Toriko’s fight gets taken up a few notches while Komatsu races hard to finish off his meal.
What They Say:
Toriko continues his battle with the corn-stealing, straw-wielding villain known as Grinpatch, and Komatsu desperately races to make it home before a rare dish of fish becomes nothing more than bubbles!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Toriko’s arc in the last few episodes has been welcome in that it feels like a rather small work overall rather than something big, huge and impressive. As much as those kinds of stories can be fun, Toriko seems to work better on a more personal level. Splitting him and Komatsu has also been a nice element as they’re on their own adventures for awhile rather than just split up during a moment of danger or excitement. It’s also a good story element in place here that’s letting Toriko and Terry spend time together on the Wool Continent where they can get to know each other better and come to an understanding of sorts about how each of them lives and operates.
The series still comes off as a One Piece aspirant where it has such a huge and varied world that’s very unique in what it wants to do. And with this episode we get another villain of sorts in the form of Grinpatch, the multi-armed man from the previous episode that arrived to just seemingly annoy Toriko. The two are amusingly well paired though in their outgoing personalities and display of manliness that unfolds. The fight doesn’t go on too long here though as it comes to a strange sort of anticlimactic ending since Grinpatch feels that things evened out at one point and that was all he cared about. Having him fly off on some bird is just another strange and not altogether well scripted moment for the series, but it’s been filled with them.
The flip side of the episode dealing with Komatsu and The Gang has its moments as well as he races back to the hotel in order to pull off the big meal that he’s trying to succeed with. With Sunny driving and others showing up along the way including Coco, it has a whole lot of busy feeling to it with the way everyone is involved and trying to please the VIP. There’s a lot of activity with this arc because of all the people but also the emotions of eating this particular meal, the ingredients and so forth. It’s nice to see it come to a culmination, but after the beauty of the Jewel Meat storyline and that final meal with it, it’s hard to imagine something else reaching that kind of level.
In Summary:
With the last few episodes focusing on a particular pair of stories that do ultimately come back together, this is the episode where it happens. With it not running as long as the Jewel Meat arc, which was pushing me to dropping the series because of how overplayed it was getting, it’s good to see things dial it back several notches here. The characters get more time to shine themselves, though it’s Toriko’s adventures that worked better than Komatsu’s. Not that his were bad, but it just lacked the focus it needed to be a stronger work. There’s some fun with the party element and what gets revealed from it since it’s all just a big gag in the end, but that’s about the gist of it when you get down to it. It has its moments but is still utterly forgettable.
Grade: C
Streamed 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.
