Pass the Monster Meat, Milady! – Episode 1

What’s it about? Melphiera is supposed to be looking for an eligible fiancée, but there’s one big problem: her passion for cooking with monster meat has alienated her from the other nobles, who have nicknamed her “the voracious villainess.” Melphie has largely given up hope of forming a meaningful connection… until she meets a kindred spirit in the so-called Blood-Mad Duke, Aristide.

It’s a great season for shoujo/josei adaptations, and a great season for eating and being eaten by monsters!

I think this show is off to a good start, though admittedly this episode has some weak elements. Firstly, to my subjective but huge disappointment, we don’t get to see any monster cooking in this show about cooking monsters! It seems odd to bury the lede and forgo a demonstration of your main premise, having characters talk about it but not actually show it in motion. Clearly this premiere’s priorities lie with setting up the main relationship rather than the foodie elements—and it does this very well, so really, I can’t complain too much. Much like the Duke, I’m keen to see Melphie’s skills in action, and get into all the culinary nitty-gritty of the story and its worldbuilding, but I shall clearly have to wait. Oh well. I’m seated patiently at the dinner table, for reasons I’ll expand on in a moment.

The animation can also be a little stiff—presumably this is a production with limited resources to work with, as is unfortunately common with adaptations for this demographic—and the series snugly sits within that generic, stylized, nebulously 19^th century European aesthetic that rules this subgenre of villainess-adjacent fantasy about magical nobility. The monsters, what little we’ve seen of them, also seem to be drawing from a familiar bestiary of tropes. Which is not to say the world and characters look bad, but they risk blurring into other entries in similar genres, using those familiar visual trappings as shorthand without adding much individual flair.

However! Strong characters and fun dynamics can always carry me through a story that may not be as impressive or imaginative in other areas, and I feel like that’s the case here. Melphie is immediately endearing as a Designated Weird Girl who’s torn between being unapologetic about her hobby, and being keenly aware of the bad social position it’s put her in. She’s a nebulously 19^th century fantasy noble, after all, and her financial and social security rests on her finding a good marriage (not to mention how her stepmother has threatened to send her to a convent if she doesn’t get engaged soon, which I have a couple of worldbuilding questions about).

She’s a plucky heroine who has masked her own loneliness so well that even she barely notices it, until Aristide shares her enthusiasm and is actually, genuinely nice to her, and she has to unpack how sad she’s been all these years. It’s a sweet mini-arc that, while simple, provides a sense of emotional progression across the episode and sets things up for the character and relationship growth ahead.

And the relationship is off to a nice start. Aristide oscillates between being stoic and cool-headed and being a blush-cheeked monster-nerd in a way that very much endeared him to me. The foundation of this romance is a shared interest, an earnest desire to learn about someone else’s passion, and a magnetic ability to match one another’s freak. They’re an instant pair in that they’re both somewhat ostracized by the high society around them, considered strange and frightening… while their greatest crime is, honestly, being awkward around people and intensely interested in the “wrong” things.

Aristide is clearly not the best with social cues and social norms, which applies to both his nonchalance around monsters and his nonchalance around, well, taking his clothes off in front of Melphie. He needs his colleague (named Chaos, I kid you not) to point out how wildly inappropriate this is—though thankfully this happens after Melphie and the audience get to enjoy some man-chest fan service and a little moment of tenderness. They need to clean the monster blood off Aristide’s shirt, alright? They need to tenderly wash viscera off each other’s faces while they lock their gazes for a little bit too long! It’s romantic! It’s not skeezy and Melphie is not uncomfortable nor in danger! It’s honestly really nice! Get outta the tent and mind your own business, Chaos!!

I’m kidding, of course—we need these moments of intimacy to be interrupted so we can get more, later, in varying degrees of sweetness and intensity across a slow-burn love story. Frankly, I’m looking forward to it. While there are some clunky elements, this premiere sets up a pretty strong foundation and I’m interested to see what Melphie cooks up for us in the coming episodes—and fingers crossed I do get to see her cook! I want to see this girl nerd out about the best techniques for tenderizing the magical toxins out of meat so bad! Let her loose!