It’s off to the Wool Continent where things are bigger, stranger and weirder than what we’ve seen before.
What They Say:
Time is running out for Komatsu to complete his fishy dish, and Toriko watches as Terry faces off against a beastly Zombie Wood. Will the Battle Wolf show his true power – or fall to his ferocious foe?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the focus shifting a bit to Komatsu, it’s been fun to watch him going after things in a positive way to get what he needs to finish a particular dish. After the time he’s spent with Toriko, he’s definitely become more outgoing and aggressive in what he needs to do to secure ingredients. He didn’t start off as a weak character in a way though, but rather one who hadn’t been out in the world all that much. Spending a lot of time with Toriko and going on multiple adventures after meeting him certainly showed him more of the world and his own involvement in those adventures gave him a bit more confidence, in both himself and his culinary abilities. Toriko draws out the best in people when they work together and Komatsu has definitely taken it all in.
With Toriko and Komatsu now on the Wool Continent and Toriko going off with Terry on his own adventure, there’s a lot to like with how it plays out. The team of Toriko and Terry is kind of fun, though it’s a big opportunity for Toriko to talk a whole lot while nobody else talks back to him as Terry either just looks at him or ignores him completely. But with them on this much more dangerous continent, they’ve got a pretty good pairing going on here as they’re able to handle a lot of the threats that come their way. With Toriko’s outgoing nature, he’s able to make it a proper and fun adventure, at least in a most basic sense. Terry’s been an interesting addition to the cast as the only non-human one to work alongside Toriko after their encounter and he offers a lot of unknowns in general.
Because of the nature of the series, this episode spends a lot of its time on the action as Toriko gets further into the continent, though he’s really just barely scratching the surface. And this is a positive since the show definitely has a lot of creativity when it comes to the creatures that are designed, comical though they may be at times. It’s this kind of anything-goes style that works in its favor since you can easily accept whatever they throw at you. Toriko gets some good moments here, but the real standout is with Terry as Toriko finally gets to see what he can do without being held back. They’ve realistically not been together all that long, and were going against each other at the start, so putting them in a partnership position works well.
In Summary:
I’m still suffering from that overly long Jewel Meat arc but episodes like this are helping to ease that pain a bit, even if it is the start of a long new arc. What we get here is simple fun with no real meat itself to it as we see Toriko and Terry going on their adventure. The two make a fun team, though it does mean we hear Toriko talking more than anyone else since he has nobody to really play off of. But it’s the creativity of things that attracts me to part of the series and this one lets it have a good bit of fun without going too wild just yet. And thankfully, at least for now, there are no GT Robots so that makes it a lot easier to deal with. With this just being the first steps on the larger journey, it’s pretty and light but that’s about it.
Grade: C+
Simulcast By: FUNimation
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
