The Spring 2021 Manga Guide

Dungeon Toilet

What's It About? 

People are often reincarnated into fantasy worlds to answer a higher calling. In this case, that means a quest to find the perfect toilet. Behold as dragon scales are converted into toilet seats and slimes are used as moist wipes in this unique adventure about heroes who truly give a crap.

Dungeon Toilet is drawn and scripted by Roots and Seven Seas Entertainment has released the first volume both digitally and in print for $9.66 and $12.99 respectively

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

However much you think you love toilets, this manga has you beat. Dungeon Toilet's premise actually makes a fair amount of sense – after all, what poor schlub summoned from modern Japan with its fancy toilets wouldn't be at least a little horrified at what's likely to pass for potties in fantasy lands mimicking the ancient world? And having spent the first six years of my life without indoor plumbing and much of my childhood thereafter on a boat, I can fully attest to the lure of what my mother used to refer to as “royal flush.”

But…I think Dungeon Toilet may take things a bit too far. It's less a humor manga and more a historic record of the various ways and means of relieving and wiping yourself, complete with mini-essays every two chapters or so to expound on the glories of toilet history. It's not that this isn't interesting, but more that the two halves of what the book is trying to be don't work together as well as you'd expect. Every chapter begins with more or less the same premise, that Japanese high schooler Yotaro is desperate for a good place to poop, and his two otherworldly party members think he's weird. Then he goes on a tangent about the type of toilet he's found, how he likes it, where and when it originated in the history of Earth, and probably a monster attacks. Or a slime he tried using to wipe his butt with flies out of the toilet and climbs up his butt. Or he meets the king of a desert nation on the can and they have deep and meaningful (?) conversations.

It's not without its humor. Yotaro and the ladies going through a dungeon and discovering that every floor has a trap shaped like a toilet from a different era of history is pretty good, and Yotaro's fixation leading to him wreaking well-meaning havoc on small villages when he forgets to account for magic definitely has its moments. It's also at least a little entertaining watching the artist try not to draw Yotaro's front while he's sitting on the toilet – those perfectly angled sunbeams are quite something. But mostly this is a one-joke book packed with random toilet facts. I have nothing against that, but I also didn't find it very good reading.

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Lynzee Loveridge

Rating:

I'm not entirely convinced this isn't for scatophiliacs.

Dungeon Toilet is less funny than it thinks it is, revolving entirely around Yotaro and his obsession with his own shit. I don't just mean this is a guy that enjoys a relaxing bathroom experience; instead, it's all he thinks about. He counts his bowel movements like an old man, hoards resources to keep his butt clean, and looks at any and all monsters as potential participants for his next poop. The story is strongly focused on how often Yotaro needs to poop to the point that he literally never talks about or does anything else.

The first chapter is about a slime going up his anus and living in his stomach, like some kind of fantasy tapeworm situation, until he gets a tummy ache and sprays slime-diarrhea on the stall's back wall. I know unko and idiocy go hand in hand in some Japanese humor, but it straight-up doesn't work for me. The art doesn't help either, looking like it falls somewhere between 2D and 3D, like it was rendered in a CG art program but then filtered into black and white. The result is smudgy with only the background art barely fairing better. I would have been interested in this if it was a bit more Thermae Romae in a fantasy setting, but Dungeon Toilet left me more grossed out than anything else.