12 Days of Christmas – Day 6 – Honor Thyself and Thy Food

As you’re watching anime or reading manga, you will eventually come to a point that defies any attempt at explanation. Between your experience with and knowledge of the series, the intensity of the events and how everything can come together, there is no easy way to summarize what the series has made you feel.

So I’ve decided to present the following to you without any further explanation or context. There’s really nothing more I can say.

Toriko – In Which Four Guys Want to Cook and Eat a Godzilla Sized Creature

Yes, we now have a Spirit Bomb. Made of appetite.

If there’s one thing Toriko knows how to do better than any other series, it’s how to create a sense of scale. I see other manga talk about big stuff, whether it be creatures, places, or just a massive world in general. But Toriko knows how to make things truly feel gigantic. It sends the characters against colossal ruins or monsters the size of the average city to make them overcome what feels like insurmountable hurdles.

This chapter took that to a whole new level. It’s one thing to face gigantic obstacles, but the difficult part is how you get across the protagonists not simply meeting them, but surpassing them. In their own way, they’ve become something grander than the creature that used to tower over them. So the question is how to convey that climactic moment with all the grandeur it deserves?

Toriko – Review

As I’ve read more and more series from Weekly Shonen Jump, I’ve come to realize how they can make amazing series out of the most ridiculous premises imaginable. Just among their well known manga, we have the story of the rubber pirate who wants to rule the ocean, the intense mystery case of the magic killer notebook, and the gun-crazy extortionist who dreams of making the world’s greatest football team. After a while, nothing they came out with could surprise me, which is why I’m glad I first heard of Toriko so long ago.

Food is the most important thing in this world by far. It’s what 90% of the world’s economy revolves around, if not more. One of the most highly respected jobs in this world is that of the Bishokuya, or “food hunters” who gather the special ingredients that are too tough to be obtained through normal means. Our protagonist is one of these people. Armed with only his intense love for delicious food – and the hundreds of millions of yen he’ll make – Toriko and his new chef Komatsu go out in search of rarer and rarer ingredients. With luck, they’ll be able to get their hands on them before the criminal organization the Bishokukai can use them to manipulate the hungry citizens of the world.

This Week in Manga – Cutting The Knot

I’ve thought about it, and decided to make the multi-chapter posts from before into a recurring type of update. The way I see it, there are certain series not many people who visit this site read, and some others where the chapter may not contain enough information for a full post. For instance, Law’s current plan from One Piece or the subject of Food Honour in Toriko could easily receive their own posts, but the most recent chapters don’t have quite enough information to write about yet. At the same time, there were other topics in those chapters and many others which I can analyze, but not at great length. Plus there’s the occasional time where I’ll miss a chapter just because I’m like that sometimes.

So my solution is “This Week in Manga”, a series I hope to come out each week where I quickly go over several chapters I couldn’t write a full post about. The ideal number is seven in one update, but it’ll most likely change depending on what comes out. For this week, we have Toriko, One Piece, Fairy Tail, Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, Kimi ni Todoke, Natsume Yuujinchou and Nisekoi.

Toriko – All’s Fair In Friendship And Cooking

Chefs in the Toriko-verse can be dicks sometimes.

The relationship between Komatsu and Take seems to have gone down a direction I didn’t expect. Even though I understood how he was being portrayed as a corrupt chef, I still thought he was going to end up a victim of the Bishokukai. With all the criminal acts they have committed so far, slavery doesn’t seem all that out of character for them. But in the case of Take, and most likely the other kidnapped chefs as well, it appears that they had some sort of brainwashing applied to them as well.

From this chapter, I think I can make a prediction or two. First is that Komatsu will get healed, most likely by Chin Chinchin and/or the Bubble Fruit. Nobody is expecting him to die right now, so it’s just a question of how he’ll get better. The second prediction, and the one far less likely to happen, is that Take will become a recurring enemy for Komatsu. He isn’t strong enough to just get beaten by Toriko, especially with this new powerup, and an act like stabbing Komatsu can’t just be forgiven in a few chapters, so turning him back into a good guy now is unlikely. With those two out of the way, the most likely option is for him to leave and return in a later arc, at which point it’s hard to say what he’ll be like. I hope that’s the case, because Komatsu could use a good enemy that is only his and not Toriko’s.

Toriko – Return of the Kings

Only in this series could that sound awesome.

Take a close look at that bottom right panel. Those of you who don’t know much about Toriko might just see a bunch of tough guys handing out together. Nothing out of the ordinary. However, for everyone reading the story right now, this chapter has been an interesting one. You see, those four characters are known in this series as the Four Heavenly Kings. They’re meant to be the main group which this manga focuses on. And this is the first time in 174 chapters they’ve all been in the same place together.