Reading Report: 19 July 2026

ダンジョン飯

ダンジョン飯

It was another week where Dungeon Meshi was basically the sole focus. Volumes 7-11 did a pretty good job introducing some of the heavier, lore-ier parts of the world, which I think came at a really good time to make Laios and the crews' personal drama into something more significant. I especially liked the way Mithrun's backstory both humanised him and recontextualised the winged lion creature Laios was encouraged to save. The succubus chapter was a cute Izutsumi focus, but beyond that she has remained a fairly uninteresting character, and going into volumes 11 and 12 Marcille has a lot more development that I've enjoyed seeing. Bundling several spoilers together (should be safe if you've read to the start of volume 12) I really liked the relationship between the demons and dungeon masters, the revelation that the winged lion was a demon and his help is a faustian bargain, and finding out that Marcille is motivated by her observation that the significant gap between each race's age spans creates an imbalance, and that's exacerbated by being a half-elf and watching her father die while she was still young.

モンスターハンターワイルズ

I honestly still don't have much to say about this but it represents like 60 hours of time spent this week and I did it in Japanese so I might as well mention it. I basically didn't find the story interesting at all. Some of the NPCs were fun to engage with, like the fishing enthusiast in the flooded forest who nicknames the player ツリトモ ("fishin' buddy"). The development of ナタ (the main child character you're helping out for the whole story) was alright, and I liked how he grows up during the main story events (of low rank) but Monster Hunter is such a branded experience now I feel like they're unable to tell an interesting story that doesn't meet the core principles of Monster Hunter™. Anyway I certainly played a lot of Monster Hunter.