Today I went to explore a dungeon, located on the 5th floor of Tokyo Solamachi, a mall right by the Skytree... it's a whole exhibition themed around Dungeon Meshi! There was a LOT of stuff, so I'll be splitting this into a few parts!
In general, the exhibition is divided up into sections based on different floors of the dungeon. Each section highlights different monsters, dishes, and characters. I'll start first with some character highlights!
Through-out each "floor", a different character is highlighted. These have a large picture of the character on the wall, along with a description, several sketches with different expressions, and some audio of the character speaking. Marcille's was very noisy... Partway through, there's this great double-sided cut-out of Senshi, from when Marcille made him wash his beard. A LOT of people were trying to get pictures of that one! Much later, there's one of a few photo-spots in the exhibition; you can join Laios' party in their frog suits! And very close to the end, you can find Falin waiting for you...
Next up, I'll post some highlights of the monsters on display!
Here's some of the monster highlights from the exhibition!
First, there's a little display with the giant bat Marcille tried to get to pull mandrakes! It looks way cuter here than the manga though... next, right near the Living Armor display, is Kensuke! The lighting here looks REALLY cool! After this is one of my favorite parts... the golem, with Senshi's vegetables! This display is actually a couch, so you can sit down and have your picture taken in it if you want. And last is the red dragon itself! They really build up to this one; there's a video screen with animatics of the fight with it, so you can see how Studio Trigger put the scene together. When you emerge through a set of curtains... the dragon is there, waiting for you with its jaws wide open!
One thing I loved about this exhibition was the big focus on the food! All throughout the exhibition, there were recreations of the dishes the party makes together.
Senshi's hot pot is found near the start of the exhibition, and it's one of the bigger displays! Most of the food displays are much smaller, and accompanied by a sign with details and stills from its debut episode. You can see a good example of that with the mimic dish! Close to the end, after you see the red dragon, you can see a table display where the party looks at some dragon meat dishes. At the very end, there's a big display of all sorts of food! It's right before the gift shop... maybe it's meant to make you want to get the snacks they're selling there? ...it worked on me...
At the very end of the exhibition, there's a section with the covers of various volumes of the manga. There's also some great illustrations of the main cast; I attached my favorite at the end!
But of course, all these sort of exhibitions have to end with the gift shop. There was a lot of things there... but what I wanted the most was sold out! That would be Marcille and Falin's Daydream Hour shirts... and Senshi's salt. Thankfully I still found some fun stuff to get!
First, since I got a premium ticket, I got a decorative plate! I got three acrylic stands; one of Marcille in a new outfit for the exhibition. I got a second one of Marcille in the manga, that rotates to her as a dwarf. The other is of Izutsumi, which goes between her regular form and... I'm not sure!
One other thing they were selling was large recreations of manga pages... so I just HAD to get when Marcille and Falin meet! They're just SO cute together... ❤️
And since I felt I needed to get some kind of snack... I got the cookie set. They probably taste pretty standard, but I felt I couldn't leave without getting something to eat. I wouldn't have done that otherwise, so the food theme must be working on me...
Anyway, that's all! It was really fun, and I had a great time getting to revisit all these fun moments from the series. I wonder if they'll end up doing another one of these? There's still lots of cool stuff that happens after the red dragon arc, after all!