Manga/Toriko

I still find myself trying to understand the point of Don Slime seeing how we know he's going to lose here. At least if Jirou was the one here we'd have something to actually work here. With Don Slime it's "Here's this totally random guy that we don't know who the story is painting as a match for Neo, except not really, because we know it can't end like this."

Edited by LSBK on Sep 22nd 2022 at 10:14:06 AM

Just a guy trying to buy time who we learned is Ichiryuu's gourmet demon. Even before the fight he knew the person who chose to be his vessel not only couldn't use his full power nor would it be able to handle him for long.

That's the thing, he's not trying to buy time. He meant to end this, he knew he wouldn't be at full strength but he still thought he'd be enough. Which, thinking about it, makes me wonder what the point of saying he's not at full strength is. I doubt we'll actually get to see it because he's most likely going to die forever here.

Because if he were at full strength he could beat Neo. He already did that once.

Is Neo not stronger now, though. I get the impression he's supposed to be.

He implied himself in his prime he could do so much more here if he had ichiryu's body instead of Asarudy's.

On the other hand, Don Slime flexing his muscles so much that they turn into planets to throw at NEO is definitely rather unique to Madara and Fujitora.

I meant Neo is stronger now than when they fought, I'm getting that distinct impression, along with the fact that Don Slime is weaker. I'm just saying, I'd care more about this if Don Slime had been established sooner.

edited 17th Mar '16 12:57:57 PM by LSBK

The reasons are different if you're looking at it from in story or from the outside. In story, Slime thought he still had enough power to win, so he's trying to end it. From the audience & storyteller's standpoint, we know he can't win, and this ends up being a means of stalling so that the elite four can be at full strength for their battle.

That said, I am rather upset with how Shimabukuro is using his screentime. We can already tell he's trying to rush to the finish for whatever reason, to the point that the non-Toriko/Komatsu ingredient hunting adventures were glossed over for time. In spite of that, this battle is somehow worth showing in its entirety, despite the outcome being obvious and the fact that Slime's character arc should be nowhere near as important as Coco/Sunny/Zebra. We've already had way too many chapters tell us how scary Neo is supposed to be.

I get how it's padding from a narrative perspective; my point is it's bad padding because I see no reason to particularly care about this character. Which might be what the flashback was for, to make us care about him.

I've seen some episodes of the Toriko anime, but I haven't watched the whole thing because I heard it got really bad. How true is this?

I've never watched it but I've also never heard anyone say anything good about it.

The Toriko anime starts fine, even if the Ufotablel ova is far superior to the way the anime covered the first chapter, but things get really bad by the cooking festival, where it goes full blown Gecko Ending in the worst way possible.

New ch:

NEO ate a god damn Super Nova like it was just a snack. Holy fuck.

edited 24th Mar '16 7:11:04 AM by Demongodofchaos2

So now it's Jiro's turn.

You know, I was wondering if Don Slime was eventually going to succumb to fear and scream in terror or if he was going to let him go out "dignified". I think it's better he went the screaming route but it did take me a bit by surprise.

Based on his swearing, it looked to me less like he was screaming in terror and more like he was screaming in frustration, which I felt was was a good compromise.

I took it more as him being frustrated by the fact that he was afraid and powerless than anything else. The way he was just baffled by everything and shaking helped, too.

Like, he wasn't exactly cowering but he seemed pretty close to it, to me.

edited 24th Mar '16 3:28:55 PM by LSBK

At least it was out of WTF is NEO then out of true terror, at least.

I bet Jirou will Die Laughing instead when he fights NEO.

So does anyone else find the idea of Toriko having a third (and apparently original) demon a bit weird when we barely know anything about the Blue one?

I do.

The main characters' gourmet demons in general ought to have been expanded upon. We got a brief spiel on who each of them was a few chapters ago, but considering we've been seeing them since their respective host characters were introduced, we really should have been getting more on their personalities and motivations this whole time.

For a long time there I wasn't sure if those demons were supposed to actually be real, and if they were, were people supposed to know about them. They weren't handled very well.

And Toriko's Red one is apparently the strongest thing Jiji has ever hear of but we know that Blue is stronger and Toriko's body apparently can't withstand Black for even the shortest amount of time. We have a lot to learn and I don't have much hope that it won't be handled as clunky as all the other recent info dumps have been.

Chapter out:

So Jirou was actually raised by Guiness. That explains few things.

Also, after all those freaky transformations his 100% looks pretty normal.

He doesn't look old anymore though. I like it just because of how unexpected it was.

I also like it. The last panel of his face is downright eerie, in a way.