Lots of stuff, but little of interest
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro
Translation: Christine Dashiell
What They Say
Jiro prepares for the most sobering fight of his life after he learns the Nitro’s true plan—reviving Acacia and permanently killing Neo! But for that plan to happen, they need Acacia to eat God. There’s just one problem…
Acacia’s incomplete Gourmet Cell Demon splits into seven pieces and scatters all over the Gourmet World, threatening to destroy all life on the planet even before the Gourmet Eclipse begins!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
This volume is more than a bit of a weird one, and we start it off by joining the little chunks of Acacia’s demon landing the world over. What this ends up being, though, is a brief bit to hype those chunks up (and Acacia’s demon proper in turn), and then in turn hype up the Eight Kings by having them step in to deal with the threat. And this largely amounts to what the series has been leaning heavier and heavier into lately: insanely over the top claims as to feats and abilities being listed off in quick succession. Oh, and we also get a half-hearted flashback to Toriko two years ago, followed by him being joined by Komatsu’s group… which then prompts a flashback back into their arc. So yeah… feels just a tad sloppy there, the way this is set up.
When we hit Komatsu’s arc again, it’s pretty clear that we’ve skipped over quite a bit. Which is to say, the whole big chef battle is just over with, and the focus is on the messed up gigantic Blue Grill kitchen devoted to cooking Acacia’s full course. And what we’re actually given is honestly pretty simple here, to be honest. It’s largely just a whole lot of insanely exaggerated bits about things taking very long amounts of time, from the meal itself to the way to make the tools the chefs will need, and all the like. It doesn’t even feel like it ties in well to the plot point that the lower class citizens have been getting used as slave labor for forever for this project, as that’s mentioned, but… not really dealt with. Instead, Komatsu just comes in and is his usual self, instantly being all “oh no, I know how to REALLY prepare this stuff, just sit back and watch.” So yeah, by compressing everything down and speeding things up, the book sort of ended up with a whole lot of nothing here.
When Komatsu and company head into the spirit world, will that change of pace help to make things interesting once more? Or are we doomed to future volumes being every bit as poor as this one?
In Summary
As with last time around, it’s pretty clear that the book is on fast-forward, skipping over things to leap ahead to the ending. And sadly, the results are felt VERY clearly here. To make matters worse, I’d also say the choice of what to focus on is also pretty poor here, just exacerbating matters. For example… did we really need so many pages dedicated to how to make special gold cookware, instead of either showing some interesting fights or actually focusing on the messed up nature of the Blue Grill’s society and giving that the attention it needed? But yeah, ultimately, the only thing of note here is a fresh bundle of over exaggerated details, which seems to be a favorite of the series, especially as of late. Even then, though… it kind of loses the impact when you rapid-fire them off like what’s done here, and even the insane ends up feeling mundane instead. I’m hoping that this just ends up being a transitionary step towards a more fleshed out volume next time, but frankly this book is a bit of a mess, and it’s hard to recommend it or pick out much that it does overly well. I guess at least there’s still a little bit of neat imagery sprinkled throughout, but that doesn’t really help much to counteract all the flaws here.
Content Grade: C
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: February 7th, 2017
MSRP: $9.99
