How Dungeon Meshi Fixes Fantasy Races
Writing about all the issue with fantasy racism, I cannot help but come back to one thing. The one piece of Fantasy media that did fantasy races, and did them right. And it is not a western book, or show, or game. No, it is an manga. And this manga is Dungeon Meshi, or Delicious in Dungeon.
Frankly, till I read this manga, I did not think that anyone would actually fix the issue of fantasy races. I did not think that it was actually possible. But in comes Rui, and just does that. And I am still bloody amazed by it.
So, let's talk about how Dungeon Meshi fixes Fantasy Racism.
Human Means "two arms, two legs, sentient"
The first noticable way in which Dungeon Meshi distinguishes its worldbuilding from pretty much any other piece of fantasy media that involves races, is in its use of language. Elves are still elves, dwarves are still dwarves, but human in this world is the word for all the species that are in the vaguest sense humanoid. Everything that has by default two arms, two legs, and is sentient in the way it uses language, is a human. The race that in other media is called "human" is called "tallmen" in this fantasy world. And this single change actually changes a whole lot.
Anyone who has ever written for a fantasy setting with different races probably knows this issue: you write a sentence. And then you stop and look at it. You just used the word "human". To describe people. Only problem: humans are not the only people in this world. In fact, the person speaking is an elf. They are describing their halfling friend. Neither of them is a human. So why did they say, that this one kind of behavior is just very human? It is not. Because in this world, they are other. In this world, there is just no word to describe all the people who are generally humanoid and think and speak and walk and err and whatever.
Meanwhile there is the world of Dungeon Meshi. Where in fact "too err is human". Because elves, and dwarves, and halffoots, and kobolds, and ogers, and gnomes, and tallmen, and all the other races are all human. All of them. The language allows the people in the world to use terms that describe them all, without othering any one group, or making one group the default.
And this is incredible in the way it makes the people think about the world - but also in how it shapes fandom discussion. Because language shapes how we think about anything. And if we do not have a collective word to describe all those different kind of people, then we do not see them as the same.
And I will openly admit: while I know this last fact... never have I ever considered the solution of just using the word "human" to describe them all, and give what normally would be considered "human" a different name.
Not just Humans Plus/Minus
The way Kui constructed the world with humans being the one overarching term is not just the only aspect in which the Dungeon Meshi world differs. There is another big aspect to this.
Because most fantasy does use one thing for worldbuilding that is another big issue. Every humanoid but non-human race is defined by their difference to humans. This is most notable in pretty much all RPGs, especially TTRPGs, where it is usual to have humans to just get the "standard stat block". So humans will just have normal stats, while everyone else then gets either a + or a -. So for examples elves with often get a bonus on charisma, but a malus on stamina. And dwarves will have a bonus on stamina, but a malus on wits. And orcs will have a malus in charisma, but a bonus on strength. The important aspect of this is: humans are the standard. Everyone else tends to be measured in how much they differ from the humans.
This again is also a thing in which the way we tend to portray fantasy very much mirrors the way we frame fantasy is very similar to how we interact with the real world. While obviously generally everyone tends to think of their own culture and ethnicity as "normal", the fact that western imperialism has changed the world so much often forces people from non-western cultures to still be familiar with the western view onto the world as it is often standard in many books - especially in school and academia. Framing white people, and also the Christian worldview as the "normative" one that everyone else has to compare to. And this is what we reflect here into fantasy. (The same with how often fantasy cultures will also be defined by the ways in which they differ from ours. Things that are the same we expect in reality we often do not consider worth mention.)
Dungeon Meshi does not do this. It does not portray the tall-men as the standard, and the other races as the the different ones. This is accomplished by actually centering non-tall-men perspectives, showing us that everyone just considers themselves as the normal standard. This shows the most in the chapter in which the characters get transformed by the changelings into races other than their own, and everyone describes - naturally - the difference from the perspective of their own way of looking at it being the "normal" one.
This is what I have talked about in terms of Dragon Age as well. The issue being less in how different races are portrayed but that the human perspective is featured as the "normal" one.
There is Cultural Diversity
In comparison to a lot of other high fantasy media, Dungeon Meshi has a very limited setting, given everything that happens is actually happening on a fairly small island. So, we do not have the usual LotR inspired "we travel along the entire continent". And still, we do see a lot more about different cultures in this world, because we see a bunch of characters who have come to the island as adventurers and who come from different cultures and carry stuff from their respective cultures with them.
We see this most, of course, through the perspective of food. Whenever the protagonist group interacts with other adventurers, we get little bits and pieces about their respective cuisine and food traditions. This is most notable of course with the meeting between Laiois' group and Shuro's group, but otherwise still is a running theme of the series.
Most notably though: these cultural lines are not drawn among race lines, but indeed along cultural ones. Sure, everyone of the races do also have specific flavors of any local culture. Because yes, the elves certainly do their own specific thing, and the gnomes as well, and yet whenever you go into the different places in this world, whereever the races are living integrated, we see cultures that do have some specific elvish thing, and a specific tall-men thing, and so on.
This is all made even more clear in the Adventuring Bible, where Kui spends some time going into some differences between different elves living in different parts of the world. It makes clear the one thing that I always group so frustrated with in other fantasy: even with elves, who live so very long, their culture would still be somewhat shaped by their specific environments. Yes, the elves living in colder climates will dress differently, than the elves living in warmer climates.
And more than that: in the end every elf, every half-foot, every tall-man, and every dwarf is an individuum. Meaning that this entire idea of bio-essencialism is pretty much absent.
While, again, we do not see that much of the other cultures as a whole due to the setting being limited to the dungeon, we do see some of it in flashbacks of different characters, and in the interaction between characters. One interaction that I also found so speaking is the interactions between Namari and Senshi. While Dungeon Meshi dwarves are less of the "drunken Scotsman" stereotype, they still are very much known for blacksmithing. Only that Senshi, our main dwarf, does not cave a flying fuck about blacksmithing, and Namari, who takes great pride in the fact that dwarves are good smiths, is outright acting insulted because of Senshi's carelessness about those topics.
This is an interaction I definitely have seen between people of real world cultures, where one takes pride in a thing their culture is known for, while the other does not care. And it showed so much, that in the end here the races are cultural, not inherently biological.
In a lot of fantasy media, especially when it comes to games, a lot of the things about races come down to stats differences. Humans are the standard with being incredibly average. Dwarves are bulky and tend to have more constitution or HP. Elves often have more dexterity, and maybe speed, or maybe wisdom or intelligence. Orcs have more strength. Halflings usually also get more dexterity. You get the idea. You probably have played at least one TTRPG where you can think of some.
The issue with this is, of course, that this once more adds to this idea of bioessentialism. Saying: "there is very physical differences between races, and one of them are stronger and others more intelligent by default". Which is again so problematic, because there is so much in here where it is quite often clear that the fantasy races do tie in with real life racism, and many times the fantasy races even then paralleling ideas about real life identities.
Those ideas very much exist as well in the world of Dungeon Meshi, but for the most part a lot of the differences between the races here is once more not as much biological, than cultural. This does not stop the fact that people often have prejudice about this, sure, but the story interacts with this to actually show us how much of it is prejudice and culture.
However, there is one very strong biological difference between the races in Dungeon Meshi, which is put in as the biggest factor for anything else: the life span.
Without spoiling too much for people who have not read the manga: the main conflict in the end is very much related to how different the life spans of the different races are. Generally the world often distinguishes between the long lived races (elves, gnomes, and dwarves) and the short lived races (tall-men, oni, kobolds, half-foots, and orcs). And in this Dungeon Meshi understands a thing that a lot of fantasy struggles with: what time actually means.
This entire little series of entries have been brought up, of course, by Dragon Age. And Dragon Age is very much an example of this. 7000 years is such a long time to a species with normal life spans that culture would have changed so, so much over those years, that it is insane to imagine that after 7000 years of elves being seperated there, there would even be a unified elven culture in Thedas. And in so many other fantasy worlds, cultures all tend to be so strangely stable in how they develop. No matter how the life spans in that story are.
Meanwhile in Dungeon Meshi, the life spans are what makes among the biggest difference. Because indeed, the general cultures of longer lived races are a lot more stable. Sure, they are influenced by cultural changes of the shorter lived races, but still... a person who lives 200 to 400 years, will just experience those changes differently, and think about the changing of those cultures from a different perspective.
Which is also why the main cuts we see between the races for the most part are between the long lived and the short lived. In many places the elves do in fact do their own thing, because they just live about 7 times as long as a human, and 8 times as long as half-foot. So, for so many reasons, it makes sense that often they do not really interact as much with the shorter lived races. Just as it makes sense that while of course there are prejudices between the races, nowhere do we see those as strongly as between the longer lived races. Elves and gnomes are most notably, as their general philosophies about magic are often opposed to each other, and with people being around longer, they have a lot more chances to meet one of the other and hold a grudge. Meanwhile both do push back against dwarves as well, as dwarves, who did in fact often live apart from the other races, often did not think as highly about magic.
The world of Dungeon Meshi also addresses one thing related the long life spans that usually get ignored: longer lives usually tend people to get stuck in specific ways of thinking. Realistically speaking quite many elves would not be those wise, thoughful folks to give you guidance, but more... your conservative old uncle on steroids. Because their worldview would just entrench itself over the years.
And the fact that this is actually something that plays so much more into the relations between the races than anything else. It shows them more in a way that makes sense, rather than being more mythical about it.
Another thing that has to be acknowledged with Dungeon Meshi is, that food is possibly one of the bests lenses to explore culture through, because it is one of the aspects of different cultures that is easily experienced and more easily understood. Sure, you might not know what possible religious reasons another culture might have to use a specific spice or so, but you can see it, you can use it, you can taste it, you can see how it differentiates the dishes from that culture from that of others.
I talked in this blog more than once about how I generally have issues with how a lot of worldbuilding focuses on big topics, but does not waste a thought to everyday things, like food, hair style, songs and stories (that are not actually mythological).
And Dungeon Meshi has obviously the leg up in this, because the primary lens through which the audience gets to know about this world is indeed food. Food is the framing device employed by Kui to let us see the characters and the cultures as well.
They do it really good as well. Because it is brought up in very natural ways. Obviously the things Senshi cooks for everyone in the dungeon is mostly based on what they can hunt and scavenge in the dungeon, but throughout it we always see characters compare the dungeon food to food common in their homes.
We also get some sense in this, how yes, the different races do have differences in their food, but in general the race specific food preferences tend to come second place to general cultural ones, based on where someone is living and the local culture. Which again, shows us that culture is influenced by the races, sure, but the race of someone is not the only defining factor in their culture and behavior.
There also is the factor that here the food is not purely functional, but definitely has also cultural vibes in it. Something that is partially related to the issue a lot of other fantasy runs into: "Say, what did the people in the middle ages eat?"
While, admittedly, Kui's framing of food in some instances does indeed somewhat shrug of some factors that definitely are limiting factors in reality (if you have ever cooked over an open flame, you will know what I am talking about), it still moves away of many clichés that fantasy uses in terms of depicting cuisine in their worlds. And that is another important aspect of making her worldbuilding more believable.
Worldbuilding vs Fairy Tales
If you ask me, the issue what got lost in fantasy settings inspired by Lord of the Rings, is, that in the end Tolkien actually wanted to create more of a mythology. Yes, he did a ton of worldbuilding for Middle Earth, but in the end to him the idea that it would feel mythic was more important to him, than the world being somehow a super internally consistent working world. Which is why he on one hand has all this really explicit conlanging, but at the same time somehow the completely isolated hobbits from the Shire, who are so isolated in fact that most of the world thinks of them as a myth, if they know about them at all, do speak the same language as the people in Minas Tirith and Rohan. Because in the end Lord of the Rings is very much still more about themes, than it is about realism.
This kind of thought got lost though when others mirrored Middle Earth in their own words, copying a lot of attributes from it, but putting it in a new environment that would have asked for a less mythical and more realistic framing.
This creates an environment where basically all those fantasy settings are having a conversation with Lord of the Rings. And this often happens via the depiction of the races. TV Tropes has a bunch of tropes under this: Our Elves Are Different, Our Orcs Are Different, Our Dwarves Are All The Same.
Ironically, of course, Dungeon Meshi is still very much in this conversation - but also does understand maybe more than a lot of other worlds the mythical idea. This does show especially with how the series deals with the elves. Because yes, as I said, the longer lived races tend to be a bit more distanced in many places from the shorter lived ones. This is most true for the elves. A lot of elves do stay among their own, barely interacting with others. They have different cultures, yes, but also... they try to have their own thing. And because of that a lot of people in this world do think of elves as wise and mystical. Because many of the other humans never once in their life encountered an elf. This is also why some people believe that dark elves are a thing. Because many have this mythical idea o the wise elves, and then when people encounter the elves that are often quite shitty due to their worldview, people will go: "Oh, that cannot have been a real elf. There must be Dark Elves here!"
The main difference really comes down to this: a lot of fantasy media does on one hand enjoy the Tolkienesque archetypes, but also does not fully dare to move away from it or question what the changes they push for would actually mean within their universe. And in so many fantasy settings we see what this leads to. Because let's face it: a ton of fantasy settings that go for "Our Elves Are Different", still look of the idea of elves as wise, and nature loving, and end up... with the noble savage stereotype. Some go from this and explicitly, half-hazardly try to make the elves into some sort of indigenous metaphor, only to not interact with that, others meanwhile just do not interact with it at all. And this is where it tends to fall apart.
The irony in some ways is, that actually... yeah, even the Middle Earth elves - who very much are NOT an indigenous stand-in - are actually if you look at it from the perspective of the other races in Middle Earth a bit off assholes. Heck, the text does in fact point this out a bunch of times, with other character challenging the elves on some philosophical points. But exactly that idea is something a lot of fantasy writers clearly did not really like. And Dungeon Meshi now... Dungeon Meshi does come back to it. Because it does make sense. Elves, who live so long, will just have different priorities, and it would create a culture or rather cultures for them, that often will clash with the ideals and cultures of the shorter lived groups. And this does in the very end feel a lot more consistent and satisfying than whatever might be going on with the elves in franchises like Dragon Age, Divinity, or even my beloved Witcher franchise.
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