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Casting voice actors in an anime can be tough, but finding the right voices for the Canaries in Delicious in Dungeon presented some unique challenges. Not only did the director have to be creative during the casting process but the way the elves were drawn in the original manga meant he wasn’t initially sure who they were looking for. The result is a more gender-neutral approach to the Canaries’ designs and voices.

“When I first read the manga I honestly couldn’t even tell what gender Mithrun or Lycion were supposed to be at first,” Delicious in Dungeon director Yoshihiro Miyajima explained in an interview. “So, I asked the art staff to give them that gender-neutral feel.” Even when they found out their genders in the manga, Miyajima tried to keep them close to his first impressions of the characters. “When it was time for the auditions, I wanted to preserve the atmosphere of the original manga and how I felt when I first read the manga with the casting. For Mithrun in particular, I asked for a voice with a deep laryngeal feel.”

Casting the elves, who only show up for a few scenes in season one of Delicious in Dungeon, took a lot of attention to get right. If a second season hadn’t been internally confirmed at Trigger before they finished making season one, they might not have bothered. However, knowing that the characters would have a bigger role in future stories meant they needed to get their portrayal just right.

Delicious in Dungeon season one is currently streaming on Netflix while we all wait for the second season to get a release date.

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... 

• Aggretsuko vs Chainsaw Man: Two Wildly different anine with the same anti-capitalist message
• The Summer Anime season return of Kaiju No. 8, Sakamoto Days, & Dan Da Dan are forcing me to break my vow of watching less anime
• From Tomo-Chan to Oshi No Ko: How some of your favorite manga creators got their start in hentai
• Piracy is baked into anime's past, but, like Crunchyroll, we should move on from it
• Flying whales, mechs, and Miyazaki vibes: Inside Netflix's Leviathan anime with the people who made it
• How AI translations of manga continues the 'enshitification' of the medium, and why Japanese publishers are "less precious" about it
• I never wanted a Cyberpunk Edgerunners sequel, but God help me I'm going to watch it
• The Summer Hikaru Died delivers its cosmic horror at an agonizingly slow pace
• The one thing that Dan Da Dan does better than Demon Slayer ever did
• Studio Ghibli movies have never been as cozy as you think they are and that's what makes them magic