Delicious in Dungeon
Short Synopsis: An adventuring party runs out of food and has to eat the local monsters to survive. And wouldn’t you know it? They come to enjoy it!
Let’s get something out of the way, Dungeon Meshi is not an adventuring show. It is a cooking show that happens to use fantasy adventure monsters. So much so that, if I’m being honest, it kind of bored me at times. Like it went all in on the cooking, in detail bordering on the obsessive. I’m talking cooking techniques, flavor profiles, specific parts of each creature and how they contribute to the overall dish, not to mention the actual ecology of the world itself. While cool, it makes for a detailed world, there were times I feel like I was reading a Wiki entry rather than watching a show. Still, it looks fine enough, the designs are quite nice, in particular I think Marcille looks great and is incredibly expressive. There’s not a lot in the way of animation yet, it’s more focused on detailed backgrounds and food, but that’s fine. Good art direction can make up for that. I’m down to give it a few more episodes to show off and be what it wants to be. So for now I’m going to stick with it and see where it goes. My hope is it dials up the adventuring and party interactions a tad and dials down the cooking just a little. Because while the cooking is great, I think it’s skewed a tad too much in that direction for me. Seriously, at what point does fantasy Gordon Ramsay show up and call Marcille an idiot sandwich?
Potential: 50%
My Instant Death Ability is Overpowered
Short Synopsis: OP MC gets Isekai’d to another world with all the usual tropes and trappings. It’s terrible.
I don’t know how to explain everything wrong with this show other than to point at the title and tell you to read it again. Instant Death is the epitome of lazy, garden variety, every stereotype in the book Isekai garbage. Big boobed classmate shoving her breasts into the MC? OP MC that can annihilate anything just by looking at them? A poorly made magic system that looks like code and frames the entire thing as a video game despite ostensibly being a fantasy world? Scumbags who try to sexually assault the female MC the moment they appear on screen? There is absolutely nothing about this show that you couldn’t get from other, better series, and plenty of things you don’t actually want at all. I’ve read some people saying that it’s bad because the author wants it to be bad because he hates isekai and the anime industry? Well he succeeded, because this is terrible. Akogarete was creepy, but at least it was good at what it was trying to do. This is just bad. In every way. With no redeeming qualities.
Potential: Say no to OP MC Isekai Garbage kids.
Chained Soldier
Short Synopsis: In a world where only girls can get powers from magical peaches, a young man is granted the ability to enhance their powers.
Where Instant Death was bad to an almost comical degree, Chained Soldier is just a regular sort of bad. The CGI monsters are mediocre, the female MC is a bunch of fetishes bootstrapped together into something resembling a character, and the power system is designed specifically so the MC can have sloppy makeouts with the female MC. But you know what? Chained Soldier seems to know exactly what it is and revels in it. I can respect that, or I can after having watched Instant Death at least. Is it good? Is there any reason to watch it? Will anyone care about it after the season ends, or even halfway through the season? The answer to all of those is a resounding no. But it’s better than Instant Death. Which means I can at least see some people having a fun “It’s so bad it’s good” popcorn watch out of it.
Potential: 1%
The post Winter 2024 Impressions: Delicious in Dungeon, My Instant Death Ability is Overpowered, Chained Soldier appeared first on Star Crossed Anime.
