Toriko 330 Review: Terrifying Food Spirits

Toriko, Chapter 330: Confrontation

We get a bit of a information dump about Blue Grill, about how they rank the restaurants with 'Shells' the way humans rank restaurants with 'Stars'. And apparently it's got a population of 500 million, entire ecosystems to breed dinosaur-looking animals, and thanks to the planktons on the giant clam, there's even day and night. Jiji explains about how everything is thanks to the Food Spirits, and how when the night falls, everyone will understand what it means. Jiji has been cryptic about how Blue Grill isn't an entirely fun-fun-happy-fun place, and this is exactly why...

At night, horrifying Food Spirits come out. And mother fucker do they look disgusting.

But before that, we get some bullshit about Komatsu, this random kid Chako, autographs and toilets and I honestly don't think we need a kiddy tagalong kid at this point. We did get some nice information, though... there are five 'Ten-Shell' chefs that are like the best dudes in town. And apparently Blue Grill residents ward off ghosts or food spirits with 'Urchive', some kind of talisman...

And this disgusting bulbous snake-like thing with a giant nose and eyes and a giant maw and a beard just shows up and it's got a couple of buddies too. It's like your traditional gonk Japanese demon-ghost-spirit thing, and it looks fucking disgusting.

We cut away to Chin Chin Chin, Chiyo and Kuribou meeting up with Warden Love... who turns around and shows that she's wearing a horrifying kabuki mask and the face underneath it looks all cracked and shit. They are then confronted by Tack, who is one of the Zero Biotope people who came with Love to Area 6. Presumably Love was either killed and possessed by the food spirits, or they did it while she was unconscious or something? What do the masks symbolize?

We cut back to the main group and despite the Urchives around the restaurant they are in, they are besieged by a large amount of food spirits all of which look disgusting as all sorts of hell. They don't really do anything, though, as the Seven-Shell chef Mari (who also wears a kabuki mask) of that restaurant explains. Apparently, food spirits cannot possess the healthy and alive, but 'unless you are prepared to lose your souls, you cannot access the Back World'. The fuck does that mean? The food spirits will take over their bodies when they want to go to the Back World?

And apparently it will be a problem for the Blue Grill residents if they transferred to the Back World improperly, and they need an adequate cooking skill to get to the Back World. There need to be a competition between the human world chefs and the five Ten-Stars, who have ridiculous names. We are treated to 'Condor Window', whose hair is curled around in his hair in the most ridiculous-looking hairdo ever, and wields a french bread sword thing. We've got 'Picnic Bomber', one of the two chefs we saw last chapter, and I honestly hope he doesn't bomb actual picnics. That's mean. Then 'Kamino Kish', who at least has a normal-ish name, who's a girl with a santa hat. Then 'Asarudy', who is monkey-mask from last chapter, and finally 'May May', who looks like a robot.

Well, not an entirely eventful chapter, but Toriko has finally lapsed back into its "let's make every chapter elicit a bigger WTF-is-going-on reaction from the audience". Glorious.