My desire to talk about the end of something I truly love hardly ever outweighs the dread of my inability to do it justice. Typically when I tackle a review I have music pumping through my headphones and a bounce in my knee- a sort of power tap to let off the excess excitement of the moment. With finales like Delicious In Dungeon volume 14, it all feels to still, too surreal. For whatever reason, I have a bad habit of being late to the party with these types of works. Blue Period, Interviews With Monster Girls– there’s more than a few examples where my procrastination had gotten the better of me. Maybe it’s because of how I worry about what happens when it ends. It’s hard to say.
I could probably launch into some great big metaphor that likens my experience to that of our characters in Delicious In Dungeon volume 14, but I really doubt anyone would like to hear me bemoan my own choices any further. With that said though, it’s an impossible task to broach with much of any delicacy, so I’ll cut to the chase with a quick recap. The demon of the dungeon was defeated and Laios saved the world. But what of everything else? As expected from Kui, the follow through on the “what comes after” of Delicious In Dungeon is very well appreciated, and further drives home their narrative of food as an aspect of culture, connection, and communication. Not everybody on the island knew or loved Falin like Laios (and Marcille) do, but they can feel that love through them, and express that with their actions.
To really generalize, it captures the human condition as filtered through food. With Izutsumi you can’t just eat what you want and survive, you have to make choices that allow you to choose and move forward, for example. Another great illustration of that is in how Kui ties the desires swallowed up by the lion to food: both in the case of desires being replaced by new food, and desires becoming metaphors based upon food. It’s an inescapable veil that thinly drapes itself across the entirety of the volume, with the difference being a faint shimmer that gives away its existence now. Of course, much of this has already been discussed in bits and pieces through the various levels of the dungeon. However, much like that dungeon as it rises out of the ocean, Delicious In Dungeon volume 14 provides a far more complete and independent picture. Marcille’s fears end up faced with a slight joke about eating well so you can live to 700, and Laios’ fear of acceptance is personified by the island’s desire to eat (the dragon half of) Falin, after all. In a lot of cases it’s certainly a form of closure for those moments, but I think that more than that it’s a beautiful way to say goodbye. It’s a step taken away from the cobblestones that descended into unknown depths, and a step taken towards the golden sands illuminated by a wonderful sunrise.
Another tomorrow exists for our cast. Another tomorrow that doesn’t assuage their fears and concerns, but another tomorrow that lets them choose how to live. And there’s no better way to illustrate that than to have wiped the slate clean with Delicious In Dungeon volume 14. The stakes of everything prior to it melt away, and rather than providing clearer skies for the future, a thick haze is draped overtop everything- for Laios, that is. Marcille found her conclusion in the prior volume, and the rest of the supporting cast has always had at least one eye turned towards where they’ll go next. Standing tall(man), but alone, Laios has to find where he will go next in this volume, and Kui does a wonderful job of allowing him to grope through that fog to come to his own conclusion. It’s an agglomeration of all the different perspectives he’s come into contact with so far, but what results in that is something that remains entirely Laios. His dreams and ambitions have changed forever, but the crazed man that made meals out of monsters (definitely for the sake of his sister) is still the same without the dungeon.
You could pluck some fancy meaning of how dreams are a manifestation of the individual rather than a product- or any other number of vague statements- but the fact remains that Delicious In Dungeon volume 14 is all about what comes next rather than what remains on the horizon. Kui drives that point home in what can only be called heartwarming in the context of this series alone- how everyone cooks Falin. When Izutsumi has to tackle the question of what to do next, they frame it as what awaits them at the end of their desires, but our rescue team can only think within the context of how they cook Falin, sans Laios of course as he’s still deciding on those next steps. It’s an impeccable focus on the duality of a dream, where you have to take the first step to experience the last. These big dreams that await the future of the world, the desires that lurk in a forgotten continent, they remain obscured behind how our characters pick apart and devour Falin.
It’s so… simple. Anticlimactic. It almost feels like Delicious In Dungeon volume 14 robs you of your desire for another page, another panel. What more is there that Kui could add? Side stories would only ever be their namesake, and spinoffs just can’t do the work justice. It is as complete a package as it could hope to be. A definitive conclusion that leaves no breathing room or sunset-stained “Until next time”. A love for food, a curiosity of forbidden magic, an insatiable interest in monsters- we’ve seen these dreams to their ends, and while the characters have gone on to exist past these pieces we know them for, it’s not a story for a reader. Very few works will be like Delicious In Dungeon, and while it’s unfortunate, Ryoko Kui deserves her flowers for not just the magic of this series, but for one of the most unique and filling finales I’ve read.
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