If someone came up to me this time last year, and said that in a years time I’d be watching an anime about a guy that goes around the collecting ingredients for the ultimate menu. I’d have called them a bullshitter.
A year on from this fictitious event and I’m the one with egg on my face and a mouthful of humble pie! I’m pleased to say that now on a weekly basis I regress to my childhood days of getting hyped up by countless episodes of Goku taking down Frieza on the planet Namek. That level of excitement and fangasm I thought were long gone. Toriko manages to encapsulate this level of entertainment for my inner child.
How can this be when the story still boils down to a extended episode of Masterchef. Which leads me onto why Toriko firmly clawing its way to an all time favourite of mine. The series is set in the glorious fantastical world of all this bizarre and it’s time period, if you could call it a time period… is The Gourmet Age! There’s times where it almost feels impossible for one of the creatures or plants that inhabit this world to be any more original. Yet it consistently brings a smile to my face when you see the likes of the burger plant that has fries for leaves. How do they come up with this? Perhaps drug induced, especially when you take a look at some of the creature designs which are always far from boring or predictable!
Look at this ugly creature named the Mystery Bird Rubanda – Totally glorious!
The above has a capture level of 30 for our heroes to deal with! I’m aware that sentence will mean absolutely nothing to most. The higher the capture level the harder to defeat the creature is. That’s not all the capture level does mind you! For me it helps display the general scale of things as well as adding a sense of peril to the adventure. When anything with a high capture level appears you know shit is getting real! Thus this simple number holds quite a large purpose think of it as a power level reading from a scouter in Dragonball Z.
Other than the creatures, the world and the colourful art style my favourite aspect of the show is its characters. There’s something extremely likeable about the protagonist named Toriko whether it’s his glossy blue hair or his amazing physique or perhaps it’s just the fact he has that truly loveable personality that resembles Goku. Some may say that kind of character has run its course and it’s a little cliché but who cares? It works, and in this shows case it works damn well!
Without a doubt the show is going to be running for lot of years simply because it’s THAT kind of show. Jump on now while you still can or else you’ll find yourself 100 odd episodes behind and wishing you’d listened to me and watched it from the get go. Experience the thrills and spills of Toriko and the gang as they travel the world for the finest and more desirable ingredients known to the gourmet age. Amidst that happy feel good colourful world sit the enemy who want to steal all the world ingredients for themselves!
Toriko is presently 12 episodes in and is currently airing in Japan so you’ll easily find it online somewhere!
