This past weekend, I went to the Ryoko Kui Art Exhibition in Los Angeles, which includes the Dungeon Meshi exhibit! It was a hot day, but it was a great outing nonetheless.

The exhibit takes place at the Art Share in LA, so we parked near Little Tokyo and then walked there after lunch. The tickets don’t have timed entry, but when we arrived there was already a sizeable line so we had to wait about 30 minutes (in the hot sun oof) to get in. We bought the tickets about a month in advance, but even if we hadn’t, the staff assured us that we could have bought tickets online the day of, so that’s nice!

The exhibit is split into two sections, the Ryoko Kui Art Exhibit and the Delicious in Dungeon/Dungeon Meshi side. The Ryoko Kui Art Exhibit showed art from some of Kui-sensei’s past works, and it was quite interesting to see how her style developed throughout some of her different works.

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It’s a shame that there’s no official translations for these works, as I would have loved to buy them. This part of the exhibit wasn’t air conditioned, but there were fans in strategic locations to try and provide some relief. I didn’t find it intolerable however, as I was just glad to be out of the sun.

I wasn’t aware that Kui-sensei published so much doujinshi prior to her debut, so it was really cool to see it in person, even if all the art was basically a replica/reprint.

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The other section was dedicated to Dungeon Meshi, and it had lots of cool sketches and side-by-sides of art from the anime and manga. I really liked seeing how many variations there were of Volume 1!

There was a corridor that showed off her art, and then an entire back area where there were also plastic recreations of food from the show and other props like Kensuke. Thankfully, this place was air-conditioned so we were finally able to relax and cool down after being in the heat outside.

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There was also a big red inflatable dragon, which was a fun photo op that I definitely took advantage of.

At the end of the exhibit, there’s a small merch store that was selling some various goods like acrylic stands, pillows, keychains, postcards, etc. of the exhibit itself (which has a cafe theme) as well regular Dungeon Meshi art. They were also selling a box set of the manga, which I desperately tried not to buy since it was only slightly discounted from regular price. I did end up buying the Adventurer’s Bible as well as the board game, since I’m really interested in playing it and it looks like a fun game.

We also visited Kinokuniya afterwards, so I picked up Ryoko Kui’s Daydream Hour artbook there as well, to tie into the theme of this outing lol. I also ended up picking up some other cool finds as well!

Overall, this was a great experience, and the tickets weren’t too expensive either (it ended up being $23 per person including tax).