Sunday, 20 December 2015

Toriko 352 Review: Finally Off That Damn Clam

Toriko, Chapter 352: We’re Back!
 

Ah, the obligatory breather chapter after the insanity of the Another arc. What a strange arc that was! We get a bit of a pointless reveal that the weird hobo dude that vomited some thing into Komatsu’s face (I guess that’s just a bit of Don Slime now that I think of it?) is Chako’s grandfather. Literally no one gives a fuck about Chako. There’s also a running gag throughout this chapter about Komatsu’s nose that I don’t really understand. Also Warden Love and the other 0th Biotope dude is back in their own body.

No one in Blue Grill can be bought back from the dead now that the Spirit Gate went all kablooey. The girl among the Ten-Shells tries to hit on Melk, before going all “what, you’re a woman? … not that it makes a difference…” Jiji establishes that Don Slime’s Asarudy-granted body won’t last for too long before it disperses again, and Jiji goes on this little explanation about how two gourmet demons cannot exist within one gourmet cells… except the whole thing with Toriko which we’ve known about for some time now. And he might even have a third one, if that weird acid trip we got a while back is any indication. Also apparently Don Slime is in everyone at Blue Grill to monitor the goings-on while he’s out paired with Ichiryu, though every single part of Don Slime has been drawn back during his rebirth into Asarudy’s body.

Also, apparently Moon has been eaten off-screen by one of the pimple meatballs, though different scanlation groups have translated it differently as ‘Moon has been eaten’ or ‘Moon has eaten Neo’. Um, okay? I don’t think they would kill one of the Eight Kings off like that without at least showing it, but I guess whatever, as sad as I am that we won’t see Toriko fight a black hole whale, it’s not like Moon’s actually been anything beyond a plot device.

Apparently all the long flashback chapters to Blue Grill has been Komatsu telling it all to Toriko and Toriko lampshades it by going all ‘damn that was a long explanation (flashback)’. And, well, like Toriko I still don’t fully understand everything that went on in Blue Grill – it was a very oddly-paced arc.


We go back to seeing the big fights going on before we left off for Blue Grill, and we see Don Slime bearing down on Neo’s main body, we see Jirou in his insane monstrous form facing off against the Neo Organization (HOLY SHIT JIROU’S FACE THO) and Midora’s fighting Frohze, apparently having destroyed all the life balls she had in the time it took for Komatsu to recap everything. Whichever of these three we cut to next chapter I’m definitely going to be happy. Might even forgive all the sins of the weird pacing and haphazard jumping around that the Blue Grill arc has.     

No comments:

Post a Comment