Boy, oh boy; what a fight!!
Creative Staff
Story: Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro
Art: Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro
Translation/Adaptation: Christine Dashiell/Hope Donovan
What They Say
While Toriko and Zebra eat their way through Gourmet Pyramid’s monsters to reach Komatsu, the chef discovers an ancient cookbook that reveals where to find and how to prepare Mellow Cola. But even if the three can wring the delicious beverage out of the terrifying Salamander Sphinx, a familiar and more sinister creature lurks in the shadows, waiting to steal their fizzy spoils.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Continuing their journey through the Gourmet Pyramid, Toriko and Zebra pass the time by killing all the creatures they come across in order to replenish their energy. While these montages are fun and all, as we get to see them eating the various ingredients with minimal success rate on the “delicious scale”, the real story is happening over on Komatsu’s end of the Pyramid. Komatsu has found himself in a strange room filled with stone coffins and strange hieroglyphs lining the walls. These glyphs depict numerous, strange creatures with tiny, cavemen like figures. At the end of this room, Komatsu finds a strange book that immediately sets his eyes alight with excitement. However, at that very instant, the strange creature that we glimpsed at the end of the last volume from within one of the coffins, appears behind him and begins to attack. This creature looks like a mummified and hairless version of the creature that Toriko and Komatsu met in Vegetable Sky. The immediate visual also correlates the caveman like figures in the hieroglyphs; and goddamn is it mean!!
Through the magic of narrative style, right when Zebra’s Sonic Shield protecting Komatsu is about to give way, a giant creature comes along that draws the mysterious creature’s attention allowing Komatsu to escape. It’s also right at this moment that Toriko and Zebra fully regain their strength, thus allowing Zebra to create a shortcut through the Pyramid floors so they could reach Komatsu in time. A little too convenient? Of course it is, but when something as fantastically written and executed with masterful precision as the proceeding fight that occurs, it REALLY doesn’t matter. So, this fight that I just hyped up considerably…
When Toriko and Zebra crash through the ceiling to arrive at Komatsu’s location, they are faced with the unimaginably massive Salamander Sphinx, the boss of the Gourmet Pyramid and the holder of Mellow Cola. We begin with a straight up brawl. Both heroes unleash a ferocious barrage of high powered attacks at the Sphinx but are quickly beaten with great ease. Exciting is almost the word that should be used for these pages. Toriko continues to show a high aptitude for exciting action scenes that just absorb the reader so much into the material that you can’t help but get the blood pumping right alongside the characters. This is no exception and Shimabukuro’s hard lined art style make everything crystal clear without losing an ounce of tension. But another super-manly monster brawl is not what makes this fight truly exceptional, it’s the completely unique method in which it continues.
Once Toriko and Zebra begin to realize the futility in their attacks, Komatsu yells out to them to inform them that he has found an ancient cookbook, one that contains the special preparation steps required to defeat the Sphinx. From this point on, the fight is no longer about being the strongest person in the room; it’s about intelligence and technique. It also all but removes Toriko from the spotlight in order to show off Komatsu being the true star and not just another deus ex machina that gets to hang around the hero constantly. The use of metaphoric imagery that Shimabukuro inserts throughout the remainder of the fight to display how Komatsu is dealing with the situation is simply a masterstroke. It fully empowers the character and presents a perspective that completely sidesteps our expectations to become something that is not just entertaining as hell to watch, but truly special. Now, everything I’ve talked about so far only covers the first half of this book. But don’t you worry; the rest of the book contains another fight that is raw action distilled to pure awesome and the obligatory “end of arc” celebration we always get. There is one exception to this arc though, we get a fascinating meeting up with Chief Mansom and a couple of new allies from Biotope 0 to drop some serious exposition about the mysterious creature our team met in the Pyramid. There’s just enough balance to revelation vs. mystery to intrigue us without leaving us dangling by a thread of frustration. With a surprise encounter with StarJun and a planned trip to the Gourmet Shrine, this volume ends on exactly the perfect spot to both satisfy and entice readers without some horrible cliffhanger that practically forces us to keep reading. We’ll keep reading because we want to; not because we need to.
In Summary
Last volume was extremely pleasant in its mix of humor and steamrolling plot to get to the Gourmet Pyramid. But that’s mostly it, just pleasant without a real solid hook. This volume gives us exactly what we needed with Toriko’s own unique twist on the Shonen formula and the right amount of urgency and brevity to completely win us over. There is not a single wasted panel or page to be found here! Everything happens for a reason, nothing overstays its welcome, and not once do we get sucked out of the story. Seriously, I could gush and gush about this portion of the arc. In fact, I already did with the anime here and here. The uptick in overall quality this series has had since the conclusion of the (still amazing) Century Soup arc is not one to be scoffed at easily. I’m telling you guys, check this stuff out!
Content Grade: A+
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: A-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: June 4th, 2013
MSRP: $9.99
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