Delicious in Dungeon

Episode 17

Delicious in Dungeon Episode 17 sure has a lot of great moments and minor details, but a few cracks are showing in the dramatic beats.

The highs of this episode are really high. The tentpole event is Falin's return as a giant chimera creature, half-wizard sister, and half-destructive chicken of death. She is terrifying and haunting to behold, and she bounds beastily into the fray to cries of terror from the characters and cheers of jubilation from the audience. We all love a giant monster woman, don't we folks? I know I do, and Falin going beast mode on three parties' worth of adventures at the same time is as exciting as it sounds.

What is most impressive is how brutal this fight sequence is. Falin has obvious monstrous power at her disposal, and that's hugely exciting. She crushes adventurers underfoot until they pop like overripe melons (I am not sure why the analogy of melons came to me when reviewing this episode…). Tail whips knock foes through walls and cast giant-area-of-effect spells that remove 1d4 party members per round. But by the same token, the adventurers are no slouches either. They dispatch the harpies with ease, and the closeup sequence of Falin getting her throat slit and torso stabbed repeatedly from behind is quite vicious. If you want dungeonpunk bloodshed, whew, boy, is it here in this episode.

That said, I have concerns about the emotional tension in this scene. Having Laios remark that his transformed sister is the coolest thing he's ever seen right before she brutally murders a bunch of characters we're supposed to be invested in deflates the impact of their deaths. Similarly, knowing that revival magic is on the table makes it hard to feel much for their fates. No sooner has Falin left the encounter area, everyone is up and chatting as if nothing happened. Delicious in Dungeon is suffering from the same concerns most tabletop campaigns do when you have revival magic be casually available: death is less an inconvenience akin to being stuck in traffic, and little else. Before this, the series did an excellent job of establishing meaningful stakes and requirements around Falin's death to carefully thread the needle where the revival was possible but not trivial. Sadly, this fight is the exact opposite, cheapening the otherwise gloriously animated and carefully thought-out conflict on display.

Rating:

Grant is the cohost on the Blade Licking Thieves podcast and Super Senpai Podcast.

Delicious in Dungeon is currently streaming on Netflix.