Living in poor neighborhoods of Osaka, Kumada watch over his wife and two young children. He is huge and riddled with scars and he works hard, smokes and drinks of sake as if it were mere water, gruff and scary, he talks little. But Kumada deeply loves his family and will protect it at the peril of his life when members of a yakuza clan set on fire to his house to facilitate a real estate transaction. Jailed for the murder of those who failed to burn his people alive, Kumada was released fifteen years later and found his family. He will have to face the distrust of his children who know nothing of their father except that he had abandoned them. But he is determined to regain control of their education, starting with his son, a urchin abused by the tough guys of the district.

Toriko is a Bishokuya with an abnormally large appetite (as a food serving for 500 people could only get him 1/10 full). He is known as one of the "Four Heavenly Kings", and his nickname is "The Glutton". He is an incredibly skilled Bishokuya, having discovered roughly 2% of the approximately 300,000 varieties of known ingredients worldwide, which is around 6000 varieties. He is also the adoptive father figure of a new born Battle Wolf pup named Terry Cloth and is the only human known to have ever tamed a Battle Wolf. He is currently seeking the fabled holy ingredient from Acacia's Full Course Menu, GOD, which is said to be the greatest main dish in the world and hopes to add it to his own Full Course Menu, despite that this ingredient is also being sought after by the brutal criminal organization, the Bishokukai and many other powerful figures. He is currently in a Combo with Komatsu.

The hero of the story. A war orphan who aims to become the "World's Greatest General". He later meets Ei Sei, the future first king that would rule all of China.