Toriko, Chapter 394: Toriko's Full Course
Well, these Shonen manga long-runners are dropping off like flies. We lost Bleach earlier this year, and Assassination Classroom a fair bit before that (though Assassination Classroom didn't feel rushed due to its already episodic nature). 40-year-old long-running manga Kochikame also apparently ended a while back, a manga that I'm not aware of, and Gintama is apparently in its last arc. Huh.
Toriko didn't have it as bad as Bleach did, but once I have the time I will do a long, long article analyzing when Toriko started getting rushed at a stupid, breakneck pace towards the end and it's still trying to keep everything important in it. It's around, oh, after the Bambina arc, I guess.
This chapter just tries to wrap things up as best as it can. We don't get any explanation to who the Devils within Toriko are and why they are so special (Blue and Third got a fair bit of dialogue, but it's just generic 'inner appetite' monologue). The piece of meat that Toriko bit off of Neo was apparently not Neo himself, but an End Mammoth, who literally came out of nowhere. So yeah, Toriko's got his full course filled at last, tying a small knot in that concept introduced at the beginning of the series. Mind you, the last two entries to Toriko's full course literally came out of nowhere and I honestly would rather have Pair and Neo fill those spots.
Center bursts out of the ground, giving Toriko a bit of an extra energy and basically healing everyone injured by Neo a couple of chapters ago... and bringing Starjun back to life. What? But Bambina is back to life too, so there's that.
Some nonsense about food luck, but apparently Neo did kill all the food luck of the combatants involved... except for ZOMBIE! Yeah, Zombie is relevant to the end! Holy shit, I actually burst a gut laughing at this. The whole 'Center heals everything' bit is a bit of an 'eh, that happened' moment, but having Zombie actually be relevant to the finale? Good job, Zombie.
Midora copies Zombie's food luck, unleashes all his energy an the food luck and launches Meteor Spice around the world, which apparently does the reverse of what meteors do and actually fixes the world together. We get a short scene of Zaus talking to Uumen, of Mansam and Rin and Setsuno, who survived the ordeal, of Pair finding the other Nitros free... and after Neo regurgitates enough food to 'make a few galaxies' (so much for the space arc). Toriko shares a piece of Pair, I think, with Neo. Nothing carves friendship like the testicles of a super-strong monkey, right?
And everyone has a meal.
So yeah, apparently next week will be the final or penultimate chapter, and if it ended... well, Toriko's second half is nowhere as well-paced as I would've liked it to be, but it's still made its way to a decent, satisfying conclusion. Even if we didn't quite get enough Bambina or Brunch or Setsuno or Jirou or the Eight Kings.
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