I consider Toriko as one of the best continuing shonen series. It may even be third best (or maybe even second best!) in my list after One Piece and Fairy Tail. In comparison Bleach and Naruto have both fallen too much behind with recent plot development though I have to admit that both have been pretty enjoyable in the past.
Art is good, I'd say that it's almost at par with any other main stream manga and that means that it is enjoyable enough. Toriko however deserves a special mention with it's massive sceneries that use high scalability to it's advantage. It's always an amazing thing to see when great sceneries are shown.
The
character designs of Toriko are definitely a good side, at its best excellent. However, I consider the main character one of the less interesting ones; side characters, monster and villains hold the place for interest in my opinion. That's not to say the main character Toriko is bad, he's good but not the main thing that appeals in this series.Of course when we are talking about characters we have to take in to consideration that it's a somewhat traditional battle shonen with a fresh idea, but the whole concept is basically the same. The author has managed to pull off interesting growth developments with the characters and has left a lot of room to grow for them.
Story is getting better and better the further you decide to read it. At first when I started reading this I was a bit reluctant because of the whole gourmet setup, but it ended up being a lot better than I could have ever imagined. Also the design of the world provides limitless possibilities in which only imagination is the 'limit'. It is true however that the story picks up a little bit slow and the first part of the series wasn't as good as the rest of the series, since the author apparently over-evaluated the "attractiveness" of GT-robos as enemies for the readers. Thankfully the author obviously learned from his mistakes and he started doing things in such manner that the story has continued to be enjoyable and intriguing for as many chapters as I remember.
The design of characters, villains and Gourmet World in general leaves Toriko with unlimited potential. This is why readers can't never predict what will happen next, but can trust that it will most likely be very enjoyable. That enjoyability comes mainly from the best story pacing of any manga, believe it or not. The pacing in Toriko is very swift, but doesn't leave anything out. We all know some mangas which too often leave us bored for several chapters because either the mangaka is unimaginative or wants to "build up" something, which too often manages to turn against itself.
If I have to say one quality that makes Toriko as good as One Piece is imaginative scenery. That being said Toriko, just like One Piece can be described only by superlatives. Both Oda and Shimabukuro use huge objects and scale to attract readers.
And I have to admit that I'm attracted.
What I don't completely understand is that why Toriko isn't getting as much attention as it could - maybe people aren't comfortable enough with the main theme: food? One reason could be that Toriko is a fairly new manga, at least compared to the ones going on for a decade.
Enjoy, I know I did. Couple gifs from Shabondy Archipelago after timeskip, Monster/Zombie Luffy pounding Oz at Thriller Bark, Zoro pwning robot Kuma and Ace versus Blackbeard showdown: Sun against Darkness.
I remember laughing so much to this. He was being unusually awesome and I honestly was expecting for him to land properly, how wrong I was.
Ugly. When one of the four emperors Big mam was introduced as a "foreshadow" in some of the earlier episodes / chapters I really tought "big" was referring mostly to her fatness or something like that. I'll be very interested to see more of her even though she isn't a pleasure to look at.
