Dungeon Meshi – 11

「炎竜１」 (Reddo Doragon Ichi)
“Red Dragon 1”

That was a pretty intense episode of Dungeon Meshi to be sure. Trigger brought in old Gainax (and early Trigger) hand Ogura Nobutoshi to run the visual side of things this week. And the results were certainly stylish, though as usual with this adaptation I find that to be a mixed bag. I can’t really hold it against the anime for that, since the manga is relentlessly quirky and weird in its own right. Somehow though I find that in anime form the stylistic excesses tend to undercut the more serious moments. Given the content of this episode I could have done with a little less irreverence, even if irreverence in the face of dark shit is Delicious in Dungeon’s bread and butter.

The meat of this ep is obviously the battle with the red dragon, which is everything it was cracked up to be and more. Laios’ plan was a good one on paper, but a lot of his ideas are better in theory than they are in practice. For starters the whole “hold off the fire with the adamantine cook pot” had a fatal flaw. I mean, would Senshi love that thing so much if it wasn’t especially good at conducting heat? That makes holding onto it effectively impossible once it takes a blast of fire breath (which the dragon generates in very cool fashion, by clicking its tongue – how rude! – together to create a spark).

That blunder necessitates the first left turn in the plan. In this case a literal left turn, which throws Marcille off as she wasn’t prepared to improvise. She does however make the right call by activating her runes and collapsing the building at the right instant, trapping the red dragon underneath. That’s miscalculation #2, however, as the gargantuan beast shrugs off the masonry like dandruff and turns its attention on the three hapless adventurers literally in the line of fire. All they can do is hide underneath its body, which provides a bare minimum of respite while really pissing the dragon off.

Things get so bad Senshi offers the use of his cooking knife. A knife made, he says, of Mithril. That’s Mithril of Tolkien fame of course, though like much LotR mythology it’s found its way into the broader fantasy/RPG lexicon. Mithril can penetrate the dragon’s scales all right – but the knife has about a 10 CM blade, so that’s of minimal value in causing meaningful damage (though it does generate even more anger). Then Laios’ parasitic sword hilt makes a break for it (it was never less than clear where its priorities lay), forcing Senshi to sacrifice himself to try and draw the dragons attention away.

Once the dwarf is stomped, Chilchuck steps up to the place to lay down a sacrifice. Laios kind of has to stay alive for this to have any chance of ending well, and Chilchuck manages to retrieve the knife and take out the dragon’s eye with it. But then things go from bad to worse, the half-foot goes down for the count too, and all Laios can do is ask Marcile to use her magic to launch him on what seems like a suicide mission to complete the set. Yet, somehow, it works – as so many of Laios’ unlikely plans seem to do – and Laios manages to reach the dragon’s weak spot despite being clamped in its jaws. But he certainly doesn’t come out unscathed himself.

It’s a good thing Marcille chowed down on that undine soup, because she’s got a lot of healing to do. In a bit of the interesting minutiae that this series is so adept with, it’s revealed that when she heals someone from serious injury (and it’s implied not so when Failin did), they suffer severe pain associated with the healed wounds. That implies Chil and Senshi were both injured pretty gravely, as they were in agony while Laios with his severed leg just has a nasty bout of itching. Still, alive is alive and that the party is – and the dragon is dead. And that means it’s Failin-hunting time.

This is gruesome stuff to be sure, though it’s depicted with ghastly exactitude and attention to detail. The long and bloody slog to reach the stomach – Senshi says it reminds him of his time in the mines (of Moria?) – offers no joy. It’s empty, and so are the intestines. But at the last Laios remembers that dragons retain the inedible parts of their victims for fuel – kind of like owl pellets that are never regurgitated. And with this the hunt is finally “successful” – though the state he finds his sister in hardly speaks of success. Surely this will test the limits of what’s possible, even under the influence of the Lunatic Magician’s spell.