YMMV / Toriko

• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: In spite of the macho artstyle and action Toriko is known for, it's also one of the more spiritual Jump series. Characters observe ritual and prayer, several characters partake in ultra-specific diets as part of their belief system, and an entire Training Arc is based around a parallel for enlightenment (Food Honor). It's easy to read a message about how muscle does not always mean dumb.
• Americans Hate Tingle: In Japan, Toriko was probably one of the most popular shonen series at its peak, almost comparable to the famous One Piece. When it began to make its way to Western shores, many fans were proudly forecasting that it would overtake Bleach and become the next member of the Big Three of Shonen Jump. However, while few people outright hated the series, it failed to gain any real traction in North America, as by the time it had arrived on the scene, shonen manga was at a low point in popularity, and existing fans mostly stuck to their old favorites. It has a fanbase, to be sure, but it's a cult following at best compared to a Big Three member on their worst day.
• Awesome Music: Guts! Guts Guts! Guts Guts!
  • SUBETE NO SHOKUZAI NI KANSHA WO KOMETE is very good, too.
  • This song that plays whenever Toriko uses his Spiked Punch.
  • "Goushuko My Way" by Akira Kushida is even more epically awesome than the first.
• Catharsis Factor: After spending the entire arc as an insufferably arrogant prick, killing Yun's parents for no reason other than annoyance, and being a colossal terrible boss to his subordinates whom he tries to kill out of anger for failure as well as the bugs he gleefully sacrificed, Toriko giving Tommyrod a Nail Gun, complete with an eye-popping expression of disbelief is especially satisfying.
• Cliché Storm: The series borrows many familiar elements from its fellow Shonen Jump series, such as Hunter × Hunter, Fist of the North Star, One Piece and especially Dragon Ball Z, and mixes them all together to create a story that is one giant sendup to 80's and 90's shonen manga. Tropes Are Tools is in full effect however, as the series takes many of these clichés and works wonders with them, creating an engrossing world that's filled with memorable characters and fantastic fight scenes, punctuated by some stellar artwork.
• Complete Monster: Joie, leader of the organization NEO and The Dragon to the seeming Big Bad is known as The Dark Chef for good reason. A Food Spirit summoned into the body of the deceased Goddess of Chefs Froese, Joie brainwashes multiple high-ranking figures in the world to force them to join NEO, and has multiple individuals who can stand in his way killed, while also having a monster known as the Four Beast released from its sealing and sending it to the Human World where it could potentially devour millions, if not billions, of innocent people. Joie participates in the "cooking" of Earth and helps deliver countless people to the monstrous Appetite Demon NEO, and when facing off against Froese's adopted son Midots, Joie takes advantage of having Froese's body to mentally torture Midora while trying to kill him and the rest of the good guys.
• Creepy Cute: In a sense, Terry Cloth. He's a large, vicious-looking wolf, but around Toriko and friends, he's as precious as any puppy.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The first character poll put Uumen Umeda in 8th place over more prominent characters like Tommyrod, Melk, Rin, Setsuno, Jiro, Mansam, and Zonge. You could count the number of Umeda's appearances on one hand.
  • And now it looks like Uumen is actually a member of NEO, who seeks to destroy the IGO and Gourmet Corp. - and may be much, MUCH stronger than he initially let on.
  • Brunchi, when he makes his flashy debut, easily steals the show with his attitude and unique heart of gold. Enough to have a full-on fight with the highest-ranked fighter below the Sous Chefs.
• Evil Is Cool: Starjun, Grimpatch, Tommyrod, Midora and the whole of the Gourmet Corp are popular for their unrepentantly evil personalties, charisma and incredible powers.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Although Toriko/Rin became canon, it's hard to find people who actually ship Toriko and Rin. Everybody actually thought that Toriko/Komatsu would be a thing considering the massive amount of Ho Yay or even Homoerotic Subtext they have. In fact, at the end of the series, Toriko leaves Rin at home and goes with Komatsu to space in order to find more ingredients there. Just the two of them, alone. It makes you wonder whether the author is serious about the Official Couple, or is just using this as a Take That! to cliche Shounen endings that have The Hero marry his Love Interest.
• Ho Yay: Lots of it, to the point of TorikoXKomatsu being practically canon by now. Komatsu's interaction with the Second Melk and Toriko being engaged to Rin does somewhat counteract it, though.
  Toriko: Komatsu, how about you and me form a "combo"?
  • Toriko asking Komatsu to be his personal chef may as well be a proposal. The day he does this, he takes Komatsu out to a very fancy and expensive restaurant along with and adventure in the clouds. Even Ichiryuu sitting with Toriko about choosing a personal chef is framed like a father asking his son about settling down.
  • Coco becomes very concerned for Komatsu in episode 4 and 5, after Komatsu becomes friendly with him even though Coco is poisonous.
  • The last page of Gourmet 34:
    Komatsu: Did you do something to me!?
    Sunny: I diiidn't. Do you want me to do something?
    • This after he fawned over Komatsu's cooking skills, saying he's beautiful when he works...
  • Toriko compares being "tasted" by Sunny's hair sensors as being licked by him. In the show, this is demonstrated by a shot of Sunny licking Toriko's cheek. Sunny's descriptions of people's actions/emotions towards things as "beautiful" doesn't help — Komatsu's cooking, Coco's entrance...
  • When they are traveling on the Gourmet Carriage, some classical music starts playing and Sunny grabs Komatsu for a dance. Then you see Toriko and Coco waltzing together, looking like they have no idea how they got there.
  • The fact that Toriko, Sunny and Zebra are all fighting over having Komatsu as their "partner" makes it feel like a really strange harem anime.
  • The amount of Ho Yay in this manga combined with all the muscular man and manly harem undertones would probably qualify as intended Homoerotic Subtext. In fact, this is likely as close to Bara as it possibly can be for a shonen manga with all due age restrictions.
  • Gets lampshaded by Sunny who asks Toriko, who'd just accepted Rin's proposal, if Komatsu really is his "partner". Toriko responds "What does this have to do with it?", and Sunny stands shocked.
• Hype Backlash: Jump pushed the series hard after its early success, seeing it as a potential successor to the then-floundering Bleach, with heavy advertising campaigns, crossovers with Dragon Ball and One Piece, people acclaiming it top-to-bottom as representing the next generation of shonen manga, and even Eiichiro Oda talking about it as a Worthy Opponent in interviews. The resulting push created no small amount of this trope, and has even been blamed for the series' underperformance—no matter what the merits of the series were, claiming it could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with One Piece set a standard it could never live up to.
• Memetic Badass: Zebra will kick your ass from his prison cell.
  • For evidence, check the main page and the character page. Nearly every trope related to Badass mentions Zebra at least once.
• Memetic Molester: Livebearer seems to be approaching this status, thanks to his... off appearance and suggestive dialogue towards Komatsu (although to be fair, it was moreso to eat his brain).
• Narm: Midora's backstory includes the clearly-supposed-to-be-sad-and-dramatic line "My heart was crumpled...like a shirt that's never been changed."
  • Some of Acacia's more depraved tendencies border between this and Narm Charm.
• Nausea Fuel: If this manga in general is full of Food Porn, observed dietary preferences of Gourmet Corp. serve as Fetish Retardant to it. For members of what their Japanese name translates as "Beautiful Food Organization", they sure are prone to eating disgusting things in disturbing ways.
  • One such example would be Grinpatch who taunts Toriko by not only stealing and eating all of his BB Corn, but proceeds to vomit it back up and eat it again!
  • The Reveal that Food King "PAIR" is Bambina's testicles was met with shock and revulsion in-universe and out.
• Quirky Work: Treasure food PAIR is a pair of monkey balls, from an animal literally called "Ball Monkey", who set up a martial art system to strengthen its fellow monkey so that it could find a "playmate". Later, it turned out by "playmate", it meant "female companion" and to capture PAIR, our heroes, four muscular, buff Testosterone Poisoning Badasses had to combine power and participate in a Mating Dance with it. They failed at the last step and enraged the monkey who proceeded to beat the crap out of them. In the last second, when all seemed lost and the four were about to be eaten, our protagonist Toriko refused to go down without a fight and bit the monkey in the lip. This action caused the monkey to see its mate and Toriko to see Komatsu. They both went up in tears and the monkey's balls were dropped to the ground. What?
  • Toriko's version of the Flying Nimbus is Bambina's crap. Really, its feces is a flying cloud.
  • And drinking PAIR in a certain amount causes your gender to reverse so your body can comprehend its full taste. Oh, and allows you to see the spirits in the Back Channel (spirit world), which is also what happened when Toriko bit Bambina's lip.
• Shocking Moments: The introduction of Head Waiter Alfaro. Two horrific behemoths, the ruler of Ice Hell and a mutated insect, each with capture levels in the high 70's are duking it out in the sky. Alfaro slices them to pieces in a second. With dinner plates.
  • Promptly one-upped by Setsuno. Alfaro is about to pull out his dinner plates and kill her while her back is turned, but never really gets the chance seeing as Setsuno broke the plates from several yards away using what we can assume to be the aura of 'screw you' she was emitting.
  • Master Chin takes it up to more ludicrous levels. His secret food technique, "Spoon", can carve out mountains. He did this once before...at "Death Falls", before we even knew it was him.
  • Toriko vs Starjun, Coco vs Grinpatch, Sunny vs Tommyrod...and...Setsuno vs Chiyo for the latest arc. On top of a mysterious third faction and the Bishokukai actually having captured and weaponized a Nitro which pwns Yuda with ease!
  • Chiyo can perform an You Are Already Dead technique in which she completely removes all the flesh off of your bones from under your armpits to your hips leaving a cleaned skeleton without you even realizing it.
  • Down in the basement of the stadium where the fighting at the Cooking Fest is taking place, it seems as though Kuriboh, Kousairou and COOKING KING ZAUS HIMSELF are all planning to either capture or kill Setsuno. They're working together with the richest men on the planet, such as the King of Jidar and President Mohs.
  • Knocking Master Jirou arrives just in time to save Setsuno from Joa's nitro. He then uses knocking on the entire earth and everything on it completely stopping even things like natural disasters for a split second.
  • Two words: HUNGRY SPACE
  • Coco makes an amazing discovery, a meteor that absorbs energy and grows, which he hypothesized eventually grew out of the Earth to form the Gourmet World.
  • All of this PALES in comparison to the reveal of Gourmet World Beasts. Thought the Four Beast and beasts with capture levels at 500 were insane? How about many creatures who's capture level is in the 1000's! And Above them all, one of the eight Gourmet World Kings, a battle wolf with a capture level of 6090!
  • Heracles sets the bar for how powerful the Eight Kings are: he snorts in Toriko's direction and blows off a third of his body.
  • Bambina raises it even higher by wiping out EVERY SINGLE ONE of the Four Heavenly Kings except Sunny in a literal blink of an eye, with Zebra having been goddamn PULPED, and the other two King's (plus Komatsu's) fates left unknown.
  • Taken to a higher level than ever with the introduction of Acacia's Appetite Demon NEO, who eventually becomes so powerful he gives the Eight Kings a Curbstomp Battle upon finally eating the King of Ingredients, God. Prior to that, Toriko's revealed third appetite demon is implied to be so powerful it's scared both ACACIA AND NEO with just a short glance, to the point where they had desperately eaten a cooked piece of GOD that resulted in the aforementioned curb stomp battle in the first place. Then Acacia eats CENTER, then EATS NEO ITSELF, raising his own power further, and Midora, after eating only 6 of the full course ingredients, is shown to be an even match for the new Acacia. And Toriko's Third Demon is still implied to be stronger. Taken even higher when Toriko, after eating GOD, CENTER and his Red Appetite Demon, casually punches the Perfect NEO Acacia around the planet in a near-instant and casually catches him in mid-launch, without even looking at Acacia, stating that "Like an adult who sees a child's playground as too small, the earth itself feels too small for myself". Then Toriko's white gourmet cell demon comes out and kills NEO in the space of a few seconds. WITH A SINGLE FINGER!
• Squick: Midora's Overly-Long Tongue powers is this and Nightmare Fuel.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Episode 142. Just when Toriko and Starjun's epic rematch is heading to its conclusion, Joa shows up and the fight ends in a draw.
• Too Cool to Live: Ichiryu
  • His own appetite demon, Don Slime, and his younger brother Jirou are this as well.
• Ugly Cute: Ob.
  • Warden Love, when not in her "perfumed" form
  • The Billion Bird
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Terry Cloth, Melk the II and Shuu.
  • Atom the Blue Nitro as well as the fake Kaka is this to some, as he looked really feminine disguising as Kaka, but later he has his true form revealed as a muscular Nitro with big afro, crazy eyes and a face inside his mouth.
  • Joie is also this, as he has Froese's face, many people assumed that he was Froese Came Back Wrong. However, chapter 338 revealed that he was an entirely different spirit who took Froese's body after Froese refused to be revived in fear of Acacia. This manga panel◊ also shows him with flat chest and some muscles, confirms that Joie is a dude.

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