OutsourcingOutsourcing: The process of subcontracting part of the work to other studios. Partial outsourcing is very common for tasks like key animation, coloring, backgrounds and the likes, but most TV anime also has instances of full outsourcing (グロス) where an episode is entirely handled by a different studio. and various delegations of duties have become tools for TV anime to barely survive, but with its team’s clear vision and enviable contacts, Dungeon Meshi has been able to alternate between external production excellence and Trigger’s explosive in-house ambition.

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The February 29th issue of Weekly Famitsu includes a lengthy feature about Dungeon Meshi, perhaps best known for the drawing where author Ryoko Kui immortalized the elves from Western RPGs that influenced her; can’t say any of them can match Marcille’s fat ears, but those are high standards. That issue also happens to contain an interview with anime series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario. Yoshihiro Miyajima and its character designer Naoki Takeda—a duo that, as they’ve made explicit every time they’ve had a mic, camera, or pen in front of their faces, were massive fans of the series to begin with. In our introductory article for this adaptation, we noted that Miyajima’s relationship with the series and his growth within studio Trigger is tied to the existence of Dungeon Meshi’s anime in the first place, and this interview sheds some more light on that. Most amusingly, it explains that before it was even fully greenlit, Miyajima used the prospect of a Dungeon Meshi adaptation to keep Takeda in the studio, since at the time he’d received offers to work elsewhere. Never underestimate people’s desire to work on their favorite series, because it can reshape entire studios.

That same interview—originally held in January of this year—also has Miyajima confirm that they’d just started production on the last episode, which by now brings it to near completion. While people tend to oversimplify the circumstances around projects with a solid schedule to the point of painting them as breezy, the quest to get here hasn’t necessarily been easy. Speaking for the show’s official guidebook, series composer Kimiko Ueno exposed the struggles to protect the integrity of the original work, while also being forced to make some cuts here and there due to its dense nature and the amount of material they set out to cover. The composition aspect we’ve praised before was the most troublesome to her; Ueno couldn’t envision a satisfying endpoint until the final stages of pre-production, making this the most she’s ever struggled in that regard. We also shouldn’t forget that, for as nicely as that turned out as well, Gridman Universe was willing to shift its production schedule to retain all of its core team, which ended up impacting a Dungeon Meshi adaptation that was already in the making.

As has been happening every time a Trigger project has wrapped up with a favorable schedule, the core staff are the first ones to point out that this is not the norm for them; meaning that it was Miyajima himself who added that it was exceptionally smooth compared to the other shows produced at the studio. In explaining why, not just in this interview but anytime he’s been asked about the series, Miyajima has settled on a similar answer to Akira Amemiya’s reasoning behind Gridman’s successful production.

Back then, Amemiya said that he’d surrounded himself with people he admired in the first place, greatly reducing the need for retakes as he knew they’d be delivering something up to his taste. The choice of personnel and delegation are definitely part of the answer here as well, not so much in the sense of cherrypicking favorite artists, but in the way Miyajima sought key individuals who shared an important trait with him: they’d already imagined what they’d like to do in a Dungeon Meshi anime, years before one was greenlit. By having given it so much thought already and being on the same page to begin with, the pre-production—potentially very taxing in a dense fantasy series—stands to become much smoother. Even as they’ve moved onto the show, whether it’s one corner they know they can cut or a chapter they already knew they’d have to pour extra energy into, the deep understanding of the series they’ve cultivated over a long time is paying dividends.

Though that is more or less the official answer, I believe there’s more to it when you take a step back and observe the studio as a whole. In our previous piece, we focused on the increasingly more diverse stylistic repertoire of Trigger. That’s something that doesn’t just manifest in the way that their lead creatives like to draw things—or not draw them, in Miyajima’s case—but also their creative philosophies, and how those extend to project management. It’s obviously not by a lack of experience that a veteran like Hiroyuki Imaishi is surrounded by chaos, but rather because he thrives in it, even while being aware of its drawbacks. Similarly, Yoh Yoshinari doesn’t cut it close due to a lack of technical skill; if anything, it’s his superlative ability that fuels his ambition, which tells him that any second available is a second best spent improving his work.

In contrast to them, Miyajima’s roots aren’t in idiosyncratic, ambitious animation, but rather in sound management. During his first few years as a production assistantProduction Assistant (制作進行, Seisaku Shinkou): Effectively the lowest ranking 'producer' role, and yet an essential cog in the system. They check and carry around the materials, and contact the dozens upon dozens of artists required to get an episode finished. Usually handling multiple episodes of the shows they're involved with., and even later as an episode director, much of his role was ensuring that things got finished in a studio full of volcanic creatives. Though he’s certainly developed creative qualities across almost an entire decade of directorial duties, that practical side to him is never going away. Whether conscious or not, the awareness of the schedule, the scope of the project, and so on clearly inform all the decisions he makes as series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario.. Mind you, we can say this with confidence now that we’ve seen his approach as a leader, because simply assuming based on someone’s background could lead to the wrong conclusion. Look no further than the aforementioned Amemiya, who despite having been pegged as a director following Imaishi’s steps before he got a major project of his own, in the end turned out to have the pragmatic bone you need to excel in TV anime.

When it comes to managing a project, prioritization is a key concept; one that, much like other industry vernacular that has gained traction among English-speaking fandom, is prone to be misunderstood as it gets misused to justify loud people’s (dis)like of cartoons. The concept is as simple as it gets: not all episodes are created equal, so rather than spend the exact same amount of financial and creative resources across them all, teams will modulate those according to narrative and scheduling reasons. Though it’s hardly an idea exclusive to methodical series directors like Miyajima, the extent to which it’s emphasized certainly varies. Dungeon Meshi’s respectably high floor makes it so that the contrast between highs and lows isn’t as extreme as the many messy TV anime that go nuclear for a singular episode, but among high-profile series, its commitment to that idea is quite bold.

If we look back at the first three episodes we’ve already covered, and despite the tendency to flex muscles in the premiere, Miyajima was confident in letting the inherent appeal of Kui’s worldview do most of the talking at the start; something he referred to as the tutorial stage, rather aptly given Kui’s gaming influences. On the other hand, he felt like the third episode was worthy of a special effort, hence why they’d always planned to ramp everything up to degrees you might not have imagined from those modest beginnings.

Although in that case it wasn’t a purely narrative reason—a couple of important events do happen in episode #03, but no more than in the first couple—he still felt like it was a moment that showcased the strength of Kui’s worldbuilding. After all, we can all more or less imagine how one would turn organic-looking monsters into a meal, but how could someone cook a piece of armor while still striving for the internal coherence of Dungeon Meshi? The resulting action hijinks are very enjoyable, but the reasoning behind that prioritization is more fundamental: their effort ought to match the author’s wild imagination.

With a better understanding of Miyajima’s emphasis on resource management, we can finally move forward to the next episodes. After such a hectic time with the living armors and given this mindset we’ve been talking about, it should be no surprise that episode #04 is characterized by more restraint. While it introduces the party to more dynamics within the dungeon and has its fair share of amusing moments, these are the type of chapters that Miyajima believes can mostly sustain themselves through Kui’s charming storytelling—plus the inestimable help of Senshi and Marcille’s voice acting, and a guest appearance by one Atsushi Ikariya.

If you’re acquainted with Trigger’s work, the specific flavor of this breather should be very familiar. Tatsumi Fujii of Yostar Pictures has been a recurring presence in their productions for so long that he’s cycled through different studio names in the process; a very technical change, since the Albacrow gang he was attached to alongside other Trigger-adjacent creators simply got absorbed into Yostar. Though outsourcingOutsourcing: The process of subcontracting part of the work to other studios. Partial outsourcing is very common for tasks like key animation, coloring, backgrounds and the likes, but most TV anime also has instances of full outsourcing (グロス) where an episode is entirely handled by a different studio. in TV anime rarely involves the storyboarding process, tight relationships like the one Trigger has with Fujii allow him to handle that on top of managing its production at his own studio. Under normal circumstances, he’d have acted as its episode director too, but paternity forced him to delegate those duties to a Trigger newcomer. Perhaps a fitting outcome, given that one of the reasons he was happy to accept the job was the practical training of young staff. Yostar’s up-and-coming animators ended up handling most of the first half of the episode, which I hope helped them prepare for very busy times at their studio.

Had the anime continued to offer adequate episodes until the time comes to go all out again, the adaptation would have earned passing marks. What it has achieved across this recent stretch, though, is something much more impressive; Dungeon Meshi has found ways to raise the bar while preserving energy for its core team, enabling many consecutive episodes with their own flavor of excellence, and painting an encouraging picture for the future of this show as well.

The show’s strongest set of episodes so far begins with Aya Ikeda’s storyboarding and direction in #05. Though she has started appearing all over the works of A-1 Pictures, the studio she belongs to, the one title that immediately comes to mind right off the bat is Kaguya-sama. For one, because Mamoru Hatakeyama’s influence on the still budding director is as obvious as it gets; his flat shading and extreme close-ups to isolate emotional shifts, paneling for similar purposes or simply for the sake of a gag, the attempts to make exposition more palatable with thematically fitting visual flourishes, it’s got it all. Fittingly so, Dungeon Meshi’s animation producer Shunsuke Shida pointed at her first storyboard in that series as having been what put her on the radar, leading to their attempt to get her on board despite her busy schedule.

Given the results, they were right in seeking her talents. Episode #05 perhaps comes the closest to matching the surreal humor of Kui’s original manga, while at the same time still embracing the hilarious dramatization of this adaptation. For as well as they work there, I also find those Hatakeyama school stylizations to be an excellent fit for the more serious scenes. Though Kui did like the commercial for the series that Miyajima originally directed, one piece of advice that she sent his way was to remember that the dungeon is a pretty dark location. All directors have approached lighting from different angles and with varying degrees of emphasis, and Ikeda successfully oscillates between two modes; the serene but often unsettling look of zenkage shots, and intricately shaded artwork when the spookiness switches from implied to overt. Though I never got the impression that the two chapters covered by this episode were necessarily part of one singular whole, Ikeda’s presentation sells them as such, like a funny horror adventure that was always meant to be told this way. The first big win in seeking external directors, and there are more of those to come.

How long would we have to wait for another one? Exactly one week, as episode #06 happens to be one of the most interesting ones in the entire show. Rather than simply seeking a talented external director like Ikeda, this marks another fully outsourced episode—though one that still builds upon this team’s relationships. Its director and storyboarder is Keita Nagahara, an animation geek who sails from Kyoto Animation’s Osaka branch. Though he’s got the acting fundamentals you’d expect from someone trained there, his broad love of animation has taken him to hop between the biggest action shows of the moment, silly kids anime, the most mainstream films, and everything between; and I do mean everything, because he’s also given a try to all sorts of animation and direction roles in just a few years.

To match Nagahara’s passion for the craft, we have a studio that’s characterized by housing animation geeks like him. Enishiya is an interesting company that offers services on multiple levels; IP management, as seen in the upcoming Spice and Wolf reboot, and also acting as their own anime studio. Thanks to individuals like animation producer Kei Igarashi, it’s the latter that have regularly gathered some of the best talent in the entire industry. Igarashi grew acquainted with exciting young artists during his time at studio 3hz, but reducing his success to that does a disservice to the actual reasons: his genuine passion for animation, and the ability to create an environment that is attractive to creators who enjoy working without restraints. To achieve that, Enishiya started by focusing on smaller projects offering better rates—this includes commercials, promotional videos, short films, and most blatantly, an all-stars (including but not limited to Ed Sheeran) Pokemon music video.

It hasn’t been until more recently, with the studio having properly established itself on a financial and creative level, that they’ve started tackling entire episodes. Mind you, this is something they’re still being very exclusive about; if Yostar’s appearance in episode #04 was Trigger calling a reliable acquaintance not everyone has access to, Enishiya’s #06 is the deluxe service that mere mortals can’t hope to aspire to. Their first episode was Do it Yourself #05, a highlight within one of the best aesthetic achievements in the last decade of anime. For their next challenge, they tackled Frieren #14, and I think I don’t have to explain how high the animation standards are over there. Anime outsourcingOutsourcing: The process of subcontracting part of the work to other studios. Partial outsourcing is very common for tasks like key animation, coloring, backgrounds and the likes, but most TV anime also has instances of full outsourcing (グロス) where an episode is entirely handled by a different studio. is meant to give breathing room to the core team, but exceptionally talented outside help like this completely shatter the preconception that a low-priority episode—so low they’re literally not the ones making it!—has to be bad in any way.

The Massara short film, produced at Enishiya and with Nagahar also at the helm, is another beautiful example of their abilities. It’s also quite relevant to this team at Trigger, as its character designer is Mayumi Nakamura—a key figure in the likes of Gridman, who also served as the character designer for Miyajima’s original commercial for Dungeon Meshi. Those are the nice excuses I found to promote it again, anyway.

What makes episode #06 so interesting, besides this type of premiere outsourcingOutsourcing: The process of subcontracting part of the work to other studios. Partial outsourcing is very common for tasks like key animation, coloring, backgrounds and the likes, but most TV anime also has instances of full outsourcing (グロス) where an episode is entirely handled by a different studio. having become a thing of the past, is how it serves as a microcosm of this excellence in management. If Enishiya’s presence embodies the smart choices on a macro scale, the way it’s executed is brilliant micromanagement. The aforementioned Nagahara proves that all-rounder status by drawing essentially the entire first half of the episode alongside animation director Hirotoshi Arai, allowing the vibrant animation talent that always gathers at the studio to focus on the second one.

Similarly to how Dungeon Meshi as a whole is thriving in these outsourced episodes that might have normally been a sacrifice, Nagahara and Arai’s large workload didn’t really come at a cost, but rather immediately established the strong identity of the episode. It’s one where the physical depth of the dungeon is more impressive than ever, constructing immersive layouts that often imply something may be lurking in the shadows—and emphasizing those more to begin with, again returning to Kui’s comment about the dungeon being a dark place. This boost to the unsettling nature of the setting doesn’t come at the cost of the humor either; if anything, the funny perspectives and layered shots combining multiple panels for the sake of contrast also make everything more amusing than usual. Having a smile on your face while also being aware that something horrifying may be lurking around the corner is the true Dungeon Meshi experience.

The very last shot of the episode couldn’t be a better summary of what is so appealing about this approach. This somewhat original addition (it’s based on an omake rather than this chapter) combines one of those immersive layoutsLayouts (レイアウト): The drawings where animation is actually born; they expand the usually simple visual ideas from the storyboard into the actual skeleton of animation, detailing both the work of the key animator and the background artists. with charming, limited shorthand animation to depict a fun argument… then uses that same depth to startle the characters with one last creepy turn. That’s the episode in a nutshell, and a mimic in the wrong shell.

Before we get to that point, though, it’s well worth shouting out a second half that exploits all the energy they had in reserve. Its supervisor Toya Oshima is perhaps the most renowned animator employed by Enishiya, often acting as a centerpiece that helps gather the young but still glamorous faces seen all over their credits. Radical linework and a propensity for background animation are qualities that got him noticed even by stars when he was a complete newbie, and despite having developed his style since then, those remain important aspects of his repertoire. That makes the action sequences in this half-episode feel like an excellent fit for him, as Chilchuck desperately tries to escape a mimic crawling across a locked room. It also helps that he was surrounded by animators who aren’t just talented, but also share those characteristics despite approaching them from different angles. Ren Onodera’s prodigious usage of CG assistance bounces off well as someone who has a good eye for manually altering perspectives, as does Takeshi Maenami’s sheer intensity.

Shout out to Kaito Tomioka’s thrilling sequence (and Meka Aoratos’ contributions after it) as well, on grounds of kicking ass.

After a couple of outsourced episodes in quick succession, and one that still was built around an outside director, Dungeon Meshi gets to enjoy the upside of a rested core team without having suffered any downside. It’s interesting to hear that episode #07 in particular was deemed to be such a highlight, as that might not have been what a fan would have instinctively prioritized. Given how successfully it exposes the cast to the dungeon as a living, thriving ecosystem that they themselves are a part of, though, I would agree that it’s well worth emphasizing it.

The circle of life within the dungeon is something that Senshi has been trying to explain to them ever since they met it, but the way these three chapters—perfectly threaded into one adventure—tackle it from multiple angles drives the point for adventurers and viewers alike. Be it the dramatic choice to eat a horse Senshi once considered a friend, the thrilling fight against a super-predator kraken, or the final punchline with Laios being tormented by its parasites, it all comes down to that understanding of the dungeon as one living being they’re all part of.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that, to match the excitement he felt when he first read it, Miyajima wants to emphasize the moments where there’s the most joy to be found in watching the events in motion. That immediately brings the action in this episode to mind, and for good reason at that. The climax of the fight against the kraken by young in-house aces Shimon Dohi and Sho Oi packs enough secondary animation, organic movement, and attention to detail to fulfill anyone’s wild dreams about what it would be like to fight a massive squid. The way it’s drained from color when dying is as biologically accurate as Kui intended it to be, but would have never been as satisfying (apologies to all mollusks reading this) with lesser execution (no apologies for the pun). The way its pigmented spots immediately fade as a cel element and the authentic deflation makes it so that the painting and compositing crews have a much better foundation to sell this scene. While it’s not as bombastic, I was also impressed by the ferocity of the underwater kelpie, which has some of the best character art in the show so far.

Given Kui’s fascinating worldbuilding, though, episodes like this also thrive in smaller moments like watching how the kelpie shakes itself dry—a cute interpretation of a fantastical moment, appropriately entrusted to another animator with KyoAni roots in Haruki Sakamoto. Given how often he’s been given cuts where they need to showcase intimacy (especially around Falin) or otherwise whimsical charm like this, the team definitely knows his qualities.

And speaking of the devil, the last episode we’ll be covering for now features Marcille’s first meeting with the member of the party they’re trying to rescue. Though he’s not really affiliated with Trigger, the episode’s brilliant storyboarder Yuki Yonemori isn’t an unexpected face—especially not around friends of his like Kai Ikarashi, who turned a small fleeing sequence from the manga into a highlight that will be remembered. Despite those bombastic moments, though, Yonemori’s defining characteristic as an animator is more down-to-earth articulated acting. Ever since he stepped up to directorial roles, he’s been combining that with evocative shot composition for a more complete depiction of mental states. In an episode where an elf reminisces about meeting a quirky girl who reshaped her worldview, and that puts her in a very distressful situation later, those qualities make him right about the perfect choice of a storyboarder.

The truth is that Yonemori doesn’t have all that much directorial experience under his belt yet. It was just three years ago that we published a piece about his directorial debut, where the theme was that his ability made no sense given his lack of experience—and let me tell you, he hasn’t gotten any worse since then. What has somewhat changed, however, is the way he approaches the job. After landing a magnificent episode of Do it Yourself!, Yonemori decided that he was leaving animation directionAnimation Direction (作画監督, sakuga kantoku): The artists supervising the quality and consistency of the animation itself. They might correct cuts that deviate from the designs too much if they see it fit, but their job is mostly to ensure the motion is up to par while not looking too rough. Plenty of specialized Animation Direction roles exist – mecha, effects, creatures, all focused in one particular recurring element. behind to focus on these directorial duties alone, at least in cases where he had to handle the latter. For someone who builds upon character animation the way he does, that may seem like a limitation, but I believe that with his aptitude and the experience he’s been accumulating, he can pinpoint the important details through his boards and director corrections alone; or just with the former in this case, due to Trigger’s tendency to separate enshutsu duties leading to Yuichi Shimodaira overseeing the production.

You don’t have to wait to see how Yonemori’s sensibilities manifest, because the first half of episode #08 immediately feels different from the preceding ones. From the softness of Marcille’s cheek against Laios’ armor to the careful way she did her experiments in the past, there’s a level of delicacy that hasn’t been present to this degree before. Again, one of the clearest example is the tender animation of the aforementioned Sakamoto—at this point it’s no exaggeration to say that Falin has been designated a KyoAni character. The contrast between their body languages across the flashback is lovely, as is watching Marcille break her shell and snap at her in the same way she does with Laios nowadays. This chapter is meant to get across how that meeting essentially changed both of their lives, and the animation reinforces that through the careful gesture work overseen by Shunpei Gunyasu. The contrast in sitting motions alone sums up the implied character arc in a cute way; Marcille’s demeanor was overly prim and proper, in contrast to Falin’s feral ways, but the elf’s current behavior has become noticeable rougher and truer to herself.

Alongside this unusually careful acting we also have that evocative sense in Yonemori’s storyboards, capable of turning the most simple compositions into something that leaves a lasting impression. The contrast between the brilliant Marcille at school, where Falin lurks in the dark, is reversed in an actual adventure; now it’s a whimsical free spirit versus an overly restrained self. Even if we move back into the present as Marcille accidentally stumbles upon a deadly water spirit, her despair is captured very concisely. Even if you’re too busy to pick up on it during the tense action, the way she quite literally feels the weight of the dungeon as she has been drained from magic speaks for itself.

If we’re talking about this second half, though, it’s impossible not to address the animation itself. The centerpiece of the third episode Ichigo Kanno and Ikarashi appear back to back to steal the show, but the entire segment is astonishing. There’s a three-dimensionality to the drawings that the show has rarely achieved, and the same shading that contributes to it also gives depth to Marcille’s expressions; mostly pained ones, because that’s what her life is like, but her zombie self being increasingly more pissed that she’s not being served a diverse BBQ is objectively humorous. Animation director Akihiro Sato has only recently taken up that role, but the quality of the episode under his supervision speaks for itself.

Almost all the highlights in such a beautiful episode come from in-house personnel, who were able to focus on these important moments thanks to all the delegation the team had done before—something that, as we’ve explained at length, they’ve managed to pull off without sacrificing quality in the process. This is the place where we’re supposed to call for caution, but if you’ve been enjoying the adaptation as much as I have across these episodes, I see no reason to rain on your parade. While #09-10 aren’t meant to be on this scale, neither were some of the preceding, great episodes we’ve had across this month. With a decently high floor for the production, and the team’s promise to go all out to end this cour, I’m sure it’ll be no time until they land another memorable episode.

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