Toriko - Vol. 43 Ch. 396 - Still Yet Unseen Ingredients!!

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Man.....I enjoyed reading this manga and getting extremely hungry from all the food and drinks that look SO delicious!! However, I do acknowledged it’s flaws that ended up killing it. Hold onto your chef hats, because this is gonna be one long review of my thoughts on the series!

1. The Powerscaling: The Powerscaling goes out of control throughout the manga, especially in the second half. One example is during the Century Soup Arc, Tommyrod was said to have been able to survive in the Gourmet World by himself, yet when we get a first look at it, it would’ve been impossible for him to do so as Toriko defeated him, while simultaneously was unable to enter Gourmet World because he was so weak. So.....Tommyrod = Gourmet World, but Tommyrod < pre-century soup Toriko? This is inconsistent powerscaling, or that the author retconned this so he could make the Gourmet World more impressive.

Another is the Four Beast, it has a capture level 350 and can grow stronger overtime to its full power, it also can survive and the Gourmet World and took on 3 fully grown beasts that belong to the animal species of the Eight Kings countless times and survived. The Mother Snake, A Battle Wolf, and an Emperor Crow. They have capture levels in the thousands. Your telling me it can survive against three of the strongest animals In the world, while being beaten by the heavenly kings who were completely unable to enter the Gourmet World at all? hahahahhahaha Bullshit.

One final example is the final battle against NEO and space, they can legit fire attacks so fucking powerful that it can shake the entire world with one attack, and it took Setsuno alone to protect the Human World or else it would’ve been destroyed in the fighting. to add salt to the Wound? in space there's a beast that has a capture level of 530,000. The Space Taipan. A beast THAT'S STRONGER THAN GODDAMN NEO! HOW AND WHY CAN NEO BE THE STRONGEST BEING WHEN THIS THING EXISTS??? There's more examples, but you get the point.

2. The Amount of Characters: We have a large diverse cast of characters, the problem is that we barely have any of time to see the majority of them develop and after the arc their introduced in, their forgotten, barring exceptions like Match and Takimaru who appear as major characters in two separate arcs. But after that, they become irrelevant to the story. The Gourmet Corps shows us a very large cast of villains with interesting designs with 5 Strong fighters called the Branch Chefs, 3 Sous Chefs who are stronger than the Branch Chefs, 3 Head Chefs who are supposedly stronger than Sous Chefs, and the Executive chef and his assistant who are supposedly stronger than the Head chefs.

And i say say supposedly for the Head and Executive chefs (plus assistant) because we never see these guys fight, or at least to their full potential. Also including are 3 of the Branch Chefs who we barely see, one of them, Yuu, was only relevant in a couple chapters of the Regal Meat arc, after that he never appeared again. Speaking of him, he was actually given a major role in a filler anime arc, so it was actually nice of toei to give minor characters more important. out of all these guys, only 5 guys actually mattered in the grand scheme of things. Two Branch Chefs Barrygamon and Bogie Woods, who are major antagonists in the Century Soup Arc, but aren't important outside of it. and the three Sous Chefs, with Starjun being by far the most important.

Later we find out a whole bunch of them were brainwashed by Joie and joined NEO, but.....Who gives a shit about them? we never seen them Fight, Character Development, or their Personalities. Why would we care that these guys are brainwashed?

There's the Chef's Festival where we are introduced to over dozens of new characters with unique designs, but.....we barely see any of these characters do anything, and the most we got is their introduction shot. what's the point of drawing these designs if your not gonna use them? its a waste of effort.

Lastly, there's a squid girl named Meyl who was a character made by a fan and was inserted into the story as the daughter of the king of souls. You'd think by being the daughter of an important figure, and being drawn very well by the submissioner that the author would treat her with respect right? NOPE, she barely appears in a couple of panels and is never seen again. What the fuck author...

Oh! Forgot to mention, the best written character is Midora because he’s one of the few characters who’s: fleshed out really well, has interesting abilities, a clearly defined personality and motivation, gets a proper character arc and good character development. The rest of the villains don’t get none of that and are poorly written and generic as a result.

3. The World Building: The world of Toriko is Ginormous, over 220,000 Kilometers. 30% of the Planet composes the Human World while the other 70% is the Gourmet World. with such a large world, you'd think we would see quite a bit of places right? well, not really. even though the World is Super Large, we don't even see 10% of it. Now don't get me wrong! the places we do see are very unique (and deadly!) to keep us the viewer interested, like the Pyramid or the Ice Hell areas. The problem is that there is not enough content to compose the entire world. It's even worse in the second half of the manga, where we go to the Gourmet World. The locations are very cool, but we barely get to see anything!

The entire second half is rushed to completion due to the manga getting axed! Area 7 is the biggest Continent after area 4, yet, we only see 2-3 areas of it despite the entire Continent being almost larger than the entirety of the Human World! we've seen more Places in Area 8 then Area 7, and it's much smaller than the Latter! Even worse? we don't even go to over half of the Area's in the Gourmet World. Yea that's right! Area's 1, 3, 4, and 5 get shafted completely! and the the latter two composes of at least half of the gourmet World! all we get from them is the Main Group sending two people each to the continents and getting one of Acacia's Full Course Menu's from each one. How can only two people get the item despite it literally taking the entire group tremendous effort to get just one? Who the hell knows, as the author isn't telling! As were shown that each Item on Acacia's Full Course is extremely difficult to get.

Speaking of Acacia's Items, let me talk about Food in Toriko. The author does an Amazing job making them look SO DAMN DELICIOUS! the problem? How goddamn ridiculous the difficulty in cooking the food themselves are. more specifically, "Specially prepared ingredients" and "Super Specially Prepared Ingredients". These Ingredients are soooooo stupid that it baffles me why they exist. ANOTHER for example, requires you to cook it for 600,000 years, but with a method, to 65 years.....What is this?! 65 years just to cook god damn fish?! why is it so hard to cook mere food?! Ozone Herb requires you to peel it's Leaves in two different places at once, otherwise it will rot, same thing happens to the actual herb, How does this even work?! I know it's Shounen, but this is too far-fetch.

The Human World worships food and views it as sacred, which makes sense since food is everywhere. However, it's not all goody-goodness because if you don't worship food and follow their religions rules, Your ass is gonna land straight to the 3 Max level prisons. Where they will give you Maximum Punishment for being a non-believer. How nice.

Now there are also a couple phenomena related to food:
-Food Luck is Plot Armor disguised as an important mechanic in the World of Toriko, it is used by the author to protect characters and make asspulls so they can get out of a situation easy. Nothing more, Nothing less.

-Food Honor is a requirement for anyone who wants to be the best of the best. it Allows fighters to better use their calories to waste less energy, have better speed, power, and stamina, and somehow eliminates "unnecessary movements". it Affects Chefs by allowing them to handle ingredients so well that ingredients don't even know their being handled. This entire system is completely stupid, it allows people who are much weaker than people who are much stronger than them to kick their asses no problem. That's not how it works, People with more speed should be able to hit someone with slower speed, not the opposite. I should not need to learn a Mental Discipline in order to become stronger

Even stronger than Food Honor is "Food Immersion" which requires you to appreciate food at its upmost limit, and it allows you to fight at your highest potential. It's dumb, why should i appreciate food? It's food, it's meant to be eaten to give me special powers. It has no choice but to give me those powers. That's what Devil Fruits do in One Piece.

The description for it isn’t pretty dumb too, apparently the ingredients are “thankful” for being eaten, despite the fact that ingredients are non-sapient, so they pour all the nutrition they have into the consumer......despite the fact that’s what the body already does to begin with in all creatures. It absorbs all nutrition.

Food Honor is overall a strange form of One Piece's Observation Haki, except more frustrating and dumber. Instead of Concentration, its Gratitude. Instead of being available to anyone, regardless of beliefs, You are forced to respect food in order to use it. Instead of being easy to train, its harder.

Alongside that, You need to have gratitude to food at all times in order for it to continue working which is dumb. I should not need to respect food at all to be powerful, Food is meant to be eaten, that is all. I'm ok with this system existing in Toriko for the sake of the world, but outside of it? I will not allow it. What makes me respect Food Honor even less? if you don't respect food the way the Government or the Religion want's you too, you are forcibly sent to the Chowlin Temple and you have no way out unless you follow Food Honor. Wtf is wrong with the world and it's intolerance to Freedom of Speech?

-Food Pressure is the best as it's the opposite of Food Honor and its nonsensical system and its linked to the "Intimidation" Techniques. Instead of respecting food and go through Tedious practices, you simply threaten the food and people by showing off your strength! I can definitely get behind this, alongside others who share my dislike for Food Honor. Who the hell would use Food Honor when an awesome system like this exists?

More questions i have for the World. Where did these various characters get their special Abilities? was it through Gourmet Cells are what? Did the Cells give Bogie Woods his 4000 bones? if they did, then why did only bogie get these numerous bones and no one else? Was he born with them? Why was he born with all of them? was his parents infused with Gourmet Cells and gained their current condition? Its never explained how the characters gain their powers and if Gourmet Cells have anything to do with it.

The author doesn't explain anything and the wiki doesn't help either, all it explains is that people can be inserted in a person without the cells with digestion or Injection and not much else. It also mentions "Drawbacks faced by implantees", yet it doesn't explain what the drawbacks even are. Also, Since the entire world revolves around food and drink....How much does the population produce waste? and how do they get rid of it? I imagine they produce alot due to excess eating!

4. Toei: Toei is known for making mediocre to bad anime adaptations and Toriko is one of them. Heavy Censorship, scene exclusions, choppy animation, and worst of all? The entire ending of the festival arc is changed. Midora doesn't kill Ichiryu and brings him to the hospital, his Meteor Spice doesn't devastate the Human World like it did in the Manga, and the Blue Nitro doesn't show up to kill Ichiryu. This completely ruins the Anime's chances of continuing to the second half of the manga, this was probably done because Toei cancelled Toriko since it got axed.

5. The Final Chapter: We get a glorious Infodump that the author pulled out of his ass to resolve plotpoints, A beast Stronger than Neo, and we find out that ISO somehow artificially Create GOD of all things! and this was the hardest thing to get? wow, what a way to end the series.


My word, this is probably the longest review i've ever made. I really wanted Toriko to be my favorite Manga, i really do! but its held back by numerous flaws that are very noticeable. It's just saddens me that it got axed and it didn't allow the author to do what he wanted....he had to finish it fast to give the readers an ending or else Toriko would've ended up as a cliffhanger forever.

Edit: With my reread of this Manga, I found an additional flaw I would to point out! And that flaw is Komatsu. He’s a Gary Stu. He has intense amounts of Food Luck, which is essentially a bad plot device the author uses to write asspulls and plot armor. There is no tension in any competition he’s in, oh there’s a contest on who can pull out the knife stuck in tough wood? Komatsu does it with ease. Oh there’s a monster that sprayed poison city wide, and the cure is difficult to make? Komatsu solves the producing issue with ease. Oh the ingredient requires knocking? Boom, Komatsu done it. Many similar examples exist. This makes Top rated Chefs like Setsuno and Yuda look like absolute scrubs.
 
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@BigRobot your points about food honor and freedom of speech are misguided. the only ones sent to honey prison and chowlin temple are peiple who are criminals. honey prison is only for deathrow prisoners, and chowlin is for people that have commited minor crimes that impact food. I dont get why youre complaining about food honor. mental doctrine and strength is important, and food honor literally makes you faster and stronger. you dont even actually need food honor, as seen with starjuun and gang. about the four beasts, its clearly mentioned that terry, kiss, and quinn arent at their max potential, so makes sense that they couldnt kill the four beast. the special preperation ingredients are just that. its fucking shounen jump where a whale's stomach us a goddamn black hole, and gourmet cells exist. also its good to be thankful about your food, and food honor is just straight up that but pumped to the extreme, just like everything else.
 
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I don’t see those points as misguided at all, I think I’m correct and this displays a more sinister side of Toriko. Your just not looking deep enough into the world of Toriko to get the bigger picture. If the world wasn’t bound by their religion, they could accomplish many great things with the power of food. But instead, they punish and make criminals out of people who try to use food to gain power and potentially benefit humanity. Like someone with good intentions uses a revitalizing kitchen knife to create an infinite amount of food to feed the extreme poor. Would they be sent to the 3 great prisons despite having good intentions? This knife could also be used to create an infinite amount of Acacias full course menu over and over to give humanity such powerful abilities and break their limits. Yea it could break the economy on food, but the benefits outweigh the negatives.

No, Honey prison isn’t just for death row prisoners, It’s also a prison for those who receive long sentences for breaking petty laws such as the one that disallows people using a beast of burden like an Obsarius. The hors’d’oeuvres for example, is for prisoners with a 100-150 year sentence. And it goes up to the point of 1000 years at the dessert level. Like I said above, something as small as using a Rivitalizing kitchen knife is enough to be sent to this hellish prison. Where the hell are regular lesser prisons? I don’t think I’ve seen a regular prison last time I’ve read.

If Food Honor isn’t needed to be strong, why does all of the Heavenly Kings need it in the first place? I don’t see someone like Zebra wanting to use it in the first place unless he’s forced to do so. I shouldn’t need to have fanatic levels of respect and appreciation for food 24/7 to gain speed and power, how can your mind handle all that strain during fights and daily life at the same time? Every user of Food Honor has to be an amazing multi-tasker in order to fight well with this technique.

You see why I don’t like it that much? That is why I find food pressure to be a much more worthy alternative. Instead of a long complex irritating process that is food honor, all you have to do is have good intimidation skills to bend food to your favor. the more powerful intimidation skills you have, the better you can make food bend to your will. From the lowest ingredients, all the way to GOD. It literally does the same thing as food honor as well, increasing your strength and speed to go up against those with food honor. Why people don’t use this much easier technique to learn than food honor? Perhaps because it’s against the near-universal beliefs that food should always respect food and thus you would go to jail or get a penalty if you use it, Even though it’s infinitely more viable than Food Honor!

Last thing? The fact that a Mental Discipline can allow someone way weaker than another person and effortlessly defeat them (like what happened with Shuu vs Toriko) is bullshit. That's like saying Ussop with Observation Haki can defeat Kaido by himself. Isn't that stupid? Because it is. A stronger person should be able to defeat a weaker person, even with a future-sight like ability, they need the speed to dodge. By this logic Shuu can defeat Goku because he's using "Unnecessary movement". Its stupid. A mental Discipline shouldn't be needed to be strong.

That is why I am complaining about food honor. it’s a rigid system that people are forced to learn, when food intimidation is a much more practical version of it. People are sent to goddamn jail if they don’t follow the religion or beliefs as everyone else.

The Shokurin (not Chowlin, that’s a funimation dub translation.) Temple does punishes people for not following the world’s beliefs, respecting food the way they do, which makes them criminals in their eyes. Really is just them being overly-sensitive that not all people worship food like it’s the most important thing ever. Like yea food is important, but I shouldn’t need to be a fanatic without being in the danger of being sent to prison. That’s what makes the human world society have serious freedom of speech and expression issues when it comes to this.

For the Four Beast, yes I agree, Quinn, Terry, And Kiss aren’t grown to Gourmet standards of strengths due to being raised in the human world. But I wasn’t talking about them in specific, I was talking about the whole species, aka in their native lands. Judging by what we see in the Gourmet World with the beasts insane amount of Capture Level, the Four Beast shouldn’t have the ability to survive in it. It faced a completely grown specimen of each of the three species “thousands of times” and survived, yet each of those beasts power level can go up to 6000 while the four beast is only in the 300s. I don’t know if this is a retcon, or just a plot hole the author made for the sake of building up the Gourmet World. Same thing happened with Tommyrod, it was said he was capable of surviving in the Gourmet World on his own, yet we see him get defeated by Toriko who at the time wasn’t even capable of doing so.

The entire second half of toriko shits on the entirety of the first half by power scaling. It suffers from DBZ Syndrome.

Yes it is a Shonen, but just because it’s a Shonen doesn’t mean it can get a free pass. Not all Shonen go to such ridiculous lengths such as Toriko. None of the big-three or DBZ went this far. One Piece isn’t even near the level of Toriko in terms of this. Only the best chefs in OP like Sanji can handle the food of Toriko, but even then, to the basic ones. The Specially prepared and Super Specially prepared ingredients would be flat out impossible for him to do. Like ANOTHER which require thousands of years to cook, and 65 years at the least. I highly doubt Sanji would be even willing to cook food that takes over 6 decades to cook. It’s all done purely for the “Wtf moments”
 
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@BigRobot mate I understand your point but you got to remember this is not the big three, sure it's downright silly at times with the power scaling and shit and as much as I may try to convince you, you might not even listen to me. This manga by no mean in my dictionary a masterpiece but it's a good manga that ended on a good note, not like Bleach and the abomination of Naruto's son story. However if you do have the time to truly spent to critique the flaws of this manga down to the minute details sound to me you really love this manga.

And true I do get irritated at the flaws and plot holes this manga especially at the Gourmet world despite the build up in the story and the deus ex machina at the very end. I truly enjoy the journey even if those kind of things bother me. This manga is like everything I truly wish, a satisfying adventure story with great cast and a satisfying ending, I may never live my life seeing the ending of Berserk, or HunterxHunter and One Piece due to their extremely big and expansive storyline. This manga however, end right at the very good part that make me truly appreciate it.

What I'm trying to say is don't let the plot holes ruin your enjoyment of a media you like.

_From someone who've finally finished this manga just yesterday when he dropped this manga 4 years ago at the Whale King's arc_
 
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the last arc was weird, but the power scales were so OTT that it became really fun, I'll remember this for a while
 
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@Belrog Now let me get this out the way, when i first read this manga start to finish, i thought it was amazing. But reading back into it now and the wiki made me realize all the problems it had. And no matter if your new or a veteran, you could notice the flaws.

I honestly can't help but nod my head when reading the criticism, the manga was going relatively great, but it was the latter half that smashed what the first half established. We got good moments with our four main heroes, unique likeable designs for the side characters (Like Livebearer), Interesting locations with unique gimmicks (Meteor Garlic and Food Pyramid comes to mind), Delicious food, etc.

I don't know how i feel about the ending. On one hand, its a nice way to end the series back at the beginning and sparing Neo! On the other hand, that Space Taipon instantly broke the sense of power scaling. That thing is literally much stronger than NEO, how did he devour a universe when something like that exists? Heck, that Taipon is stronger than Don Slime or basically any Appetite Demon.

Personally i give this manga an 8 or 9 depending on the moments, but critically a 6 or 7. It honestly depends on how deep you look into it. It's honestly sad how quickly toriko fell after the anime got cancelled and got axed.

Edit: Just wanna say that basing a story solely from enjoyment is flawed, I like Toriko, but i won't give it a 9 or 10 because of that. The flaws factor in as well. And just because i critique the flaws doesn't always mean i'll truly really love something. Ala, Sword Art Online. I Criticize and bash that story to oblivion due to how bad it is and i don't like it one it.
 
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@NoTofu I feel your pain, so sad how a Manga with such a unique concepts potential was wasted due to being rushed and axed :(
 
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I'm reading this for the 100th times and just so happen to see these comments, especially @BigRobot 's. I'm not expecting an answer, I'm just here to "correct" part of it. Half of your points are either wrong, misguided or biased.

Neo is not the strongest life form. He get killed by strong creatures, appetite demons and disasters but he can ressurect thus he can eat until he "destroy" a universe, leaving only strong beasts and creatures he's unable to eat. But that's enough to consider it destroyed, since of the unimaginable number of ressources there is maybe a few billions of planets left.

The four beast is the blue nitros' tool to gather humans, they're not going to let it die just like this. I heavily doubt he can just level up infinitely, seem more like he's trying to get back to his original level. We don't know whether he fought against the kings or just a member of the race but that's not important. Even if he get destroyed in a fight against them, I'm kinda sure the blue nitros have a way to ressurect it or something. Or the beast himself can create mob like the four beasts and ressurect from them. He's an important tool of the blue nitros for their scheme, he can't just dissapear like this nor will the blue nitros allow it. But after the last fight he was not really needed anyways since the preparations are more or less completed. But let's say it's kinda flawed. Or that I may be wrong.

You're completely wrong about the prisons, the IGO law that make you a criminal, shokurin temple and "beliefs" things. It may be your bias making you think bad of them but you're just completely wrong. I'm not gonna talk about this a lot since the manga explained it pretty well.
Of course we're not gonna see a normal prison here, why would the author talk about it? how would even be able to introduce it in the story? going to the local prison to taste some prison-only delicacies?
We saw a few criminal in the first floor of the honey prison and if their crimes where committed in the real world, death sentence would be such a light sentence that it may cause controversy around the world.
Yeah they did say that violating the eight gourmet laws send you to this prison and using revitalizing kitchen knives is one of them but no they're not going to send you to this prison because you revitalized a pumpkin or something. Hell, if you keep it in private use even if you revitalized your full course a thousand time, at most maybe they'll make you pay a fine and ask you to get the proper licenses/documents to use it.
Your whole thing about shokurin temple is wrong. The manga explained it well enough to not need other expalnation. Read it again if you want proof.

Concerning the characters and the world: The uniqueness of the characters is better than everyone looking like a gourmet sp, it make the manga better but the author can't just go on giving each of them their story/development. Same for the world, it's big and interesting and we did not see each part of it but the author already did the best he can to show it to us. We saw more locations than your average 400 weekly chapter manga and almost as much developed character as them.

You're so wrong about food honor/food immersion. You don't seem to understand it. like, at all. I guess that technically 10% of what you say is correct but you miss the point entirely, so much that if you took "food honor" out of it people won't even know what you're talking about. But on the other hand that's indeed how people can perceive it. I won't explain it to you because I won't be able to make you understand it but if you want to understand maybe start by learning japanese culture of respect, and considering the gratitude as a state and not something created from a fanatic love of ingredients.
Other than how you perceive the food honor you're also wrong about the "mental discipline" part. Food honor bring skill, and of course can make them stronger. Shuu is not weak and Toriko was not that strong at that time so it make sense. A first time lol player with a lvl 11 character+2 full items against a lvl 9 Faker with 1 full item +1 component who is going to win? Skill mean a lot in everything but won't allow an ant to kill a tiger.

Your points about "beliefs" are wrong.
Again, your points about shokurin temple and freedom are wrong. (it's so wrong I said it twice).
Reading the bubble fruit arc should make it clear.

The author didn't make a whole arc around gourmet cell injection but it's talked about in the Hex food world.

I agree that the capture level is kinda bs but it is fun and interesting.

The whole food luck thing is explained, same for ingredients and appetite demons but if you don't like how it's used to make Komatsu "invincible", that's your right.

About cooking, I think it make it more interesting, especially when the ingredient is also special.

Yeah, your whole thing about shokurin temple, "beliefs", freedom or whatever is really wrong. (important thing must be said thrice).

I may have overlooked something or not but that is it.
 
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