Friday, May 13, 2011

Anime Reviews: Toriko Episode 04 - The Deadly Cave Battle! Fire, Five-Fold Spiked Punch!


It really doesn't matter how much I eat before watching one of these episodes, even if there is no actual eating or cooking going on, I always end up hungry.

 
For some reason...

Tina tries to go back into the cave, but before she can the entrance collapses, trapping her and Zongeh (who I swear is going to be this series' Satan/Hercule) and his goons outside.  Fortunately she has a camera on Komatsu's helmet, which she can watch on her laptop.  It's through this that she, and we, discovers that Komatsu has been kidnapped by another Gourmet Hunter, who plants to use him as live bait.

 

Also, apparently eating chocolate will give Tina the brain power she needs to solve this problem.  I can't wait to see what scheme she concocts to save the diminutive chef.

 

Despite this being a fight episode, the pacing flows well.  Coco and Toriko have to team up to defeat the Devil Python, with Coco distracting it and trying to shut its pit organs down so Toriko can hit it with his five fold spiked punch.  Coco manages to take out the pit organs with his poison, only to discover that the python has more than just three.

 

The python manages to inject Coco with some poison, but thanks to his poison super powers, he is able to instantly concoct an antidote against it.  He takes out the rest of the pit organs, and Toriko nails the snake with his five fold spiked punch, absolutely annihilating the creature.

 

After the fight Coco wants to go after Komatsu, but Toriko tells him not to worry, since he gave Komatsu a secret weapon in case he got in trouble.  Unfortunately for Komatsu, his kidnapper runs into another Devil Python.

 

One of the major problems shonen anime faces is pacing.  Especially in older shows, far too much time is spent on fights that drag on for far too long.  More recent shows have been pulling away from that, as evidenced by this episode, where the big fight of the arc only takes one episode.  It's almost enough to make a DBZ animator cringe.

 

Once again the episode ends with a hook, after seeing how hard it was for two of the so far strongest characters of the series to take down just one of these, Komatsu is royally screwed.  I can practically hear the narrator asking, "How will Komatsu get out of this one!?"


If you liked my review, Watch the Episode Here!

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