Yeah, I’m just going ahead and filing off the plural. Today, I took a loot at Dungeon People, which screened its first two episodes.
So, first impressions. Well, while I knew better going in, as any sort of ad copy or even image will help disambiguate, but the translated title conjures a certain inaccurate image. I know this is a weird thing to focus on, but at least to these English-speaking ears, and probably to English-speaking ears in general, “Dungeon People” spoken or written out of context conjures a certain imagery. Oddly savage, probably by reading “Dungeon” as somewhat cognate to “Cave” only more hostile. Well, that’s not what the show is about. And oddly it kind of owns it. “Dungeon People” is a punchy and evocative title, and while it conjures those images without any context, with just a tiny bit — like the main poster’s Escher-esque stairs and warm borderline-pastel colors — it creates the hook that the writers behind it likely desired while shedding the unfortunate baggage with economical speed.
But, I digress. Dungeon People is about a girl who is a Thief-type in generic fantasy land. She’s also pretty absurdly overpowered, due to hell training from her even more overpowered dad. Presently, our lead is concerned with one particular dungeon (looting dungeons being her trade), because said father disappeared (presumed dead) on an expedition into it. As of the start of the show’s present tense, she shows her stuff exploring the 8th and 9th floors, when the only adventurers to return alive reached the 7th at the deepest. On the 9th floor, she fights a minotaur, who is a pretty big threat… until he takes out a wall, revealing a cozy little room behind it, and completely changes demeanor.
That would be due to the impending arrival of our other main character, a little mage girl with obscene power to end all obscene power, who is the dungeon’s administrator and de-facto final boss. She’s rather cute and cheerful, and wants to hire the thief to be on staff, since it’s been hard finding somebody the monsters respect. Thief is baffled by all this, but stakes her future on a duel and loses, resulting in her gainful employment.
Thus, we enter our real premise: seeing the punch-card back end to keeping an RPG-style dungeon running: altering the layouts, hiring monsters, preserving said monsters when they get stabbed by adventurers, restocking treasure chests, and so on and so forth. There’s a healthy bit of comedy, most of it of the harmless and surreal type where the first lead’s skills and inclinations, though incredible, are not exactly a fit for her new role (feeling somewhat like Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid in that respect, if lower-key) or where it’s just a matter of seeing how this all operates in this world, where lethal danger for adventurers is banal business for the managers of the site.