different reason that the others. When he was a child, he was the sole survivor of a horrific encounter with one of them, which ended with him eating what he believed was part of the corpse of one of his friends. It wasn't until the present day when he learned it was not and was able to put that part of his past to rest.
• Wizarding School: A flashback shows Marcille and Falin attending the same school.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: Senshi throws away actual treasure since it’s not edible. Marcille and Chilchuck yell at him about it.
• Wrecked Weapon: Happens to the sword of Laios.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Seems all is well at the midmark; the party found the Dragon, with Laios stabbing it, and Marcille manages to resurrect Falin using the dragon's meat. Falin doesn't seem worse for wear if a little disoriented and more powerful than before. Laios excitedly says now they can return to the surface, and he's never letting Falin out of his sight again. But then something summons Falin when the party is all sleeping; Marcille and Laios follow her, finding an elf standing over the dragon's corpse and a hypnotized Falin. The mad mage also recognizes Laios from the Living Painting adventures and confronts him, demanding to know who he is. He succeeds in spiriting away Falin, knocking out Laios and trapping everyone underground in a rapidly-closing chamber. Ghosts rescue the party, and orcs capture them before Laios reveal they've broken bread with the other tribe. But now Laios has a new quest: rescue Falin from the mad mage.