May 1, 2024
Most of my feelings about Toriko originally came from when I watched the anime. I really liked it, thought it was a unique fun world and enjoyed the characters and how it was a slightly different focus when it came to how Toriko was slotted into the shounen genre. I love the manga up to where the anime ends. Then things get a little dicey. I think that there's a few issues I really take with the final 3rd of the story.
First the Toriko manga was not as popular as Jump tried to make it, so eventually Toriko needed to wrap up that slot,
...
so the rest of the story probably should have been twice as long, and instead of the Gourmet World being the 2nd half, it feels like a truncated version of the story. There are parts especially in some of the set ups where you know that if Toriko could have gone at it's intended direction, that it probably would have not combined so many story subplots all at the same time.
I also think it got to the point where Toriko jumped the shark for me with anime logic a few times. I think the back door/room of spirit and time stuff was used fast and loose with its logic. I think eventually the food luck stuff stops making sense for how it's interpreted in the final 2 arcs, and some of the big reveals were a bit lackluster for me given how much had to be revealed as quickly as it was. Toriko was a slow drip world building experience and to suddenly shove it into overdrive didn't do the story any favors.
That said the characters are a lot of fun, the world building when its clicking is a great time, and it's a much more relaxing type of shounen adventure than some others. Fans of shounen adventure stories should at least give it a try as they'd probably feel pretty comfortable in the conventions the story uses, it just didn't stick the landing for me.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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