It seems weird that Senshi didn't seem to care for his axe when he's been diligently taking care of his pot. While this initially came off as him having skewed priorities (a cooking pot breaking in the dungeon is far less of a problem than your axe breaking), it makes sense once you learn of his backstory. That pot kept him alive and is basically all he has left of his family, of course he's going to take care of it far more than some random axe he bought from traders.
Initially it's weird to think that Marcille and the greater magic community at large wouldn't know that you could simply pick a mandrake root with a well-timed cut and instead create a convoluted method of sacrificing a dog to pull it out. However, as Senshi noticed, it's clear that letting the mandrake root scream before killing it lets out impurities and so it's likely at least some wizards discovered Senshi's method, but quickly realized that harvesting mandrake in that way is useless for magical purposes. Since it doesn't work for magic, it makes sense they wouldn't bother recording it in a book and so Marcille wouldn't have learned about it.
Most of the doppelganger forms are very well-justified by how the characters see each other. Here is a page from the world guide identifying whose shapeshifter is whose.
Marcille's version of Laios is the gigantic one. She'd been told he looked just like Falin, but having spent years in an all-girls magic school she really focused on the ways he looked different. Senshi's version of Laios has Falin's face because tallmen look effeminate to dwarves and he sees a Strong Family Resemblance between them, as he records in his journal. Chilchuck's Laios is foolish and unreasonable, constantly blurting out a desire to eat monsters, as he had in Chilchuck's Imagine Spot a few chapters ago.
Of the Marcille dopplegangers, Senshi's version is affected by the Fantastic Racism he has towards elves and is the strange-looking one who keeps talking about dark magic. Chilchuck likes blonde hair and so remembers the side plait Marcille wore in a previous chapter, but he doesn't know anything about her magic; her grimoire even contains the "Spell to Turn Back Time" that she half joked about. Laios was strongly affected by seeing Marcille cast the resurrection spell, and has leafed through her grimoire. His Marcille is less excitable and has more distant eyes and unbound hair.
Laios's Chilchuck has correct features and attitude as Laios knows him best and understands that the half-foot is an adult, but Laios hasn't paid attention to his neck wrap. Marcille hasn't fully internalized that he isn't a child and her version has large round eyes and is sweeter. Senshi fully doesn't understand that Chilchuck is an adult and doesn't know much about traps and trap disarming, so his version is doughy-cheeked and has very incorrect tools.
Laois's Senshi doesn't have a hole in his helmet. Chilchuck's is handsome, as half-foots often find dwarves attractively masculine. Marcille was struck by Senshi being short and stout, which was exaggerated by the doppleganger, and he doesn't have the right tools; she's often been mana sick or otherwise indisposed and hasn't helped as much with the cooking as the others.
Mithrun hardly focuses on details at all, making his Kabru look like a ONE. sketch.
Kabru has a great deal of social awareness, so his version of Mithrun is essentially indistinguishable from the real one.
Marcille being a half-elf is alluded to before being confirmed in Chapter 68:
The elves in the series are commonly depicted as having narrow, angular eyes and pointed ears. Marcille, however, has large, round eyes and rounded, though long, ears. The elf who appears in chapter 3, Fionil, also has rounded eyes and ears... and is also a half-elf.
Chapter 51's cover page depicts the main party as each of the five main races (human, elf, halfing, dwarf, and gnome). As elves, Laios, Chilchuck, and Senshi possess the aforementioned sharp ears and narrow eyes; Marcille as a human, however, is nearly identical to her appearance as an elf.
Marcille has a great fear of death and having people she loves die before her; her nightmare in Chapter 42 manifests as a wyrm with the ability to rapidly age people to death. Her fear stems from her father dying while she was young, and though she never states how he died, she recalls her mother telling her that she "runs at a different pace" than others and will have to watch her loved ones pass her by. This inspired her to take up magic and research dungeons, and her greatest desire as she tells the Winged Lion is to make the lifespans of all races equal.
Marcille was also born not far from Laois and Falin, her parents being court wizards, and gathered her magical knowledge from the same academy as Falin as apparently the only elf.
Izutsumi is made out to be a picky eater because she always refused to eat things like green onions in her food and passed them on to someone else. This can be recontextualized somewhat when you remember she was fused with a cat. To whom onions are poisonous. It may not be that she's especially picky as much as she instinctively avoids eating things that feel like they would be bad for her cat half.
Another thing is that cats have different taste buds. When she tries to drink some succubus milk, which is described as being very sweet, she reacts with disappointment. Cats lack the taste buds for sweet things and thus can't taste it. It's likely that part of her pickiness comes from registering a completely different taste profile compared to everyone else.
Izutsumi also shares similar tastes in what she loves to eat as well. Barometz is said to taste like crab and the moment she has a taste, she wolfs it down quickly. Before that, she asks Laios for fish as well. Like cats, Izutsumi also has a inclination towards consuming aquatic life.
Mithrun's No Sense of Direction can be partially explained in that he only has one working eye; it's difficult to aim without depth perception. But he's also an Empty Shell incapable of wanting or not wanting things. To travel somewhere, you have to want to move in that direction. Since he is unable to desire anything, it's likely he just starts moving wherever he happens to be facing, not where he needs to go. Also, since a dungeon's master can manipulate the dimensions of their dungeon as they see fit, they can just make any direction they travel become the right one, a mindset that's probably become force of habit to a former dungeon lord like Mithrun.
Out of everyone in the team, Izutsumi seems to tolerate Marcille the most. It could be because Marcille is the only one Izutsumi has had one-to-one bonding time/interaction with so far, but that wouldn't explain why she becomes so clingy when she's affected by the Golden Kingdom's monster Geas. But now we know that her greatest subconscious desire is to reunite with her mother. It's likely that Izutsumi's treatment of Marcille is similar: subconsciously attaching to the closest positive, female influence.
Why would the Lion eat Marcille's desire to maintain her hair? Because as a mage, she has the potential to seal him like Thistle did. If less able to use her magic properly, that's unlikely to happen. Also, it's a nice little desire to snack upon without rendering her useless to him.
In Mithrun's first appearance, one of Pattadol's fairies flies past him repeatedly before he grabs it hard enough that it struggles in pain, implicitly irritated by it. Considering his indifference to almost everything - while wandering the dungeon with Kabru he does nothing to remove the effects of the changelings, even while knowing that they're eventually fatal - this might be Early-Installment Weirdness. Or, it could be that at some point he's formed a new desire which is to not have something buzzing around his face several times, but in his focus at being near another dungeon he hasn't realized it.
Otta only dating halfling women and dumping them before they turn 30 is played as somewhat unsettling by her teammates, who imply that she just likes them because they look so young. However, taking the relative lifespans of the races into account, it's not that strange or even scummy; At 137, Otta is a young adult by elven standards, equivalent to her 20s or early 30s in tallman lifespan, while 30 is middle-aged for a halfling. Otta dumping her girlfriends because they grow too old for her is less a case of her fetishizing youth, and more that her girlfriends genuinely grow out of her age-range faster than she can keep up.
Also, Otta is a Butch Lesbian but also a particularly short, slim elf - she's four foot three, the same height as Thistle. She may enjoy feeling like the bigger, physically stronger partner in a relationship but finds that most non-half foot receptive women are taller and/or more solidly built than she is. For all we know, when she takes up with a half-foot girl they have a lifespan talk and everyone knows it's not going to be a permanent relationship with children and taking care of the half-foot when she gets old, and breaking up is more mutual as the maturing half-foot comes to see Otta as youthful and irresponsible.
After Kabru and his party kill the corpse hunters who had tried to murder them, they toss the bodies into the underground lake. The lake that's full of hungry fish and monstrous predators. Unless the corpse hunters get very lucky and someone finds them quickly, they are likely deader than dead.
The massive group shot in Chapter 96 shows a few characters that look like them near the top, though it's not known when or by whom they could've been found and revived. (The dungeon did eject people and objects after it collapsed... which would still be a long time for a corpse to be in the lake. Good thing the ending also shows some Canaries capable of advanced revival.)
When Marcille is turned to stone by a cockatrice, it's mentioned that petrification will eventually wear off by itself. At the same time the risk of parts snapping off a petrified body is brought up. What would happen if a person broke into pieces and was still broken when they turned back...?
It may be that they only revert naturally if they're undamaged, which would explain the directions Laios gave to assume a very safe and stable position so there was little chance of damage while they spent the time they needed finding a means to revert the status.
Laios also states that it takes years for it to wear off in humans. While he assumes that it could happen sooner for elves, and Marcille is confused upon getting de-petrified (seemingly ruling out any And I Must Scream implications), it's still horrifying to think about someone losing years of their lives if someone couldn't find another cure for them.
More a case of Fridge Sadness, but the way Senshi is so determined to the point of being fixated on making sure the "young ones" of his group are all kept fed and properly nourished. Once you know that his backstory involves him being the youngest member and ultimate sole survivor of his former mining crew, being kept alive and fed best as they could despite coming to the brink of death by starvation by the one person he looked up to who was determined that the youngest of their number should be able to survive.
Chilchuck says he is 28 years old, and that halflings become adults at age 14. He also says he has three daughters, all of whom are independent adults. If they were triplets, this would mean he became a father at age 14. If they weren't, which is highly probable due to him referring to a "second" daughter, then he became a father before he turned 14. (This all of course rests on the assumption that he did not lie about any of these things.)
He mentions that halflings are considered adults at 14; the implication seems to be that they mature more quickly.
While 18 is considered the "age of adulthood" in many cultures, in Japan the age of adulthood has traditionally been considered 20. In regards to halflings, it could well be that "adulthood" for them falls into this type of category (being the mangaka is, obviously, Japanese). It would be odd, but not too far fetched for someone to be married/have children at 18, regardless of the age of 20 being the "adulthood" age. Chilchak may have simply gone this route. Beginning a family when he reached sexual maturity, rather than at what's usually considered the age of independent adulthood for halflings. It's also worth noting that it's never been made clear if halflings have the same gestation period as humans. It's possible that seeing as their lifespans are shorter, they might have shorter pregnancies too, which would go some of the way to explaining things here.
The Adventurer's Bible confirms that Chilchuck got married and had his first two daughters (possibly twins) at only 13. He had his next daughter a few years later. Since that's a year before being considered an adult, the (real-life) human equivalent would probably be having kids at 16-17.
What is there to stop The Winged Lion from regaining his desires? He only has to watch the world long enough, or lazily interact with the physical but once, to rekindle it.
Maybe they can't be the same desires that were eaten? Mithrun's been nearly an Empty Shell for years and hasn't recovered the basic desires to eat and sleep.
Winged Lion is not a living being, but a personality that was born from desires, and without desire, it returns back to a force of nature like the wind or rain. Eating is not a necessary drive for it, but more like a drug and it keeps taking out of addiction. Laios removing it's desire is like someone removing someone's desire and addiction to cigarettes completely. They try cigarettes first time to see what they're like and become hooked, after the desire has been erased the only way they could smoke again is if a cigarette finds it's way into their mouth and somehow gets lit by pure chance, and even then they have no desire to smoke another one. Even if the personality of the Winged Lion doesn't get erased, it's forced to "live" a dull and sober existence from here on.
Thistle's whole backstory is sad when you think about it. He was taken from his parents quite young to appeal to the vanity of a tallman king, young enough that he doesn't actually remember the name they gave him, and trained as a jester. Thistle was there to celebrate Delgal's birth and helped raise him, and was at his side into Delgal's middle age. Due to Proportional Aging, at the end of those several decades Thistle was barely changed, but naturally tallmen with very little contact with other elves didn't really see him as the child he was and put increasing responsibility on him, making him the court magician. Delgal's father was killed in front of Thistle, something that left a lasting impression on him, and Thistle comforted and reassured Delgal as a peer. Later in desperation Delgal turned to Thistle hoping for a miracle and Thistle became the master of the dungeon to protect Delgal and his people. From there he Never Grew Up and the Winged Lion nibbled at his desires, making him forget his youthful idealism; Thistle sealed the lion into a book that limited its power, but was already different by then. He's a Psychopathic Manchild because he was a child forced into an adult role and then at a dire time made a Deal with the Devil for idealistic reasons.
In a bonus comic where Izutsumi is talking to Lycion (the elf Canary who illegally modified himself into a beast-man), a fundamental difference and horrific new discovery between their two conditions is revealed. While Lycion's body is that of his original elf self and he was modified by having a beast soul added in that he could suppress or reveal at will, Izutsumi's body is that of a cat which had a human soul grafted into it, only hers is constantly active and never suppressed. If the "extra soul" were suppressed, then her body would revert to the body of a normal cat, rather than that of a human woman. Which is why Izutsumi is so heavily affected by the magic of the Golden City that's tamed all the monsters, and why, when the succubi attacked, alongside Izutsumi's desire to meet her human mother, a large cat beast appears along with the attackers (which Iztusumi even refers to as something her beast half would find attractive.) All of which facts lead to a couple horrific thoughts.
The body that the soul of the girl once named Izutsumi isn't the one she's currently inhabiting isn't her own original body, and rather that of a beast that her soul was implanted into as part of whatever experiment her original captors were trying to pull.
Even if Izutsumi had somehow succeeded in parting their souls from the same body, it's more than likely it would be Izutsumi who would disappear forever if the procedure had been successful. Since her body is originally that of a beast's and whatever body her human soul came from is likely long gone by now.
When the Winged Lion asks the party what their favorite foods are, Senshi says "Hippogriff soup". This puts a new cast on the hippogriff chapter, in which he mentioned thinking of it every time he ate, and wept and was glad to taste it again. It wasn't just a survival food and linked purely to guilt and desperation, then - he liked it, he spent decades uncertain if he'd eaten another dwarf and if his craving to have it again was actually a craving for human flesh. No wonder he wasn't close with other humans. Laios helping to determine that it really was soup made from a monster at least ends that period of Senshi's life.
is a page from the world guide identifying whose shapeshifter is whose.