Dungeon Meshi episode 21, being heavily dialogue-driven, was pretty straightforward animation-wise and let Ryoko Kui's stunning art speak for itself for the most part, but that doesn't mean that there aren't still some GENERALLY-INSIGNIFICANT-DETAILS-TO-SCRUTINIZE-AT-ARGUABLY-UNNECESSARY-LENGTH.
There was a strong emphasis on hands in this episode, particularly the second half, starting with this cut of Laios resting his on the Minotaur's snout.
The animators have taken this simple little panel (on the right) from the manga (btw, people who know more about this than I do, is there a name for this type of panel, which in film would be called an "insert shot"?)
and turned it into this highly detailed tracking shot that heightens the emotional impact of this moment for Laios. It feels very similar to the shot of Kabru bringing a piece of fish to his mouth that introduced him to the series!
The theme comes up again when Laios does a little bit of blair-witching in the corner after being rejected by house-kitty-pilled Izutsumi,
and once again a few seconds later with this added close-up of Marcille's hand when she tries to read the magical aura of the area.
This one clearly makes heavy use of reference footage, to the point that it almost looks rotoscoped until you notice little details like this line that warps unrealistically at the heel of her palm.
But with smooth, realistic motion like this, little details like that are much less important than the overall feeling of authentic shape and movement. This can be seen in a lot of Masaaki Yuasa's work, which often favors consistent motion and more frames over super polished individual drawings. Here's a thematically appropriate cut from Ping Pong for example:
(This one might actually be rotoscoped, I'm not sure)
If you pause on any individual frame, the lines look wobbly and inconsistent, but it comes together as a whole to create something that feels authentic - real.
The heavy detail in the hand anatomy and the way the skin wrinkles around the knuckles in these cuts feels like a hard departure from Studio TRIGGER's signature heavy stylization, but these realistic cuts have popped up here and there since the start of this show, and I think they fit Dungeon Meshi really well! It can be jarring go straight from wacky bombastic cartoonsmanship to realism, but while it is a show about the hungriest hungriest himbo and his family of weirdos, it's also simultaneously a show about anatomy, ecology, and the horrors of the human mindbrain.
This was expanded from an excerpt from this video where I break down the whole episode, so if you want to continue wallowing in the sludge with me, consider checking out the video!
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