i should have participated in this lmao hope there's another instance of WEM

i would love for this to be a regular thing tbh

sounds good but next time i'm throwing in naruto with no ability to reroll.

I got Dungeon Meshi. I read up through chapter 7 which is all of volume 1.

I dragged my feet a bit starting this one and then got super busy so it took me a while to get to it. Originally, I thought I had read around 5 or so chapters of Dungeon Meshi and remembered not liking it. I read something about some knight guy trying to build a shop/restaurant or something in a dungeon. He worked with some girl he met down there and there was also a skeleton in their party. No clue what it actually was.

Anyways, Dungeon Meshi starts with a group of adventurers down in the dungeon. The party consists of a knight dude as the protagonist, his sister who I think is a cleric, a halfling thief, and an elf mage. They lose to a dragon and the sister gets eaten. As she dies she casts teleport on the rest of the party to get them to safety outside the dungeon. When the survivors awaken, their first priority is to go rescue the sister because death is a bitch in this world and lets people can be revived from basically nothing. The problem though is that they don't have the money to restock on supplies so knight dude decides that they'll just forage food in the dungeon. They set off and meet a dwarf on the first floor who thankfully knows a lot about cooking monsters and is willing to join their party.

The series from then on is actually pretty interesting. There is a lot of effort spent detailing the monsters and foliage of the dungeon. Its anatomy, its role in the ecosystem, and most importantly, how to cook it. The chemistry between the party members is pretty good, they all play off each other well. I think there should be a bigger sense of urgency in their actions though. They didn't have the time to go back to town, collect some funds, and stock up on food but they have time to stop twice every day to cook new experimental meals? I get that the point is supposed to be about the culinary journey but it bugs me a bit.

I'll keep reading, at least up until they rescue the sister. I'm going to continue to be pretty busy for the new week or two and I didn't want to keep people waiting so I'm getting my review out now.

I watched the 2000 Dune miniseries, it reminded me a lot of Star Wars meets Game of Thrones

Okay so the actual review, unfortunately I'm mostly going to be talking about the miniseries adaptation itself, not the source material.

First of all, it's Set and Costume Design porn, everything looks sick as hell and really builds the world, the uniforms and buildings of the different factions are all cool and interesting, and really unique, I love the Samurai Stormtroopers and the Red Quake Map.

The CG is Quaint, It's 2000 so it's hard to criticise its quality much, everything looked like a PS2 cutscene back then, but I feel like it didn't need to be CG. This era had a lot of Cutting Edge CG usage where it really looked worse than the traditional alternatives such as miniatures and matte paintings. I guess the worm needed to be CG tho.

I feel like it had the problem a lot of rich fantasy has where certain concepts are just kinda introduced without any explanation. It does help the world feel more alive when there are just things we don't need to have explained, but it left me with a lot of questions when those concepts ended up being important. The things where the Bene Gesserit make their voices go weird and where they go really Fast, for example, I don't think were ever explained beyond "theyre witches".
Also the way the fat guy flies around like he's in gmod but that's just kinda genuinely hilarious.

The accents also are the usual sci-fi mix of British, American, and Space, where it's not clear why some people are British and some are American. I always find it sounds awkward as fuck whenever American accent are delivering old-timey/fantasy dialogue and it's the case here too. Also any time the Fremen spoke their own language I didn't have a clue what they were saying because the stream I found was subtitled in French, but only for the parts where people weren't speaking English???? Anyway thankfully they forgot they had their own language and spoke English the rest of the series after like the first half hour.

Anyways the story was neat, if nothing super unique. The classic "Colonial guy falls in love with a native culture (and woman) and defends it from the rest of the colonisers" plot with a sci-fi fantasy twist (shit its like James Cameron's Avatar too!!!!!) and some fun House/Family politics. I can def see how it served as the template for later media like Star Wars. I'm actually interested to see the new Dune film beyond "well its Denis Villeneuve and I like everything he makes" now.

Some of you on Discord know I accidentally watched the first episode of Children of Dune (the sequel series) first and didn't understand a thing. I'm sure it'd make more sense now that I've actually seen the first series and have been introduced to literally any of the concepts, but I'm still not sure if I want to watch it. It didn't seem as interesting as the actual series ended up being.

Still won't read the books tho sorry.