By Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro. Released in Japan by Shueisha, serialization ongoing in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump. Released in North America by Viz.
Weekly Shonen Jump is, of course, a magazine designed for young boys to read. The series are full of things young boys like, whether it’s being a pirate, ninja, shinigami, samurai, or just the kid at school who can beat up all the other kids. That said, the magazine has a sizable female readership, both here and in Japan. And the editors know this. Most Jump manga have something that gives them a crossover readership, something that girls and boys will equally love. But then, on occasion, you get those Jump manga which are 100% designed for their demographic. Sometimes, you just need a dash of pure testosterone.
Enter Toriko, which has been running in Jump for two years now, and is probably its most popular new series. Theoretically, Toriko is about a vaguely futuristic world where animals seem to have mutated to become both ridiculously strong and impossibly delicious. Someone needs to be able to hunt down these dangerous animals and get them ready for the oven. Someone like Toriko, gourmet hunter! Together with the audience identification figure whose name I’ve already forgotten, they’ll travel to the farthest reaches of the globe, fighting hideous beasts for the sake of cuisine!
The food, it has to be said, is a bit of a MacGuffin here, which is somewhat surprising given how much attention is paid to it. Toriko himself is eating constantly, his sidekick Komatsu is a first-class head chef (I had to look up his name; it’s a sign of how irrelevant he is that he doesn’t get an intro card like the other main characters), and nobody can stop talking about Garara Gators, Rainbow Fruits, and the like. And yet, the food is just a gateway into what the manga is really about, awesome visuals of huge creatures and Toriko hitting, slicing, and dicing them.
He really is a huge, hulking menace, and it’s nice to see a Jump hero who we meet already at a very high level of strength. So many shonen heroes start off at the bottom, almost human level, and slowly build their way up over several volumes. Toriko springs forth as a demonic beast, and although we may get a flashback detailing his youth, it’s clear why most animals in the world are terrified of him. This allows us to jump right into the action.
The art serves this type of manga well. The heroes are not really all that attractive, but they certainly are rugged (again, with the possible exception of Komatsu), their style being more influenced by Fist of the North Star than Kenshin or Naruto. Toriko always seems to be grinning rakishly, usually because he’s staring down a 2-page spread of a gator or ape looking like it wants to eat him where he stands. The apes in particular are nasty suckers, and there is a great amount of detail given to their slavering jaws.
I will admit that vegetarians or animal rights activists will probably want to avoid this manga like the plague, even though Toriko makes a big point of never killing anything he doesn’t intend to eat (he stuns the apes as their flesh is too tough for cooking). But for anyone who wants to see Shonen Jump heroes at their absolute manliest, taking on hideous creatures with an insane grin on their face, Toriko is the manga for you.
