Creative Staff
Story: Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro
Art: Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro
Translation/Adaptation: Christine Dashiell/Hope Donovan
What They Say
While Komatsu is on an intense fishing expedition with Toriko and Sunny, Gourmet Corp. is forcibly “recruiting” the world’s best chefs to join their nefarious organization. On their list is Livebearer, the crooked chef of Gourmet Casino, and keeper of the next food on Toriko’s training list! Can Toriko and his friends survive in the jungle of corruption and crime known as Gourmet Casino?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
This volume starts off wrapping up the Shining Gourami arc in expedited fashion. With a whole lot of posturing and backstory that really felt stretched out and not accomplishing a whole lot in the previous volume, we find our team quickly in the caverns behind Death Falls. The reins are quickly handed off to Komatsu as he declares to find and capture the Shining Gourami since both Toriko and Sunny are completely wiped out thanks to Toriko’s 36-fold Twin Spiked Punch that Sunny rebounded using his 300,000 strand Spatula. Yes, it was a hell of a combo, but man that was complicated to type out! Anyway, it turns out that the whole purpose of this arc was not to simply see the fruits of Sunny’s training and to earn Toriko and new technique, it was to further help demonstrate Komatsu’s overwhelming food luck. Initially introduced in the last volume during the single chapter where Toriko and Komatsu visiting the Gourmet Shrine, it seems as if Food Luck is starting to become more of a tangible component to this world instead of simple phrasing for what we call plain old luck.
Once our team gets to eat their catch of Shining Gourami, and Komatsu discovers a new ingredient, the volume shifts back to single chapter “in-between” stories. Between this volume and the last volume, the between arc stories are really starting to rise up and become just as good, if not better in some cases, than the main story arcs! Now that is a heck of an achievement. These long running shonen action series use the main arcs as their bread and butter. Incidental stories are quickly passed over and are of no consequence. Toriko was already bucking the trend by having incredibly short main arcs (typically a single volume or at most two volumes since the completion of the Jewel Meat arc) but now it’s raising its game in the incidental department. What is really going on here is much more simple than “raising its game”. Toriko as a series has always been about building its world. Taking the time to flesh out every single aspect that it possibly can so that new stories and wonders can constantly be introduced without any stretch in the structure. One Piece is the other shonen series that has also accomplished this feat. However, One Piece has always been about the big broad strokes that emass a large canvas. Toriko is more about a living breathing world without too much high stakes. This small scale approach has allowed Toriko to continue to grow and generate an incredibly massive history and create extremely high stakes in the background. I hesitate to use the word subtle when talking about a series featuring hulking monster men smashing up gigantic animals and eating them…but it’s been extremely subtle in setting up its main story without ever drawing attention to itself. Frankly, that counts as genius in my book.
This building of the bigger picture continues in this volume where we are introduced to the plot that Gourmet Corp. is going around and kidnapping the top chefs in the Human World. The sinister nature of the plot is hinted at but not really explained. However, there have been so many threads woven in and out of that past 17 volumes that we know what’s going on and this is just another card added to the top of the house. Interestingly, my tone throughout this review has been one of excitement and invigoration. However, while the in-between chapters are extremely well done, a whole shit load of fun (Toriko going to a Gourmet Salon for a haircut is a blast), and entirely necessary to the continuous enjoyment to the series; it’s the last three chapters that have given me my energy. Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s time to go gambling!
The next ingredient on Toriko’s list is Meteor Garlic, a food so rare that it cannot be found in the wild. Instead the team heads to the Jiddal Kingdom to the Gourmet Casino in hopes that it lies there hidden among all the exquisite, rare, and illegal foods the Casino holds within its vaults. The Jiddal Kingdom is a land that falls outside of IGO laws and is a hive of crime and villainy. Theft and murder run rampant throughout its streets and at the center of all of this Mad Max bullshit, is the Gourmet Casino. Once our trio, now consisting of Toriko, Komatsu, and Coco, enter the casino the story encapsulates all of the fun that one associates with gambling. Sure gambling has its fair share of problems: losing everything you own, getting into debt with loan sharks and the mob, etc; but the series handles everything with the air of mystique and excitement that typically circles the concept of gambling. Alongside Match, whom you will remember from the Century Soup arc, our team commences playing a wide variety of Toriko-esque games. It is exactly the type of flavor you expect the series to spin on this subject matter. However, the fun and games don’t last long until they are invited into the VIP area, where the kind of life and death games we would associate with Kaiji run rampant, and are met with the owner of the Gourmet Casino, Livebearer. Livebearer is a hulking man that dwarves even our own gigantic heroes. We know that he is plotting something sinister and our anticipations begin to run high; but that will have to wait until the next volume.
In Summary
This volume plants us firmly back on solid ground with the series. Everything seems to leads somewhere and has a measure of weight to it all. This was what I was missing in the last volume. Even though the new arc barely gets started here, it already feels more substantial. It’s accompaniment with the in-between stories that continue to expand both the world and a sinister plot lurking beneath really make this book feel as if it’s not just back on par with the good stuff we’ve been seeing recently, but like it will be heading to higher heights in the near future. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, God this series is fantastic!
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: A-
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: October 1st, 2013
MSRP: $9.99
