First, let's talk about the one good thing about this manga, and really there is only one good thing: attention to detail. The author has clearly put a lot of effort into making the world-setting coherent, and making the characters and politics feel realistic. I agree with the other reviewers that the characters in this manga feel realistic.

Now, let's talk about the bad. Initially, the story was the MC and his team fighting monsters, sometimes using clever and non-conventional tactics based on the rules of the setting. That was fun and exciting and it made sense in the context of the setting. But as the manga dragged on, the plot just veered off in nonsensical direction, with the protagonists fighting the dungeon master who was practically a god, using tactics and logic that felt like they shouldn't work but somehow they do? I have to say that the story felt more and more unrealistic and nonsensical as it went on. The MC is a goofy type, who is only obsessed with researching monsters and cooking them, and not really interested in politics (at least that's the way it comes across in the manga). If events had proceeded more logically, then most likely the ending would not have been a happy one for the MC. But, a series of happy coincidences resulted in a happy ending for the MC. I didn't like that.

Another thing I didn't like about this manga was that there was too much cooking. Pages upon pages filled with nothing but dialogue about the cooking and eating of fantasy monsters. In the beginning it was okay, I thought maybe this was just some comedy joke thing, but as the manga went on, it got worse and worse. As the series neared its end, there were more and more pages in each chapter that was purely just cooking and eating monsters. Pages upon pages of characters just talking about eating fantasy creatures. It became increasingly tedious and boring for me but I powered through it and got to the end at last. Now, don't get me wrong, I like eating food as much as anyone. But I cannot stand a manga that was literally just about eating food.

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I came into Dungeon Meshi with no expectations and no prior knowledge of what it was about or how good it might be. I was looking for a new manga to read and I tend to like stories involving dungeons in general so I clicked on it and tried it out. Overall, I'm very glad that I did.

Dungeon Meshi is not a groundbreaking, exciting manga full of action and twists. Instead it is an extremely solid story with a simple premise. At first I thought that the focus was too much on food and too little on the great fantasy world imagined by this author. However after I got through a few chapters I came to truly enjoy both the realistic food preparation aspects of the story and the fantasy aspects as well.

Although Dungeon Meshi's story is very much rooted in the archetypal idea of a medieval fantasy world, many of the plot points are grounded completely in logic and reality. Food preparation works as it does in real life, the monster's strengths and weaknesses are sometimes magic but more often realistic details based on how they might be if monsters lived on earth as we know it.

The art is somewhat simple. I don't know too much about judging manga's art but I will say that it is certainly not bad art. It may lack the detail and flair that some manga readers are used to but the style overall is solid.

The characters pretty much adhere to the normal characters you'd expect in a medieval fantasy RPG style world which didn't bother me but may be too plain for others.

Overall I give Dungeon Meshi a 9/10 because although it is a simple manga, it is also a charming one and sometimes it is nice to read something without so much drama, fan service, and cliffhangers.

Story - 9
Art - 8
Character - 8
Enjoyment - 9
Overall - 9

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