Toriko 363-364 Review: Dead Slime

Toriko, Chapter 363: Don, Serious

Well, here's the inevitable 'Don Slime loses to the big bad villain Neo-Acacia' set of chapters. That's not to say that it's not interesting, of course, but then it's kind of obvious that Don Slime's not going to be the one that takes down Neo. Despite the couple of chapters given to Don Slime in recent times, again, we don't really get much breathing room to really get a proper feel of Don Slime as a proper character instead of a plot device. Don't get me wrong, I still like the big dude, and he is awesome going in and being all "I AM DISASTER!" and shit, but really the rushed feel of the Blue Grill arc and the madness that follows really doesn't lend too much attachment to Don Slime.

Despite the fork/knife thing that Don Slime summoned in a previous chapter, he seems to have abandoned it in favour of manipulating natural disasters. Lightning blasts, Tornadoes, spikes to use as graters, mouth kamehamehas, and in possibly one of the awesomest attacks in all of manga, he flexes his muscles and sprouts a motherfucking meteor swarm.

And, of course, Neo doesn't give a fuck. He eats his own arm to regenerate it, and it's super-obvious from the get-go that he's eating Don Slime's big energy attacks. We get a moment where it seemed like Don Slime's falling into despair and whatnot, but power of determination and he summons a little ball....

Toriko, Chapter 364: The Theory

... which turns out to be a weaponized star. Because that's what a super-powerful colony of squid bacteria does -- create a condensed star. And Don Slime blows it up. And Neo, of course, eats it. Don Slime is reduced to his original cute form. We get this long and honestly rather pointless flashback of Don Slime trying to get the spirit of Ichiryu to come back. There's this superlong talk about evolution and appetite being the catalyst of evolution and whatnot, but honestly it's nothing we've never heard before. Is Ichiryu coming back? That flashback isn't exactly clear, but eh. Again, wrong place, wrong time. Would've worked really well if they placed this flashback and the flashback when Don first met Ichiryu way before this arc happened, during the whole 'let's revive Ichiryu' thing.

And then Neo-Acacia eats Don Slime. He can eat Don Slime's body without problems, and then Pair the Nitro shows up, telling Don Slime that, well, he came from a 'different' place. Acacia-Neo just wants to eat God the dish, and he tells Pair the Nitro to hurry the fuck up. Pair just... well, directs Acacia-Neo to... where Jirou is single-handedly fucking up all the Blue Nitros.

Now Jirou vs. Neo? That would actually be awesome, because Jirou's a long-running character with established badassery. Not that I hate Don Slime, mind you, but he just seems so obviously set up to be this uber-strong character that's going to take a fall so Toriko and company can show up and be the hero. Oh well. It was a nice end for Don Slime. I liked him when he lasted.

Overall this set of chapters are both disappointing yet awesome at the same time.