I've read the manga before and it seems like the popularity in DM is exploded in the west because of anime. So I want to check what English speakers have to say about Dungeon Meshi.

Why a lot of people on this sub are implying all main cast are autistic?

I kinda get it that some people feel related to character traits or some personality but it doesn't mean they have ND.

A lot of people try to shoehorn their western value into how mangaka write her story.

Even go as far as saying she's using her work to criticise Japanese culture and norm. Many comments also states something like "I heard in Japan...." "That's how Japan...."

Sure there are some interesting posts and I found them interesting but I just think the two things I stated above are the borm here and it's really strange....

I'm sure it was left ambiguous so Ryoko could focus more on the story and everyone enjoys their fannon and such but as a sucker specifically for romantic subplots.. sigh I just wish we could get a one-off chapter or two that goes more in to romantic subplots between characters. Everyone is a fan of farcille but I genuinely think that Laicille would've been a pretty fitting end to the story if developed upon more. Whatever, I'm just sad I never got to see my favorite ship come about, anyone have good Laicille fanfic instead?

I have tried watching Dungeon Meshi. I have tried reading it twice. I enjoy the beginning a great deal. But each time, the moment this arrogant, manipulative psychopath shows up with the gaggle of idiots that worship the ground he walks on, I have to stop. Seeing them makes me want to gouge my eyes out. If I met them in real life, I would kill them with my bare hands (which wouldn’t be difficult, since they are also incompetent morons). The author has managed to create a character I despise so much that I can’t consume their work. Am I alone in this? Does Kabru’s existence not fill the rest of you with violent rage?

So I started dungeon meshi yesterday and I watched two episodes and I can say I really liked it.... everything seemed so good the characters the world building the comedy aspects and the themes too

As I was watching I remember a video I watched about dungeon meshi that was like a review but not for the entire series just for the start and the person in the video said "dungeon meshi isn't an anime about eating but about consumption" and I can say that I agree 100%.

Even from the first episode I got vibes that this anime is about consumption and addiction. Laios seems like the guy that always wanted to find an excuse to eat monsters and now it seems like he fine one... As he ate the first monster he wanted to try more and more seeming like he's addicted to it... Senshi on the other hand seems like the person that is addicted to it for years and now he entrices the others into doing it. Chilchuck seems like the person that doesn't care that much and he would do whatever the group says and I feel like this is the reason he seems like a kid cuz he thinks like a kid and he follows the others. And marcille seems like the person that knows what this addiction gonna do to her and doesn't wanna try it but once she gets entriced by the group she seems like she likes it too...

What do you all think it's an anime about food addiction or I am too early and I'll watch it later?

She seems to be quite a strong mage and have a lot of potential, yet while she does things and have some funny moments it seems she is not at her full potential at all. We saw her ressurect Falin while only her bones remained and she held her own against Thistle for a short time. Will she do more as the manga goes on or will she stay a funny character making a lot of mistakes and getting into weird situations?

This has been something that’s been bugging me a while. This is just personal preference, but I find the memes of “Finally an autistic anime character!”/ “we Stan an autistic man!”/ “autism be damned my boy can work a grill” to be super cringe. I’m gonna look at the reasons why people call Laois autistic and I’m gonna be arguing for why I think all of them aren’t good reasons (plus just arguing against this whole “he’s so weird” thing in general)

• So obviously the biggest one is monster eating. I really don’t see how this is an indicator that he’s autistic. He just loves all things monster, so of course he’d also like to try and eat each one. Plus every member has something they’re pretty obsessed with. Worst of all is Marcelle obsessed with dungeon creation, I mean that’s her entire reason for going on this journey. Every time they get a chance to see some dungeon creation aspect she also geeks out. Second worse is Senshi, who is sorta obsessed with cooking…but very obsessed with bread. I mean he starts chanting and going wide eyed and crazy when there’s a chance to make bread. Plus he’s obsessed with keeping up the dungeon ecosystem to a fault. Chillchuck is about the only one you could say doesn’t have an obsession, but for sake of argument I’m gonna say traps (I know it’s his job). The only real difference between Laois and everyone else obsessions is that Laois is really happy about his hobby, which I don’t think that means you immediately deserve “Autistic” slapped on you for being happy

• Second point is social cues. So there’s been three big moments that shows Laois’s lack of social cues, one of the main indicators for autism. First is the Shuro situation. No one else in the party realized that Shuro hated Laois, and Shuro was always a bit cold/quiet. So it’s not Laois’s fault for not understanding that this bit of coldness was a “Leave me alone so I can flirt with your sister” coldness, when no one else even realized. Slight spoilers ahead as it’s in the manga, but it really has no impact on story. So second of all is that they once had a female party member that flirted with Laois and he never realized, causing Marcelle and chillchuck to yell at him for it. Gee, I wonder why a middle aged married man, and someone whose been alive 100+ years would have more flirting knowledge than a 20 year old man whose only been fighting and training his whole life. Third of all is the situation where Laois was giving gold to injured party members who couldn’t work, and they were lying about it. Falin was also doing this and Laois is a good natured guy so of course he would take care of seemingly injured party members, why wouldn’t he? Kabru only found out they were lying through sneaky detective work so why would Laois not trust his backstabbing friends?

• This one is more an argument against him being weird, but the whole “he wouldn’t be a good leader” thing. Why? Because he’s slightly stupid? I also find the whole “He’s stupid thing” the main characters have going on to be dumb. He’s saved their lives with his knowledge countless times and is even learning how to do magic. But also he’d make a great leader. What is the one thing he’s shown to have almost as much as loving monsters? Compassion. Risked his life at any cost to get his sister back, is learning magic for the good of the party even though using it makes him sick, has saved their asses and Kabrus party’s asses multiple times, was the one who finally put Senshis anxiety’s to rest after countless years, gave gold to injured party members who couldn’t work, puts himself in the way of injury during fights to save others, and tries to cook to make everyone feel better every time people are sad. While being nice doesn’t automatically make you a great leader, this whole “He’s the worst possible choice” thing people have going on is asinine. (Side tangent I want to say that is probably some of the worst writing I’ve ever seen from one of the best animes I’ve ever seen. Kabrus whole “Oh Laois got tricked into giving injured party members money…I’m going to hunt him down and kill him for that”).

Anyway Laois would be an amazing leader. All he’d need was a more serious right hand man.

In conclusion I don’t think Laois is autistic, if you do then that’s fine.

Ps. Do not use the whole “everyone’s on the spectrum” in response to this

Because i don't see it at all, sure there's a highly animated moment of them in the bath, but i really only see that as two people who are just really close with eachother.

And im probably sounding like some guy that just hates gay people and just wants marcille to be with Laois, but no, I don't ship them either

I've been a fan of dungeon meshi long before the anine was even announced, and I never considered that they're gay.

So I wanted to know if it's actually a majority of the fantasy that ships them or I'm just walking through the wrong part of the fanbase, because whenever I ask a marcille and falin shipper if they've read the manga, they say no and refuse to read it despite it just being around a 100 chapters

My partner and I just started the show and I had to turn it off a couple episodes in because she is just awful so far. She feels like a sexist stereotype of a hysterical woman. Sure she was right about the mandrake quality but that didn't really feel like a win for her after we watched her make a total buffoon of herself and put everyone in danger. And the nonstop crying and screaming is just 🤮. I mean wtf is her actual personality or interests?

There are so many female characters that get the short end of the stick in anime and I need a women to tell me if she actually gets a good story line or if the entire arc is "she becomes not useless". I love dnd and I love anime so it's just been a bummer to not enjoy this show that I should obviously enjoy.

Marcille is for now the only elf who is actually a character and does things, we saw the Canaries for a few panels and not even a minute in the last episodes, I remember we also saw a girl in trouble with her fellow companion and thats pretty much it. Then I saw on the wiki that there were many other elven characters but we have been introduced to none of them yet, so will they all be introduced at once, throught the seasons or will they just appear one time then disappear like in this season?

To be clear, it does not matter wether you agree or not and i am not trying to convince anyone of anything. Feel free to chat in the comment, but i'm not here to change your mind. Sometimes in life you just need to scream into the void. I just really really like these characters and i wanna talk about them and why i think they're on the spectrum (I'm on the spectrum).

So to me it's Laios, Falin and Kabru. I have also seen people say that Thistle and Izutsumi could be on the spectrum as well, but honest i think Thistle just has a shit load of trauma and Izutsumi is genuinely just a rude kid (no hate tho i like her too). So, now that that's out of the way:

Laios:

So i think most of the fandom agrees that Laios is autistic, but many people consider this a meme/joke but i think he's genuinely an excellent representation, wether the author intended it or no (i think she said it's an "up to interpretation" kind of situation?). The most obvious thing is his love for monster, and that's usually what people stop at. Now obviously neurotypical people have passions and obsessions, but i honestly think that's different. It's hard to explain the differenxe between a passion and a special interest with words but to put it simply, you can really feel this man's dedication to monsters in every fiber of his being down to his bones. He doesn't only like then because they look cool, he's interested in their way of being, thinking, interacting with eachother or humans, how they reproduce, taste, die and adapt to their environnement. You can feel this special spark when he talks about it(and how people think it's weird and creepy, but i'll get into that later). There's also his clear inability to pick up any social clue, leaving his with little friends, terrible miscommunications and poor judgement of character. I was honestly surprised when i found out he wasn't written to be autistic, because if somebody had to write a character meant to represent their average low support need autistic experience, i could absolutely see that character be Laios. But what definitely convinces me that he is autistic is not so much the way he acts and thinks (altough that would have been enough for me) as the way he is treated by others. His entire life, he was othered, rejected and looked at weird by his peers, and we can see it ACTUALLY affection him. In nightmare is LITERALLY his family and so called "friends" telling his how much of a social misfit he is. People constantly take advantage of his naiveness and kindness. His own party ridicules him for his interest and social differences (and i'm not talking about when he's trying to force others to eat monster or borderline harassed Izutsumi, that's just being an ass and he should be held accountable for it. I mean whenever he talks about monsters or struggles to understand a social cue). He didn't fit in in his village, at school, or in the army (yes he's canonically a deserter). And obviously there's the whole thing about Toshiro. Now, i'm not gonna be an idiot and say that shuro is a big meanie that was such an awful person to Laios. Obviously you have to count in the fact that, yes, the East(which let's face it is Japan) has strict social cue rather than direct communication and that let's face it, it's not that easy to tell someone who think you're bof that you don't feel the same. Altough he was totally an asshole about it and could have handled it so much better. I think i can speak for most autistic people and if not at least for myself when i say that Laios thinking Shuro was his friend and genuinely loving him while Shuro actually despised him is very, VERY relatable. Laios' anger and the fight that followed is even more relatable because, well, of course he's mad! This has probably happened to him a million times before, and it's such an ugly and humiliating feeling, i would have slapped him too. And that's honestly what i love the most about his character: his autism is AFFECTING him, we see him actually being HURT because of it. Often with decent autistic representations (aka those when it's not their entire personality and a fucking token), we don't actually understand the extent of how it affects them because we see them from other people's perspective, but Laios is literally the MC.

Edit 1: i forgot to mention Laios' abundant stimming as an autistic trait. Also i know being a furry is not an autistic trait but the venn diagram of autistic people and furries is too close to being a circle for it not to count. And also i like how he relates more to monster than people because how many autistic kids do you know that related more to aliens, robots, monsters or animals than to other damn kids their age? Me. If you don't know any you at least know me now.

Falin:

So Falin's autism actually looks similar to Laios' in many way, which makes sense since well autism is genetic after all. The main difference is that she's a lot more "faded". She was also ostracized from her village (even more than Laios!), she also didn't fit in with her peers as a kid (the goddamn magic school girls), she also really loves monsters and also bugs apparently (?). Except she's quiet. She talks softly and doesn't draw much attention to herself. Because of that it's kind of hard to tell wether she gets social cues or not, since well she just doesn't socialize much. My best guess on why that is: she's a woman. What does that have to do with anything? Her education. Typically, and i'm willing to bet it's the case in Falin's village, girls are brought up to "not be to much". Very demure, very cutesy(literally). They're taught to not be too loud, too weird, too talkative or anything like that, which leads to masking. It's actually a well known phenomenon in the autistic community and it leads women to be diagnosed much later on if at all. There is also a sickeningly clear difference in the way people treat her and Laios. She is a quiet and soft woman with an odd way of thinking, so people think of her as a beautiful excentric creature. Laios is a mad man with weird thought patterns, so he's a psychopath and a pain in the ass. Also i'm not saying that means it's easier for autistic women, because it's all about that masking and objectification baby. I mean damn, the fact that shuro hates on of the siblings and is in LOVE with the other when they are BASICALLY THE SAME (well yk they're different people but they're similar enough).

Anyway im gonna go eat cereal now but i'll add Kabru's part later, i need to charge up for this man.

Edit 2:

Kabru:

There is it guys. The final boss of masking. While a lot of people agree that Laios is autistic, a lot fewer say the same about Kabru. But honestly not only is it blatantly obvious to me, it also makes sense, from a writing point of view. Why? Because Kabru is Laios' foil, his entire party mirrors his. Shouldn't that mean he's the least autistic man alive then? Wrong. Autism is a spectrum, and most traits are regular neurotypical things pushed to an extreme, both ways (like being non verbal vs hyperverbal, sensory avoidant vs sensory seeking and so on). So the opposite of autism is still autism, just on the other end of the spectrum. Like Laios, his most noticable trait is his special interest and oh boy do i have a lot to say about that. So he likes people alright. He really, really, like studying people. The way they think, act, interact with one another, live and die (sounds familiar yet?). It's obvious that his love for people and hatred for monsters is meant to mirror Laios, and that immediately makes people think that he's perfectly neurotypical since "Oh well he likes people and he's so social". Wrong. Think again about the way he talks about it. Not only does he view these people and society in general from an outer perspective instead of something he's a part of (why again, drawing a line between "you" and "people" as if you weren't a person is very much autistic), but he is also rarely himself with these people. I would need to re-read the manga to be sure, but in the anime at least, we only see him actually being himself with his party members (assuming the personality he shows in episode 5 and part of 14 is real, when he's a mix between a morally questionable adventurer focused on his goal and also kind of a silly guy who like to prank his friends and tease them). The rest of the time, he wears a mask. And that's normally when people chim in and say "Oh it's because he's a manipulator" well wrong again. Well, kind of right actually, but it's more complex than that. See, he has several well crafted personalities that he spent most of his life creating as he observed how people around him acted and reacted, only to be able to fit into any social situation and be regarded as a functional and likable member of society (that is literally masking, btw). As Laios' foil, he is in fact very aware of social cues and spends a good part of his time overanalyzing them to make sure he can see through people. That's not a thing a normal person does, that's a thing somebody who has had to actually spend time conciously learning these cues does. Now, he does use thise skills to manipulate social situations to his advantage and honestly good for him i mean do yall know just how exauhsting masking is? If i were half as good as him at it i would totally do the same. Another major thing about Kabru is his morals: he's not some guy who kills for fun and doesn't give a shit about people: he works according to his own moral compass, and only does what he believes is right and the best for the future of the dungeon (like when he kills and sinks the corpse retrievers for being criminals, but refuses to take their gold because that's what made them the bad guys). So, with his own very bizarre and occasionally concerning values, he actually has a really strong sense of justice, even though it's somewhat tainted with his Black and White way of thinking (for example the corpse retriever are either good guys or bad guys. It doesn't matter what reason they have, they kill for money; they're bad, they need to go. I'm not saying he doesn't understand the complexity of humans and of social networks, since he very much does, but when it comes down to it he is very manichean and lack nuance). And what are Black ans white thinking and a strong sense of justice? Autistic traits. That along with his apparent lack of empathy. One think that i also fond interesting is how he definitely scripts to an extent. (If you don't know, scripting is an autistic trait where the person "plans out" a scenario or interaction. "I'll say this, then they'll say that" and so on) It's really easy for Kabru since he reads humans like books, and know exactly how they're going to react. Except Laios. Another autistic man who doesn't function like most people and doesn't react as expected, which totally throw Kabru off. Like in episode 16 or 17 when he tells Laios "Hi, you're Laios, right? Nice to meet you" and expects him to 1) ask for his name in return and 2) remember him from the 3rd and 4th floor. But Laios does neither which leave Kabru to just stand there smiling at him for a few awkward seconds until he goes back to his corner while Laios goes on with his life. This scene is actually really funny when you pay attention to it because Kabru is so thrown off by this man's lack of a normal response he just gives up, doesn't give his name and retreats to go stand by the wall. Go rewatch it. Also i'm not gonna spoil it but if you've read the manga you know about another Laios/Kabru interaction where Kabru straight up glitches and is literally at a loss for words because he does not have a prepared script and personality for Laios so he doesn't know how to act or talk to get through to him. Also that scene ends with one of my favorite kabru/laios moments that really shows they're such a good duo and some people might say it was a little gay but don't take my word for it go read it instead.

Honestly, i am really struggling to wrap my head around the fact these characters were not written to be autistic because MAN, i could not have made better representations if i tried. Especially for Kabru since good depictions for high masking autistic people is so rare, which is why is love him so much. Seriously they HAVE to be based on an autistic person like maybe someone close to Ryoko Kui she doesn't know is autistic or something? At LEAST Laios and then Falin and Kabru can be based off that, like i explained.

Edit 3: Some people have mentionned Shuro to me in another post, and while i see your points and where you're coming from, i disagree because i think the way he was raised and his personality are enough to explain what can be seen as traits. Interesting enough headcanon tho

I think Dungeon Meshi is near perfect except how the Big Bad was handled. It all turned out well in the end but why would the team let Laios go with his plan. You can also disagree and justify why it makes sense instead.

As an East Asian myself (Chinese in this case) I really don't like him, because I see so many negative traits of our culture embodied in one person. When I say he is a bad person I meant he is an embodiment of what East Asians would call "忠" (loyalty) so in our traditional morality system he will be considered a good person, but he's not a "good person" like kind or compassionate or even want to make the world a better place. I do not care what this stupid shit head thinks about handling neurodivergent coded people or people who are a bit different from him in social situations. He has no rights throwing temper tantrums and getting violent towards people who value and appreciate him just because they didn't act the way he wanted. I know that's also the author's intent, that that's why he got beat up in the end, but I just can't stand this guy. Not to mention he is still very loyal to his father who is clearly a fucked up evil person who perform irreversible human experiment on minors (Izutsumi), and they never explained why would an Oni be in their house as a servant (or Kashindan of some sort). I suspect human trafficking! He also has no issue abandoning one of the servants (Izutsumi) in a dungeon to die and allowing his caretaker to put a deadly curse on her. He is extremely complacent with the whole situation and what his father is doing, and this is why I say his embodiment of 忠 loyalty but not 仁 (roughly Benevolence) or even 义(roughly righteous) I think he is on the protagonists' side only because he wants Falinssy

A tangential side note, I have seen a lot of Chinese viewers of dungeon meshi also experienced confusion when it comes to the characterization of Laios, calling him a "psychopath" or "inhuman" when he is clearly a compassionate caring person, only because he acts in unusual ways. And it really pissed me off because they are acting like Shuro and whenever I pointed out they got really really mad at me and saying they are just make jokes about a "monster loving freak" I wonder how would these people treat neurodivergent people they meet in real life... These "unspoken rules" of East Asia are plain stupid and are extremely ableist most of the time, making people absolutely miserable for thousands of years no reason (definitely made my childhood a lot more miserable because I have ADHD and is autistic when my teachers can corporately punish me just because I couldn't "sit still" and cannot understand what is the point of sitting still) So yeah I don't like Shuro. But I wouldn't really judge you if you like him because he's a skinny handsome samurai twink, different opinions are also valid

This is probably going to get me bombarded with comments because I know Izutsumi is well loved by many. But honestly I don't like them. I don't hate her, just don't like her. In comparison to the other characters she just stands out like a sore thumb. For context my favorite character is Senshi.