@TLC:
Sigh, I've been holding my tongue with Toriko for a while, after all how many times every week can you go "Huh?" or "What?" or "What's going on?" but we've hit a nadir with this series.
I remember when this series was just a nice, simple adventure about two guys travelling the world and trying to taste the most delicious food in the world. Since then it's just devolved into this weird, extremely convoluted series full of conspiraces and summoning rituals and food spirits and back channels and I don't know what else. There's no longer any sense of coherency or internal logic, each chapter no longer has anything to do with the chapter precedeing it, it's just one big ball of a mess. I…just don't care. Can we get that simple series back again? Can we get Toriko punching Tommyrod in the gut with his stump? Can we go get some BB popcorn? Can we just simplify things back to that strong, visceral, primal, two guys just wanna eat food and fight crazy animals feeling?
I'm supposed to just turn off my brain and enjoy the ridiculousness of the action but that's the thing, the manga won't let me, because for every cool, badass moment that surfaces, it's immediately burried by a ton of weird technical jargon and conspiracy bullshit that I don't give a shit about. There's no longer any sense of fun, direction or ambition.
One of my favorite series of all time is Jojo's Bizarre Adventures, a series where the mangaka is infamous for making shit up as he went along, but you know, he did it well. He kept things simple, he focused on the characters and their motivations, he set clear goal posts to work towards and we were always with out heroes every step of the way, most of the time, the awesome badassery wasn't just due to some ridiculous concept (though there were a lot of those, believe me) but through the strength of our characters persevering through their trials, there was a lot of fun shit but there was a lot of substance to it as well, you had a reason to care and be invested.
Here, I find no reason to care or be invested. It's just a lot of shaking keys in our faces without any care or craft. There is a way to do a fun, simple, turn your brain off series, Toriko is not the way.
All this reminds me of an argument which Batman movie had the best Joker or which is the better Mad Max movie between Thunderdome and Fury Road.
