If you were to ask me my favorite new anime of 2024, I would say, with absolutely no hesitation, Delicious in Dungeon—although most of its fans just call it Dungeon Meshi (translation: “Dungeon Meal”), because the Japanese title rolls off the tongue much easier.
Dungeon Meshi is based on the manga by Ryōko Kui. (A woman!! Girl power!!) The anime adaptation is brought to us by Studio Trigger, the same studio that brought us the likes of Kill la Kill, Promare, and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. Aside from incredible animation, I’d say Trigger’s hallmarks are big, impressive battles and incredible horniness. Dungeon Meshi isn’t completely devoid of incredible battles (see: Red Dragon) or horniness (see: chimera in second cour), but it feels like we’re discovering a new, cozier side to Trigger.
When I started watching Dungeon Meshi as it premiered in January 2024, I had no idea it would be a two-cour season that would immediately continue into the spring 2024 season. Discovering there would be an extra 12 episodes was as delightful a surprise as realizing you could turn monsters into a colorful sorbet.
But we, as fans, can be greedy. Two cours is excellent, but what about a season two? Has there been any word on that yet?
More Meshi, coming up
The final episode of Dungeon Meshi‘s first season aired on Netflix on June 13, 2024. Because the universe is kind every once in and while, Netflix and Studio Trigger didn’t give fans any time to be anxious about the show’s fate. Season two of Delicious in Dungeon was announced immediately upon the season one finale’s conclusion.
The additional good news here is that this very short, vague announcement not only says that season two will exist, it also tells us that season two is already in development. Trigger kept working on the series this whole time! Still, there’s not yet any word on when we can expect season two to premiere. Studio Trigger does incredible work, so for the sake of their animators, I don’t expect season two to drop until the second half of 2025 at the absolute earliest.
Dungeon Meshi is based on Ryoko Kui’s manga of the same same, which ran from 2014 until 2023. In other words, the source material is completed—and recently, too. Because the manga chapter titles and the titles of segments within each episode are the same, we can learn how much of the manga has yet to be adapted into the anime.
There are 97 chapters of the Dungeon Meshi manga. The final episode of season one of the anime adapted up through chapter 52—just a little over halfway into the manga’s material.
If Dungeon Meshi‘s second season has two cours like season one, the second season will almost certainly be the show’s last. But if Trigger splits the rest of the manga up into two 12-episode seasons, as opposed to cours, we might get season two a little earlier. And then have to wait. There’s advantages to both!
I think we can assume the climax of the series will take up more episodes of anime than chapters of manga. We’ve seen this done, and done well, countless of times before, including in series like Mob Psycho 100.
