Toriko 336 Review: Holy Shit Unexpected Appearances

Toriko, Chapter 336: What Nakaume Saw

Toriko though! Bleach was pretty fuzz-inducing and One Piece was decent, but Toriko, once more, fucking blows both chapters out of the water by simply being just so freaking awesome.

It starts off innocently enough with Teppei talking to, well, I guess the dude's called Nakaume. And we're picking up where we left off last chatper and this really is one of the bigger myth arcs of the series -- what the fuck is Neo doing? And apparently it scared Nakaume so much his hair turned white just by remembering it. Because hair pigmentation totally works that way. We get a short look at Dragon King Derous (the only real king we didn't see last chapter other than Heracles -- who had an arc all to himself). Teppei notes how all the kings are moving, probably because of either the Gourmet Eclipse or because of the cooking in Blue Shell... I think it's talking about the mysterious city-wide cooking project, which is more likely than the tournament.

Apparently the Blue Nitro is doing the same thing in Area 1, and we see some Uzumaki-level shit as these zombie-like people are walking towards some mysterious-looking glowing crack in the ground. Is this what's going on in Area 6? Are the humans the ingredients and being fed to Maybe-Acacia?

Nakaume survived being taken there, though, and Teppei wants to know what he saw. Nakaume's fucking pissing himself, because what he saw took up two pages. And the weird bulbous Acacia-lookalike thing we saw last chapter? Well, it's shoulder has got some fucking bulbous tumour abomination thing that's like a PG-rated version of the demons in Berserk. And that thing is massive and apparently according to Nakaume it's going to eat everyone. And all these mini-tumours kind of forms a goblin-like face, and it's got like these sleepy-looking faces on the other sides of his giant face. Holy shit. What the fuck is that? Is that the food spirit within Acacia? What the hell? It's going to eat everything with its weird hole-mouth, I guess.

We then cut away to Joa Frohze Joie and she's doing some mysterious thing with weird spheres. What the fuck are those I don't even want to begin to speculate. But she realizes something's amiss, and sure enough, Teppei, all half-transformed with wood-arms and carrying Nakume on a little wood coccoon on his back, is trying to get out. He tells Nakaume not to worry because Team Toriko, Jiro and Setsuno can probably eat whatever it is he's afraid of...

But he suddenly gets attacked by Man-Eating Grass (of course). A bunch of string-like goop gets fired at Teppei, and he dodges them... but this ugly face suddenly says 'Pause' with a pause symbol showing up... then 'Rewind'. And 'Play', basically stopping time, rewinding time and playing it so that the globs actually hit Teppei. What the hell? This is, like, some JoJo's Bizarre Adventure main villain weird timey-wimey outcome-controlling power. And it's cool.

And this giant spider with a fucking twisted human face shows up and talks about how Playback is a useful ability to learn. I really didn't realize who this dude is -- his face looks familiar -- and Teppei identifies him as Mohyan Shaishai, the mysterious super Saiseya dude that was missing and revealed to be hanging out with Neo. He wasn't this freaky spider-monster back when we last saw him before the timeskip. I'd have remembered it if he were like that. Teppei tries to talk Mohyan down, but, well, Mohyan shoots out Thread Spear, which Teppei counters with Wood Spear (he's basically a less grandiose Senju Hashirama at this point) but Mohyan just Fast-Forwards his attack and Teppei barely got away with some acid sap. Because,y'know, acidic sap. Only in Toriko.

Teppei can't get out through the back channel in time, and he's just protecting Nakaume now... when his leg is wrapped around by some long thing. And he's captured by Mohyan's spider web once more.

And HOLY SHIT, we saw a bunch of dudes from back before and they're all different! Definitely more prominent than Mohyan was in the pre-timeskip chapters. We've got Joejoe, the Bishokukai Igor-scientist fellow who was basically in all Bishokukai base scenes, who's all bloated and gross and has a chameleon tongue which trapped Teppei's leg. We've got Kousairou, the black-skinned white-eyed hermit bastard who betrayed the 0th Biotope, and he's basically got a shit-ton of octopus tentacles growing out of his hair and body. And we've got the cooking king Zaus, who's got eagle wings. Well, I guess someone's been experimenting on them.

Teppei's attempts to cut off Joejoe's arms while reflecting to himself how he is fucked fails because Joejoe has super regeneration, but Joejoe's tongue gets cut in the next page. Well, Teppei's doing some crazy shit, I thought. But no, it's motherfucking ALFARO, the moss badass butler of all time, showing up with brand new golden plates like it ain't no thing. Holy shit, Alfaro. He does so little, but acts so badass in every fucking scene he shows up in.

He comments on how sharp his blades are, everyone is surprised and we get a closeup of Alfaro with a smug expression like "yeah you wannabe villains I was here first". Alfaro talks all calm like about how his boss isn't upset -- he just asked him to politely get rid of them. The Neo dudes all prepare to attack -- Zaus draws weapons with giant gorilla arms, Joejoe sprouts even more tongues, and Kousairou... uh... grows an octopus ink-mouth thing. Kinda silly looking honestly.

The next page then shows all three of them immediately getting utterly fucked up despite not moving an inch from their position. And I thought it was Alfaro just being a badass and trumping them with his plates... but no, we see gorgeous hair, and Zaus recognizes who it is. MIDORA. And his god damned weaponized tongue. Yeah, if it was Alfaro or Teppei who one-shotted those three dudes, I won't count them dead -- Zaus at least was pretty top-tier. But Midora? They be fucked.

Midora descends and holy fuck this is just all so awesome.

I have no words. Toriko is really making itself to be one of my favourite mangas of all time and it's chapters like this that make Toriko just so much more than just an insane cooking-hunting manga. Because really, every single damn page I was like HOLY FUCK HOLY SHIT HOLY FUCK TEPPEI JOIE ZAUS ALFARO MIDORA HOLY SHIT

So yeah we've got Neo dudes turning into animals and the weird cooking thing with the Demon Acacia thing eating the world and the Eight Kings moving and Midora and Alfaro and whatever the fuck Joie is doing and Mohyan's time-rewinding powers and did I mention Midora and Alfaro? Yeah, all the hype. All the yes.

Great chapter. Fucking great.