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One of our favorite anime of 2024 debuted back in January 2024 when Delicious in Dungeon hit Netflix. Trigger, the studio behind the anime adaptation of Ryoko Kui’s hit manga, approached the series the same way most studios do – as the first season without the reassurance a second would be greenlit. However, news that executives were eager for a second season led the team to make some changes to how the first season of Delicious in Dungeon ended.

Most anime series are renewed on a season-by-season basis, which can lead to long delays between seasons, such as what we’ve seen with Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt. However, Delicious in Dungeon had the good fortune of knowing that a second season was on the way before the first one was even finished. “At first, I thought that after the final episode, I’d be waiting around for a while, hoping for a second season to be greenlit,” series director Yoshihiro Miyajima explained in an interview. “But then, in the latter half of production, producer Kazufumi Kikushima came to speak with me about season two. We were in the middle of production at the time though, so rather than being happy, it was more like “Give me a break!” but we made some quick adjustments to the final episode so it could tie into the second season.”

Fans who watched the season one finale of Delicious in Dungeon will remember that it ends with the party forming a plan to free Falin from her chimera form by eating the parts of her that aren’t human. This is in line with what we know about the ending of the manga, but the original ending to season one was much more open.

“Back in the initial scenario writing stage, we had decided on a final scene with everyone eating together,” Miyajima confirmed. “We wanted to close it out in a way that anyone else could continue the story where we left off. However, if we were going to be able to do the second season, then we wanted to set it up for a continuation right then and there.”

So rather than an open ending that could lead anywhere, the new ending leads more directly into the second season’s plot. The next time we dive into the Mad Mage’s Dungeon with Laios and his party in Delicious in Dungeon season two, we won’t have to waste any time before we get to the action.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

• Why the finales of My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen, and One Piece feel like the end of an era in manga
• Why is One Piece more popular now that the anime is 25 years old? We asked around and found out
• Dan Da Dan is weird, profoundly inappropriate, and the perfect anime this season
• Why One Piece's Monkey D. Luffy is the perfect anime hero for the dark times ahead
• 40 years after its debut, Dragon Ball is a pop culture force like few others
• Dan Da Dan's most emotionally devastating sequence proves that sometimes words aren't necessary
• Gnosia, the "Among Us meets Everything Everywhere All at Once" visual novel is getting an anime adaptation that needs to be as weird as possible