Toriko 328 Review: Giant Sea Monsters & Chiyo's Son

Toriko, Chapter 328: The Roof of the Civilization

Kind of a slow chapter, but still pretty good. We're still doing the whole worldbuilding thing, with the Black Sea apparently being made up of different kinds of tastes depending on how deep you go, with parts of it being like squid ink, soy sauce, black coffee and soup stock. Jiji also explains how the corals and rocks in the Black Sea are used to make the seven pieces of the Golden Cookware, which according to Jiji are the only things that can handle Spirit Food.

Monocle-mustache-dude whose name I forgot asks Jiji about Spirit Food, and Jiji explains that the Back World doesn't have much in lieu of food, and that's why the souls within it are hungry for 'life', and out of all the tastes in the real (or 'front') world only one taste can be taken to the Back World, which is naturally Another.

Of course, while Jiji goes through all of this important exposition (which he lampshades) the other chefs are distracted by the sudden bright light and all the pretty stuff they can see, and apparently that portion of the sea is brightened up by the 'Stardust River', the remnants of when an Another fish has passed through in the past. So kind of like Heracles' footprints or the Mother Snake's whirlwind footprint things.

Chiyo then walks up and does this monologue about how maybe her son is looking at the same sight of beauty and whatnot, and note that the reason she's with that group is honestly because of the Back World. She notes how her son died at twelve years old, and we learn moer about her dead son, which is all the more tragic. Her son has been sick all throughout his life, and ate only through tubes, never tasting real food. The moment he was discharged from the hospital and bought to Chiyo's restaurant, he apparently got worse and died before eating. Chiyo talks about how she regret never being able to make a home-made meal for her son, and notes how she cannot help but not move on from her son, and if she can have a meal with her son one last time she won't have any regrets about dying.

Is Chiyo going to die? This sounds like she's going to die in the future. Which I wouldn't be entirely opposed, as long as she actually does have that one last meal. We get some generic inspirational affirmations, when this positively gigantic coral monster, the "Corgolem", shows up. It's super gigantic, and kind of launches a small part of itself to trail their group when they escape. The Corgolem kind of looks like that tree monster from the BB Corn arc, or the Four Beast's original emancipated plant form, no?

And apparently according to Jiji, in addition to Whale King Moon, there are the "Seven Beasts" that rule over Area 6, which are all over 4000, and I'm assuming these are made up of rejected designs for the King of Area 6. We see this horrifying looking shark, and this monster turtle with a castle on its back, and another disgusting anglerfish looking thing in the background. 

And then this Don Slime dude shows up, just this black blob with limbs and glowing white eyes. Jiji introduces Don Slime as a food spirit, and apparently is about to do an introdump about Don Slime's ability to hide things or whatever when Don Slime shuts him up. What is that all about? I dunno. 

Meanwhile they arrive on the roof of the ancient civilization, which is a Giant Shell, the largest shellfish in the world... which is as large as 10 billion square kilometers, a.k.a. enough to fit the United States. They enter the Giant Shell, pursued by a piece of the Corgolem, and finally arrive in Blue Grill. Well, so that's how their version of Atlantis exists -- there's a gigantic pocket of air within the Giant Shell.

Pretty awesome! I don't think anyone in their group except for Chiyo, Chinchinchinchin and maybe Aimaru and Match can really fight on the level of Toriko and company so we probably won't see much of the Seven Beasts in action which is a damned shame. But still, it's pretty awesome to see these monstrous sea creatures. And if Giant Shell is as large as the USA... well, knowing how Toriko is all about craziness Whale King Moon is probably the size of the real Moon, or even larger.