The time has come, a new ingredient, a new arc, and new madness!
What They Say:
Toriko, Komatsu, and Sunny embark on a hair-raising quest to track down the Shining Gourami, and extremely rare sea creature that lives deep within Death Falls!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Well, the opening scene is pretty amazing. We are introduced to the concept of a Gourmet Planner/DJ. A specialist whose sole purpose is the play music that matches whichever meal you are currently eating. This particular planner has a crazy character design and outfit. Reminds me of Apoo from One Piece a bit except it leads into a flashback montage with an awesome/ridiculous song playing in the foreground, which is awesome. The montage is Komatsu telling Sunny about his adventure in the Gourmet Pyramid. Again, Toriko shows that it’s possible to still have flashbacks but make them somewhat interesting instead of lengthy replays of previous footage. I applaud…and dance.
During the scene at the tree house restaurant, Toriko sets up the premise for the next arc. The IGO President originally gave Toriko 7 special ingredients to collect as part of his training for the Gourmet World. With three ingredients successfully captured, it’s time to move onto the fourth, Shining Gourami! The location of this ingredient, Death Falls, is talked up by Sunny as being one of the few places in the Human World that is on par with the Gourmet World. Of course the next ‘level’ has to be more difficult than the previous; it’s the Shonen Jump Power-creep. It allows the series to keep going without becoming incredibly dull by having the heroes’ challenges be too simple. The fun part, for me, with Toriko, is that the power-creep bar was set extremely high a long time ago. Due to the utterly ridiculous nature of the premise and style, the raise in difficulty has almost reached near impossible highs from the perspective of other Shonen Jump shows. This is part of what I love about Toriko; it just keeps getting nuttier and more outrageous with each arc in terms of the power-creep (possibly its biggest influence from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure). While each arc may not be successively better than the last, we can at least find solace in the fact that it will keep getting crazier and more fun.
The rest of the episode is spent travelling to Death Falls by way of Sunny’s new ‘family member’, a Mother Snake, whom Sunny got from the Gourmet World, whose length is almost the circumference of the entire planet and can reach speeds of 450 km/hr. This is just good clean fun. Our heroes snagging ingredients while riding on its back, making fun of each other (I mean, Sunny IS going along with them this time!), and just having a blast.
In Summary:
Just like the beginning episodes of the Gourmet Pyramid arc, this episode starts off strong with a good sense of humor and a lot of fun with the world. While the Gourmet Pyramid arc was overall a pretty good story, there were so many lulls in the middle that it was hard to stay fully behind it. With this episode, we get that same level of fun and energy that we got last time, but the overall basic premise seems to be more promising. The location is another super deadly place, but the inherent dangers after they get past Death Falls don’t seem to be too great. This can add to a lot of surprises that should amp up the energy throughout the arc. Also, no time is wasted in getting to Death Falls so we know that the story should be jumping right in…this is where Toriko’s arcs really seem to shine.
Grade: A-
Streamed By: Funimation
Review Equipment:
Sony BRAVIA KDL55EX720 55-Inch 1080p 3D LED HDTV, Built-in Hulu Plus app
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