Recently both animes, Toriko and Hoozuki no Reitetsu, have finished airing on Japanese TV. Toriko as of now is going on hiatus. Come to think of it, I've been following the anime for three years. It's been a good three years and I'm glad I stuck with it. I am very grateful for Anime Destiny that subbed the series as they did with Kingdom. It's about time Toriko the animation took a long break.
As time went on, Toriko just became very repetitive and uninteresting to watch. Even though in the manga, it followed a very typical formula that all shounen manga followed, it still held my interest. Toriko's weirdly exciting mish mash of science fiction and action was what made it special from other shounen titles. Everyone who reads and/or watches Toriko knows that the characters will continue to get stronger and they will keep fighting each other. This is not a story about wit. This is a story about toppling higher adversaries and gaining more raw strength. Those that are familiar with the story know that the anime had changed its content to be suited for a much younger audience. That means no smoking, no blood, no extreme violence. Just a lot of special effects for blasting things apart.
Art in the series is pretty goofy in my opinion and I'm not bothered by it actually. This goofiness however in the anime just became childish. Colors were changed for easier animation and shapes got simpler and simpler. Animation quality degraded towards to end and the story just kept dragging on and on. I simply got tired of watching the fighting. Even the dialogue bored me out since I was able to predict what was going to happen. Things in the manga was much more exciting. I don't think that when things are censored, they should automatically be boring. Fights aren't interesting because there is blood involved but because there was something at stake. The bloodless fighting in the anime became meaningless because they were fighting for the sake of fighting. I think towards the very end, the only things that I still really liked was the voice acting and staff that worked on the backgrounds. They had the very best voice actors and the drawings for still images were often times well done. I still wish that they release the rest of the soundtrack. It had some pretty good themes composed.
Why is it that we shounen lovers love seeing fights so much? It's not like we support violence in all forms, but seeing a heated fight is so exhilarating. Inherently we may be the same type of beasts envisioned by manga artists lusting for action because we feel powerful. I feel a bloodlust at times and it is not aimed at anyone in existence or anything. It's like a will to place yourself into an imaginary persona to play the savior of the world. I feel "happy" or maybe euphoric is a better word when a story depicts a bloody scene. Typically these are scenes when the hero triumphs over the evil. When it is the reverse, I feel terrible, but still admire it in a way. Take Shingeki no Kyojin for example. A good portion of the story are Titans eating humans and it gives the story high stakes. There's a good reason why you don't show kids these things. It starts twisting your mind over time and you don't even notice it. If you are going to show violence, have a good reason for it. Don't show violence for the sake of violence. If you are going to censor something, do it in a way that it doesn't destroy the original intent.
Hoozuki no Reitetsu ended with 13 episodes. It was a cool series with dry humor. Most people that don't like it are put off by references that are too foreign to understand which is completely understandable. If I didn't get any of the references, I would have been bored to death as well. It is a fairly niche genre I suppose. You need to at least get a grasp of knowledge on Buddhist hell and mostly Asian customs associated with Buddhist hell. Occasionally some terminology comes from modern sources of anime and otaku culture. The subtitles tried hard to connect the series to a foreign audience but as I said before in a previous post, calling the Sanzu River the River Styx just doesn't make sense. Using a specific Greco-Roman equivalent to substitute a Japanese name just doesn't cut it for me. If they decided to animate a second season to this, I wouldn't mind. They're all compilations of short stories within a single episode. Seriously, the song "Caramel Peach Jam 120%" sung by the character Peach Maki was catchy. A good smack in the face to girl idol songs.
I think I'll start reading the Toriko manga picking up from where I left off last time.
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