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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... 

• 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
• Assassination Classroom is a Shonen anime well worth revisiting, ten years on
• Sony is making big moves to own the anime industry by buying Kadokawa, publisher of Oshi no Ko, Sword Art Online, and Konosuba