Pass the Monster Meat, Milady! ‒ Episode 6

© 星彼方・講談社／「悪食令嬢と狂血公爵」製作委員会

I think the mark of a good food show is whether or not it makes you fantasize about eating the food it's showcasing. That is, I would say, one of the primary appeals of media where food and/or cooking is a central part of it. And this week, MM technically accomplished that for me, but it comes with a pretty big asterisk.

The big monster fish (the zanas) is obviously meant to be a catfish with teeth. Well, I say “obviously,” but anecdotally, I've found that people who haven't lived in areas where catfish is a popular dish tend to vastly underestimate how huge they can get—so hey, if that sounds like you and you're curious, look it up sometime! You'd be amazed at the sheer scale of them. As for me, I grew up (and have lived most of my life) in Oklahoma. Without going on too much of a tangent, people are all about catfish in Oklahoma, whether it's eating them, or catching them (look up “catfish noodling” sometime if you're feeling brave or if you like an element of danger in your fishing). Also, I got a ton of relatives in Arkansas, who catch their own catfish, and it's more or less the only thing my family and I eat every time we've been there. So basically, just the thought of fried catfish was enough to activate the dusty neurons in my…Okl-ansas? Arkan-homa? …brain.

But if I didn't have the fried catfish-loving background that I do, I doubt this episode would've done anything for me in terms of making me yearn for the food the way people yearn for Ghibli food. My partner looked over at the episode at one point, and remarked that the zanas chunks look like fake chicken nuggets. And that's kind of the issue here: The visuals. Since the start I've been saying that visually, this series is nothing spectacular. Worse, it's actually been a bit sloppy, with each episode looking at least a little more hastily drawn than the last. And it's hard to make food look good when, well, the show itself doesn't really look that good in general. The show could potentially make up for that in the preparation process or in watching reactions to the food, but while we did get some of that this week, I don't think it quite did enough to make up for those underwhelming visuals. Incidentally, did you catch a glimpse at that salad that was in there for a moment? It was barely on screen, so don't worry about it too hard if you can't remember, but like. Surely it's not just me, this looks pretty pathetic by anime salad standards, right?

© 星彼方・講談社／「悪食令嬢と狂血公爵」製作委員会

What this episode lacked in appetizing food, however, it made up for in an overall better episode structure that I hope it maintains for the rest of its run. Monster of the week style, if you will. Extra cooking and showing off the food, with a dash of cute character moments, but hold the storytelling or background information since that's been one of the bigger struggles of this show thus far.

At this point, we're halfway through the series, and I have mixed feelings about it as a whole. On one hand, the concept is cute, I like the protagonists and their chemistry with one another, and it's a nice lighthearted watch. But then, on the other, the visuals are doing it no favors, and the writing is so far proving to be pretty clumsy. Still, I look forward to new episodes enough each week, and sometimes that's enough. All the same, as the series enters its second half, I hope we get more episodes like this one that are more focused on the food than not.

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Pass the Monster Meat, Milady! is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.