Toriko 389 Review: All Sorts of Things Are Happening

Toriko, Chapter 389: The Flavor He Can't Stand

Okay, that's a bit all over the place. We start off with Aimaru, who, with his Germavore Gourmet Knights discipline, is able to enter Area 0, the origin of all flavour and all that shit to see Center being born. There's some buildup to this plot thread, at least, so it doesn't entirely come out of nowhere, but I still feel like this bit really needed some more exploration to make me really care. The fact that Aimaru has been one of the least-developed of the main characters still in play now probably doesn't help either. I mean, we've got a lot of Gourmet Knights screentime over the chapters, but not Aimaru specifically other than those couple of flashbacks that established that he was Toriko's old buddy.

There's a couple of fight scenes between Acacia and Midora, with Midora launching his Meteor Spice thing en masse to blast the giant gourmet hand that Acacia had summoned. Acacia summons a crapton of other gourmet hands, Toriko charges in with Jet Leg Knife, Brunch saves Komatsu and his buddies, a swarm of Battle Wolves charge in only to be eaten by Acacia (that was brutal)... and Komatsu has this long flashback where he talks with his own Gourmet Spirit (Frohze?) that reveals that apparently anyone who eats their own full course means that they won't be taken over by their Gourmet Demons when they eat Acacia's full course... but apparently it didn't work on Acacia for some reason, who's more Neo than Acacia at the moment, eating dogs and shit.

Pair then comes in with another gigantic introdump, knocking Toriko and changing his appetite into something that Neo can't stand, which is 'anger'. Apparently Acacia/Neo's colour of appetite is black, that is all-consuming... and it consumes Midora's food luck, and it hates anger? Yeah, this bit wasn't entirely un-foreshadowed, but damn if it feels tacked on and forced. Whatever the case, though, Pair turned Toriko into basically Hulk, while Acacia punches Midora.

Oh, and the fact that food luck, the best and most eyeroll-inducing plot armour ever in Toriko, has been eaten by Acaia, it's at least a nice thing. It's been overdone and irritating in recent chapters, so seeing it gone is definitely a good thing.

There's a lot of things going on, and it's all just, again, things that felt like they should've been built up with seeds scattered in the earlier chapters but we go straight from the very first hints (like Pair's mystery capture data thing) to the payoff without the journey and it's a bit of a shame.