Toriko 332 Review: King Don

Toriko, Chapter 332: Chako's Situation

I honestly kind of forgot about Toriko last week! It's an okay-ish chapter. I am an absolute big fan of how Dressrosa-y this whole Blue Grill area feels, this seemingly prosperous, if wacky, country with a dark secret thanks to all the secret dealings and people abductions done from the shadows. Except, y'know, with food spirits and soul stealing and whatnot. There's also a fair bit of quirky villain introduction going on at the beginning, and some over-the-top cooking competition stuff at the end. 

We start off with one of the Ten-Shells, who is this sorta posh-looking dude (girl?) with round glasses flipping very quickly through a book in a room. He doesn't look like any of the dudes from before, mostly because he's not wearing a mask, but the other characters call him Asarudy, the monkey-masked fellow from before that spied the Human World chefs. The other Ten-Shells show up, with, uh, -looks up- Condor Window being just all crazy with his crazy swirling hair and shit, and he gets into an argument with Maymay, who is apparently an old man and remembers how many times he tells Condor to shut windows. Kakino Kish, the girl, talks about how Maymay is weird. Condor walks up to Asarudy, who is crying... and Asarudy's buddy, the awesomely-named Picnic Bomber tells him that Asarudy just gets super-engrossed in whatever book he's reading. Apparently that book is brought to Blue Grill by motherfucking Ichiryu, who is apparently stronger than the Don.

So Don Slime is pretty fucking strong, all right.

Condor and Asarudy get into a bit of an argument about whether the humans are exciting or not, and apparently death isn't that much of a convenience to them, since Condor apparently has came back to life before. Sucks to be the original host of the body he inhabits, though...

Meanwhile, we get the cooking tournament started, and everyone shows up with bowls of rice because apparently watching the tournament with the Ten-Shells is enough to make plain rice taste so good. Blue Grill's judges, the ST10, apparently summoned by Asarudy, can taste Spirit Food and will be judging the competition. I guess they are Blue Grill's version of G7.

And Don Slime is apparently fucking KING of Blue Grill, despite being a food spirit. Well.

And considering all the evil shit going on in the country, is Don Slime secretly evil? Or are the things they are doing secretly good? Fucking weird. 

But without Komatsu (who's off being distracted) and Team Chiyo (who's with Tack), it is up to Yuda to compete. Yuda lists off the contestants as Wabutora, Chiru, Damala Sky and Nono. Out of them only Yuda and Chiru really has done anything significant, with Yuda being a constant recurring character since the Four Beasts arc, while Chiru was sorta important in the whole food discipline arc thing in the secret forest. Nono's only really notable for her crush for Komatsu, and neither Wabutora and Damala Sky ever did anything beyond having memorable designs. 

Komatsu, meanwhile, is talking to the masked beggar outside Chako's house, and apparently there's a Soul Trade thing going on in Blue Grill, where good-for-nothings are ostracized and their souls are replaced with superior ones. Also, like all the other civilizations, their ancestors were originally slaves of the Nitro, and were subject to Gourmet Cell injection. Though the ones who didn't adapt well to Gourmet Cell injection apparently had descendants with these defects like bad eyes (Chako's mother) or bad taste buds (Chako). And apparently Blue Grill doesn't give a shit and sees that it's a waste of time spending time and effort on these failures, so they'll just switch out their souls for a superior one.

Even though, uh, the defect of eyes and taste buds and whatnot lie in one's body, you'd think, and switching out souls won't do anything significant. But I guess we'll get an explanation? Maybe the soul can alter the body it inhabits?

Also, apparently those who have had their souls switched out are now participating in the country's project, and there's a random health examination to weed out these 'failures' to participate in the mysterious project. Damn, Don Slime, you are like a dictator or some shit.

I do like it that Chako's lack of taste has been foreshadowed by him calling Komatsu's food bad, which is kind of a clever thing to do... though I still would prefer that we didn't get too much scenes focusing on Chako. He is irritating. Komatsu heads off to the "Kitchen of Eternity", where apparently souls are drowning in eternity or some shit that didn't get explained because this is manga and explanations must be dragged out.

All kind of creepy, and the chapter closes with the announcer of the competition introducing the five chefs from Blue Grill and the human world while Don Slime watches. Overall good stuff. I didn't expect we would get another cooking competition, nor did I expect the whole dark secrets of a prosperous city thing to be in play when all indications before this seemed to show that the main thing are just going to be Food Spirits and the motherfucking Black Hole Whale and the seven mini-kings of the sea and whatnot. But this is cool too.