Now this was an incredibly surprising delight — the recently released fantasy donghua with a gourmet theme — Mythical Creatures are My Dinners (aka Jintian de Wancan Jiushi Ni).
An animated show that features a cute art style, funny characters and a novel premise — that of genius cultivator and gourmand, Mo Bai, who after deciding he has eaten everything in the world that’s delicious, believes his life might be over.
Then, after a chance sniff as a tasty smell drifts past, Mo Bai’s life begins to change.
The fantasy donghua is adapted from the the manhua Tonight’s Menu: Magical Beasts by Jihuo Culture x Mister Potato x R. Jia Jia.
It is currently streaming via Bilibili’s – Chinese Donghua YouTube channel, and apparently has a large number of episodes to come.
Here then is a recap of Mythical Creatures are My Dinners, Episode 1 so you can get a sense of whether you will enjoy it as much as I did.
Mythical Creatures are My Dinners, Episode 1 recap
The food-themed donghua begins with a cooking competition going on in a large, ornate hall, with a judge sitting on a golden throne eating.
As each dish is finished, she gives a critique to the waiting chefs, with nobody getting over a 5 out of 10 due to each dish having at least one thing wrong with it.
But, as she finishes the last dish, the hall door bursts open and a woman rushes in screaming that the judge is a fraud. Oddly, the woman looks just like the judge sitting on the throne.
It then turns out, the “judge” is actually food-obsessed Mo Bai, and he disguised himself as the judge and snuck into the hall to see if he can find any tasty food to eat.
After fighting the guards called by the real judge, Mo Bai then escapes through the roof of the hall via a helicopter-style ring around his neck, smashing the hall’s roof in the proces.
The scene then switches to a grassy area high up in the mountains, where Mo Bai is lamenting that his life is probably over as, after years of looking for good food to eat, he thinks he has eaten everything there is.
No sooner are the words out of his mouth, however, and a tantalizing smell wafts past his nose.
Mo Bai can immediately tell that smell is coming from hundreds of miles away so he sets off to find it, eventually arriving at a rundown restaurant in the middle of nowhere.
Mo Bai meets little cook Hei
As he walks into the restaurant, however, every customers’ eyes move to watch him and, after ordering his food by saying “It had better be fit for human consumption”, we realize the customers are not actually human but instead are demons and other strange creatures.
As they attack, Mo Bai annihilates them all, then turns to see where the delicious-smelling food is coming from.
As he does so, a little cook complete with a horn protruding from his head arrives from the kitchen carrying a bowl of food, trips, falls and smashes the bowl into Mo Bai’s face.
But, while you might expect Mo Bai to immediately kill the cook who hit him with the food, as that person prostrates himself and begs for his life, it turns out our protagonist only cares about the taste of the food that hit him — and it is one of the tastiest things he has ever eaten.
When he accuses the little cook of tricking him, though, the cook screams that he didn’t, and he can make the dish again if Mo Bai wants him to. If he had the ingredients, that is.
And that’s when we see Mo Bai whisking the cook off to Ju Mountain to catch a mythical beast, so he can eat that tasty dish again.
Then follows various scenes of Mo Bai and the cook seeing a couple of Claw Pigs, but the cook deciding they are “only 100 years old”, so won’t taste very good.
He then explains to Mo Bai there are three different types of mystical beasts — Delicacy, Exquisite and Supreme — and the Claw Pig is just a very low-tier animal.
But it’s then the cultivator sees a bird in the sky, leaps up to get it so the cook can prepare a dish with it, only for the cook to discover it is the extremely vicious Unicorn Condor — and this thing is huge.
As the two run away with the bird rushing after them, furious that it has been grabbed from the sky, Mo Bai asks the cook which part of the bird they should eat first.
He screams “Chop the claws first”, so Mo Bai obliges with the bird soon flying back up into the sky minus several of its claws.
We then get to see the cook whip up an absolutely delicious looking stew that he then pours into the hollow claws of the condor. Heck, I know it’s only an animated series, but yep I would eat that.
(And yes, this is definitely hints of the plot of Japanese anime Delicious in Dungeon — complete with sketches of the just-cooked food that also looks quite similar).
Unfortunately for the cook, the soup is so good Mo Bai has no intention of ever letting him go.
That means, after finally asking his name — “Hei” — he drags the cook off to a nearby town to “buy ingredients”, all with the goal of making him his personal chef.
Once in town, Hei is trying to hide himself as, with the horn on his head, it’s obvious he’s a demon. Doesn’t matter, though, as Mo Bai promises to protect him.
The pair then buy various things for cooking — knives, spices and an escaping chicken — while Hei does his darndest to escape from his captor’s clutches, but all to no avail.
This Mythical Creatures are My Dinners, Episode 1 recap ends with Hei and Mo Bai bedding down for the night in a local inn, with Hei telling himself he will do everything he can to escape tomorrow.
Why is it I have a feeling that probably won’t happen?
If you’re looking for a short donghua (each episode is only 13-14 minutes long) with unusual characters, a quirky, funny and interesting plot, tasty looking recipes and all served via a cute art style and excellent 2D-animation (animated by Delight Animation), you should give Mythical Creatures are My Dinners a watch.
Every episode of the series is streaming on Bilibili’s YouTube channel, with each episode released so far available from a playlist.
You can start off by watching the just-recapped-by-us first episode below.