Toriko 351 Review: Omnipresent Bacteria

Toriko, Chapter 351: We Completed It

Man, another weird entry in this absolutely weird arc, and it seems that, well, this might be the final or penultimate chapter before the flashback-Another arc is over and we cut back to Don Slime beating the ever-loving crap out of Neo and his stupid goblin wart nose.

Komatsu cooks Another into some kind of honestly generic-looking fish dish, but suddenly a gigantic school of glowy living Anothers swarm out of it and basically overwhelms everyone with its savouriness. Every food spirit demon basically get overwhelmed with the great taste that they ascend to heaven, Asarudy gets a flashback to his past life and his past lover, the living chefs are booted out of the spirit world and the gates are absolutely destroyed. All because of some steamed fish.

We get a short nice moment of closure for Chiyo who met the spirit of her son in the soul world where she's comforted by her son saying how she is full thanks to all the love she gave him. A bit anticlimatic, honestly, but hey, it's sweet. 

Asarudy apparently had a backstory all along, something that is dropped on our lap randomly this chapter. His old lover apparently has been waiting for him on a shrine, being reduced to a desiccated corpse, and he tells Don Slime that he wants to die to belong with his lover once more so Don Slime can take over his body. This all happens apropos of nothing -- no mention about the mysterious shrine, no mention of Asarudy having a mysterious past he is struggling or doesn't remember, no mention of Don Slime needing a sacrificial body (so far it's been implied that Don really wants to get Ichiryu back)... it's just odd and poorly done, in my opinion. Asarudy dies, too un-developed as a character for me to care.

Komatsu cooks a meal for the kid. I don't care. It's kinda inappropriate to have Komatsu ranting about how the best food for Chako's different tongue is a mother's cooking happen a scene after Chiyo talking about how despite her son never tasted his mother's cooking it's still all heartwarming and stuff.

Also apparently Don Slime is a monster capable of changing himself into anything, including possessing microbes that allowed him to eat Acacia's full course in the past. Just what he is isn't quite explained, just that he can transform to all these animals and creatures, he founded Blue Grill, and despite part of him being trapped in the Soul World it's no huge task for Don Slime to recover from all the slime left behind. Man, I just wished most of this is really made clear instead of being introdumped when it's relevant. Asarudy will eat the full course, allowing Don Slime's true body to be revived, though Don Slime is at least nice enough to ask Asarudy for permission. And Asarudy, coincidentally enough, has this backstory we just learned about which suits him.

Don just handwaves Ichiryu away with "he pissed me off" and it implies something more... is Ichiryu still alive? Is his soul super-dead or something? We don't get anything.

It's all just a series of introdumps that seem to show up to justify other introdumps and plot twists that don't need to happen without said introdumps. It's not even like the back channel/soul world/Another backstory we got a while back where it's a mystery that's been built up for a while. Asarudy's backstory and Don Slime needing a sacrifice to return to life are things we literally learn about in this and it's kind of a bad storytelling. Neither of them are poor concepts on their own, and are great stories if told at an appropriate point in the story or if it had some foreshadowing. Kinda made you wish they exorcised the whole Chako shit and replaced it with Asarudy or Don Slime.