Now the true ship can finally set sail.

It’s just me, mind you – most people lack the vision to see it. But that’s a discussion for later. For now it’s one of the more amusing episodes of Dungeon Meshi (and that’s a high bar), and I’m not going to lead with the ending. Incidentally we’re now at 40 chapters through 18 episodes, which is about 2.25 chapters per ep if you’re scoring at home. Doing the math that means Trigger would need about 42 episodes to adapt the whole manga. Not only have only two cours been confirmed, but that’s an awkward episode count anyway. So, in short, I have no idea what the plan is.

Alone together again, the fearsome foursome make their way to the sixth floor. Or “the floor where we got our asses kicked”, if you prefer. Falin’s trail of blood an ominous path to follow, this time around they find level freezing cold and in the midst of a blizzard. After a short discussion on the lifespan of elves prompted by the question of whether the Lunatic Magician could really have been alive for a thousand years (Marcille notes that modern elves “only” live up to 500 at most), Laios reveals the fact that he’s actually met the L.M. before. Which seems highly relevant, so you can understand why the others are kind of pissed off.

Soon the blizzard becomes so fierce that the only way the group can stay together is to hold hands (and no one realizes there’s an extra). Laios finds a tunnel to take refuge in, Marcille hits the lights, and a strange sight greets everyone: everyone. Lots of everyone, in fact. There are several of each of the party members present. Laios immediately speculates that these are shapeshifters, a monster that “sometimes popped up” in his hometown. Eventually if you don’t weed them out, they replace the original after eating them. So no big deal.

This is a fairly straightforward horror/sci-fi scenario of course. But the fact is, Dungeon Meshi has a particular genius in the way it depicts this sort of situation. The hook here is that the fakes are derived from the memories of the real party members. So in effect, the fakes are the members’ subjective impressions of each other – with all that implies. That means the Laioses are pretty easy to spot, since everyone else in the party thinks of him as a weird doofus with bizarre proclivities. Some of the others are pretty easy too, but not all of them, reflecting the various ways the quartet see – and don’t see – each other.

Kui-sensei actually released a helpful chart (ROFL) of whose memories created which fake, which is the most Dungeon Meshi thing ever. Some of it is actually pretty easy to spot knowing what we know about how these people think. And some of the fakes are likewise pretty easy to spot (and Laios stuffs those into a handy jail cell). The last few are tougher, as the shapeshifters get better as they edit out the mistakes in their performance. Eventually it’s whittled down to “A” and “B” versions of each member, and Laios appoints himself to be the judge of who’s real and who’s a shapeshifter – by observing the pairs cook a meal together.

Laios is actually pretty systematic (for him) in the way he sorts this out, “hunch” or no hunch. What I find really hilarious about all this though is that in the end, the real ones are real because they’re the bigger dorks. Period. That’s the giveaway. And the culprit behind it is actually a massive canine beast who creates the illusions. Once Laios figures this out, he channels his inner dog to draw it out. Which he does, but is about to get himself killed by getting too into character before Marcille bails him out with some big boom (Jamie Hyneman approved).

And then we have that ending, which in all good conscience I shouldn’t even really mention. The fact is though that I don’t really have a good conscience, except what’s imposed on me by nature of having this site and writing about what I do. So I’ll just say I was very happy to see those final few frames, and I look forward to next week’s episode as much as I have any episode in the series so far. Buckle up buttercup, because it’s going to be a fun ride.