DeathBecomesDavid

This show sure is pretty. 

That and melodramatic, sometimes cringe, often bittersweet, and occasionally deeply moving. I came to Toradora after finishing Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun, hungry for more high school comedy and romantic tension. Hell, I was giddy for something with more posturing and arch writing after the former’s gentility. 

I did this to myself. 

From the first two episodes I was struck by two things. Firstly was how relatable I found the co-protagonists. Tsundere (comedically violent or spitfire characters, often women) seeming Tiaga and domestically inclined Ryuji, as familiar as they may feel do have real world parallels. My wife and I for instance. It’s incredibly affirming to see a match where both parties support each other’s emotional status while still pushing them towards (and, crucially, sometimes pulling them back) from their troubles. Their shared anxieties and pact making are very sweet. Secondly, I felt I knew with Texas Instruments precision where the next twenty-three episodes were going. 

You know how My Hero Academia detractors liken it to little more than a well oiled Shonen? No amount of earnestness or production value will ever make up for what the non-believers to be gaping holes in the space where surprise feels conspicuously missing. This is a bit crass, to both MHA & Toradora, as “surprise”, “originality” or “escalation” are not laws of writing physics that can not be abandoned. The flipside is that a reliance on caricature, no matter what Toradora’s thesis may say, lays bare a track that you are either on board for the comfort of familiarity’s sake or you’ll feel like a sourpuss the whole ride. 

Who is going to couple up is never in question nor is what will they learn from each other. For a show about not judging a person by first appearances, Toradora sure does like to deliver just what we tune in for with high school romance. So that’s kinda exactly how you have to take it. Most media provides only what it’s genre promises even when we secretly hope it may give us a little spin. 

So how does it fare? As I said above, the support networks that develop are sweet natured, sometimes (knowingly) ill advised and provide the show’s highest highs. The MVP is Ami. Given that the other four mains have exactly two layers to their identities it both soothes that Ami is such a detailed presence and mystifies why she doesn’t have her own arc outside her introduction. She comments on the subtext of her friends' conflicts like Minorin’s cheery facade crumbling as she refuses to engage with her emotions. Her delicate and sad ending place echo our co-protagonists tumultuous lives making her, frustratingly, something of a sacrificial character by the end.
Did I mention I found Tiaga and Ryuji relatable? Let’s table the “they’re literally kids” for a moment and focus on domestic life. As contrived as their being neighbors might be we A) presumably knew what we signed up for and B) needed this closeness to create this specific relationship. Co-living is greatly underappreciated in young love both culturally and in the media outside found family stories. School or workplace romances often feel like what they really are: a slide show of the most heart fluttery moments. Putting our leads under one roof settles a “will they, won’t they” intimacy issue that plagues love stories. It’s in Ryuji’s cooking, Taiga’s plotting, and the time spent on them just lounging that makes this one of the sweetness anime couples I’ve seen. 

Ryuji’s home also serves as a base of operations for the mini arcs sprinkled throughout the twenty-five episodes. When things are looking good the two celebrate over pork cutlets with Ryuji’s mom. When things are bad the house is empty and cold. Excursions to Ami’s beach house or the school festival feel tense in that social anxiety way. Will Tiaga approach Kitamura? Can Ryuiji’s cooking experiments impress? Is Minorin gay? What do you mean, JK LOL?! So when they return to the soft ugly glow of Ryuji’s working class home it’s a relief. Spoons have been spent, so to speak. 

Now let's get ugly. 

“If you want meat all the time, go find a household that can afford it”, Ryuji tells Tiaga early on. There’s this rule for fiction where a lack of representation for minorities is not great, but bad representation is worse. I mention it as Toradora could easily have told it’s story with virtually no mind to class. A blissfully ignorant story about teens of equal footing vying for affection in a love quadangle. Instead, Ryuji is characterized first as poor even before his signature “delinquent” looks. Taiga, likewise, is shown in her cavernous apartment on a large canopied bed. There’s a lot that’s different between them as romance stories require, but the gap between their financial situations is never addressed with anything more than jabs like that above. 

It’s much worse when Tiaga get’s controlling. I never got over her calling Ryuji a dog as it is implied early on that his dad came from a lower breed of people, hence his Yakuza eyes (in stark contrast to the moe look of everyone else). Taiga treats Ryuji and Ami as servants on and off for the show’s entire run employing “comedic blackmail” with Ami’s career to boot. Look, we haven’t even got to the comedy violence, but I shouldn’t have to explain why that is ALWAYS terrible and if it must be used, it should be rare and as a consequence to someone’s harmful behavior. Not just when they say something rude! I love Hi Score Girl, but it sucks when someone gets funny, haha decked in the nose there and it sucks here too. 

I feel like Toradora relies on this in particular with our most mature characters, Ryuji and Ami. Minorin and Kitamura are so peppy and absurd they only need dramatic backstories to make them fulfil the drama and comedy halves of the show. With the relative adults the show opts for slapstick comedy to happen to them and Tiaga is their harbinger. This is what I was talking about when I said you can see well ahead what tricks the show is going to indulge. It’s not that our straight characters aren’t perfect foils for humor. Ami’s game for Tiaga’s ferocity and Ryuji deadpans like nobody’s business. But there must be a better way to communicate our heroes' youth and inexperience without shtick. 

There’s a lot more I can criticize, but it’s where the show ends (which I will not spoil) that leaves me unable to lean in one direction. They’re just kids after all. Toradora knows, right? They pout when one doesn’t reciprocate affection. They connive when honesty would be easier and then some. The last six episodes threw much of my confidence in the show as it rushes towards the end. It wasn’t clear if it knew what the characters wanted and what they needed were two different things. Then at the eleventh hour, it surprised me. Like, with just a few minutes left. Hooray? 

Toradora is like any teenager. It’s a flood of emotion, impossible goals, disparity among peers and wanting something, but not knowing quite what that something is. It sure is pretty though. And sometimes deeply moving.