cover image Toriko, Volume 1

Toriko, Volume 1

Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro, Viz, $9.99, paper (208p) ISBN 978-1-4215-3509-8

In this fun Shonen Jump title, a testosterone-driven super hunter eats magnificent imaginary beasts on an alternate Earth. Komatsu, a pint-sized businessman, is given the task of tracking down extremely rare meat for his boss's party. Soon Komatsu is on a King Kong-scale expedition with the 7-ft. tall gourmet hunter Toriko. In the world of Toriko, gourmet hunters capture and sell fantastic creatures at a thinly veiled parody of the famous Tsukiji Fish Market. Shimabukuro's impossible adventure is mouth-watering fun. He delights in creating unreal tasty food, like the rainbow fruit, a legendary fruit so sweet that animals continue to eat it even while being devoured themselves. Toriko lives in an outlandish gumdrop house, eating chocolate bark from a tree growing in his bedroom. Shimabukuro's art plays with scale—Toriko's demonic battle aura is two stories high, while the diminutive Komatsu is small enough to ride piggyback on the protagonist. The series is rated Teen, perhaps for the violent hunts, or maybe because Toriko downs an entire bottle of whiskey in chapter one and regularly smokes branches from a cigar tree. If the fun of manga lies in the outlandish situations, this book delivers by the bushel. (June)