Toradora! Anime Review

Quick Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2010-10-23 (updated 2014-10-23)
• 4 stars out of 5 (?)

Toradora may look like your average perky, fanboy-targeted comedy-romance at first glance, but it ends up taking an obvious setup in entirely unexpected directions, with substantive teenage character drama eventually taking precedent over humor. Even more unexpected, this works, thanks to a refreshingly mature tone--the show is more about the beginning of adulthood than the end of youth--and the strength of its five central cast members--fun, likable anime personalities with an undercurrent of humanity. Particularly memorable is class-clown Minori; Yui Horie's scene-stealing performance makes almost every minute she's onscreen entertaining. After spending most of its first season on light hijinks with an undercurrent of mild drama, the series gets down to business: watching competent, together characters completely lose it in surprisingly realistic ways. It's teenage angst, but the emotional core rings true, and there's a good reason for it--the side effects of disastrously bad parenting drive the drama. It's a little leisurely with the pacing, and it leaves some unfinished business at the end, but the climax is satisfyingly romantic in a mature, low-key way.

If you go in expecting a broad comedy, you'll almost certainly enjoy the first season, but likely feel let down by the second, because that's really not what it is at heart. If, on the other hand, you come prepared for a relatively substantive coming-of-age drama/romance with a stiff dose of comedy and quirky anime flavor, thanks to well-developed characters and a solid emotional core, Toradora stands alongside Kimagure Orange Road among the best of the genre.

Read the full-length review...

Full Review

• Reviewer: Marc
• Review Date: 2010-10-23 (updated 2014-10-23)
• 4 stars out of 5 (?)

Toradora may look like your average perky, fanboy-targeted comedy-romance at first glance, but it ends up taking an obvious setup in entirely unexpected directions, with substantive teenage character drama eventually taking precedent over humor. Even more unexpected, this works--thanks to well-developed characters and a solid emotional core, it stands alongside Kimagure Orange Road among the best genre-bending coming-of-age romantic comedy/dramas.

Toradora works as well as it does thanks to its small cast of fun, likable characters.

Taiga is superficially a tsundere character--mean on the surface, nice inside--that subverts the stereotype by casting it as a real psychological problem. She starts out less tsundere than complete basket case--hurt terribly by parental neglect, she's distrusting, indiscriminately angry, confused, socially inept, and living in squalor. At the same time, it's clear that she's desperate for love, which she demonstrates with her incongruently open affection for Minori--the one person who's been there for her.

While Taiga's temper is mostly played for laughs initially, it's not just a joke; over the course of the series she gradually pulls herself together, eventually turning into a somewhat testy, functional person. This slow transformation caught me off guard, and had me getting attached to a sort of character I usually find annoying. Tsundere specialist Rie Kugimiya does a memorable job supplying her humorous anger and confusion with an undercurrent of humanity.

Ryuuji, Taiga's opposite, appears to be the passive protagonist; stable, a fiercely domestic clean freak (a good ongoing joke), and bad at expressing himself. As it turns out, there's more to him as well--the responsibility of being more of a parent to his infantile mother than she is to him has left issues unassumingly simmering under the surface.

Kitamura is the uber-youth, and unlike most bespectacled brainiacs, he's also hyper-competent and quite perceptive. He's the least substantive of the group, but is impressive for the all-in vigor he applies to everything he does--including, it turns out, failure.

Minori is a spectacle: A force of nature, she's overflowing with energy and flat-out wacky in the most entertaining, light-up-a-room way possible. Pretty much every minute she's onscreen the first season is fun--you could easily build an entire comedy around her.¹ Yui Horie's scene-stealing performance deserves a lot of the credit--she makes simple lines unfailingly entertaining.

Interestingly, Minori's not your usual oblivious nutcase--she's a class-clown who's competent and well aware of what's going on around her. This makes it all the more striking when she starts to crack around the edges, increasing the impact of the conflict in later episodes.²

Ami is the odd-girl-out, acting as more of a sarcastic, bitter observer, quietly wishing she was more of an insider. After an early couple of episodes establishing the damage done by premature maturity and why she would fall for Ryuuji, she really doesn't get the development the rest of the characters do. Importantly, though, she isn't just a harem addition--her sullen remarks make it clear she knows she's not in the romantic picture.

These five are the only significant characters apart from Ryuuji's mom, who's also not quite as much of a joke as she seems. None are as simple as they seem at first glance, and the wonderful Japanese (only) acting gives the colorful anime personalities a measure of emotional substance.

Further, they're not static; Taiga isn't the only one to change subtly--and believably--through the series. Indeed, among Toradora's strengths is its ability to follow a thread without hitting the viewer over the head with it.

For example, in the first episode we're shown Ryuuji's failed attempt to compensate for his scary eyes with his hair. After a string of early jokes it ceases to be an issue once his classmates realize that he's a nice guy who just looks like a thug. However, throughout the series, every time he's feeling self-conscious, he fiddles with his bangs. This little tic signals what he's feeling, and gives the viewer a touchstone of continuity.

The symbolic Tiger/Dragon pairing that gives the show its title is another example--it's mentioned at the beginning, then not so much as alluded to until the last episode.

Toradora is, for the most part, a coming-of-age romantic comedy. Unlike many similar anime, though, it's more about the beginning of adulthood than the end of youth; the focus eventually turns to big life decisions and the difference between a crush and real romantic commitment. A recurring theme is attempting something impulsive and youthfully irresponsible, then stepping back, looking at the long term, and making a rational decision.

This dose of maturity is a refreshing change of pace, and had me feeling far more emotionally invested than I expected. It's also one of many ways in which Toradora sidesteps a well-trod path. Even the inevitable destination looks remarkably unfamiliar once it arrives.

The set-up is obvious: Apparent opposites Taiga and Ryuuji team up to help each other chase someone else, but of course it will turn out they're better suited to each other. However, instead of an increasingly infuriating string of excuses for the two not to get together, they quickly realize that they could get something going. But, having fallen straight into the old-married-couple dynamic, both of them make the conscious decision to go after something with less practicality and more spark. This, I really liked--it comes right out and accepts the underlying pretext, it just isn't ready to go there.

It also helps that the alternate choices are obviously appealing. Kitamura is confident and charismatic--everything Ryuuji isn't, and everything the surly, awkward Taiga wants. Minori is nearly as competent and fun incarnate--everything Taiga isn't, and everything the reserved, domestic Ryuuji wants.

Having confronted and willfully postponed addressing its premise, Toradora spends most of its first season on light hijinks episodes setting the stage. These episodes have an undercurrent of mild drama, but they mainly serve to get you attached to the characters and their version of normalcy. Had that been all there was to it, it would have been a solid comedy--the off-beat timing is sharp and the slice-of-life situations entertaining. It wraps the season up with a more serious story arc introducing Taiga's dad, which clearly demonstrates why she's such a mess.

In the second season the series gets to its unexpected emotional meat: Watching competent, together characters completely lose it. First we watch Kitamura's cheerful perfection fall apart in spectacular fashion. Then, even more unexpectedly, comes Minori--she seems utterly at a loss, which stands in stark, uncomfortable contrast to her unstoppable energy up to that point. Even Ryuuji turns out to be a slow burn--he eventually snaps in dramatic fashion. Taiga, of course, was a disaster from the beginning.

A noteworthy feature is the series' general refusal to let things work out cleanly--toes get stepped on, people say hurtful things, and not everyone can walk away happy. This aligns with the second major underlying theme: Trying to put others before yourself rarely works, particularly when everyone is doing it. If you read between the lines, it's something of a condemnation of Japanese tradition: Not rocking the boat, putting the harmony of the group ahead of your own desires, doing what you're expected to do--all these things are attempted, then jettisoned in favor of following what you want, no matter how much of a mess it makes. This mildly subversive message is common in anime, but Toradora presents it in unusually realistic ways.

Not all the drama is broad or overblown. There is one spectacularly vicious gender-role-reversed brawl between two girls while the rejected guy cries in a heap with his buddies consoling him, but most of the fighting is the sort of snippy, sarcastic bickering that feels more at home in reality TV than anime. Uncomfortable, unusual, and memorable.

It's teenage angst, to be sure, but the emotional core rings true. Further, there's a good reason for the angst--Ryuuji and Taiga in particular bear the scars of disastrous parenting, and both lack anyone to turn to for emotional support other than their friends. Those scars are the third theme underpinning the whole series.

Kitamura, in contrast, is the only one with competent parents, and indeed it's his parents that eventually smack him back into shape. Minori is a disappointment on that count--it's repeatedly hinted that, in addition to having more going on in her head than it seems, she has some serious family problems hiding somewhere, but that's never addressed. That's my only real problem with the series: It seems to have a lot left to do when it ends.

The climax itself isn't the issue--it fits perfectly from a narrative standpoint, is dramatically effective, and is wonderfully romantic in a mature, low-key way. It's just that after spending so much time getting to know the characters on a deeper level, only Kitamura--the simplest one--really has his story concluded by the end.³ We can see where things are going for most of the others, but there's a lot of stuff left open or played out offscreen that I felt owed as a viewer. Minori in particular seems to have plenty of unfinished business, and Ami isn't much better.

It doesn't help any that the overall pacing is quite leisurely; either season could have been a couple episodes shorter without losing anything important. I felt like the series needed either another season or an OAV series to properly cover the follow-through.⁴

Visually, Toradora is interesting in that it's unassuming but very effective at what it needs to do. The art is simple and the backgrounds not particularly detailed, but the characters look memorable, are very expressive, and there's a reasonable amount of flavor in the everyday locales. The character animation makes up for any other weaknesses--full of life and color, particularly when it comes to Minori's antics. The costuming deserves a nod--there are a wide variety of everyday outfits and even a couple of dramatic makeovers. There's not much memorable in the background music, but the opening and end themes--two of each--are infectiously chipper, with a bit of an electronic tinge.

When you put all this together, Toradora is little hard to pin down. If you go in expecting a broad comedy, you'll almost certainly enjoy the first season, but likely be either bored or let down by the second, because that's really not what it is at heart. If, on the other hand, you come prepared for a relatively substantive coming-of-age drama/romance with a stiff dose of comedy and quirky anime flavor, you're not likely to find many shows better than Toradora.

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Related Recommendations

The unexpected tipping of the scales from broad comedy to relatively substantive teen drama is a little unusual; Kimagure Orange Road is easily the closest in terms of having both broad (in its case supernatural) elements and angsty drama, although its humor is less effective and the drama more self-induced. The lesser-known Ghibli film I Can Hear The Sea is actually rather close in terms of dealing with parental issues and low-key emotional drama, but with little of the humor and more sense of looking back on the foibles of youth. Any number of shoujo series do similar stuff without so much of the comedy, and there are countless romantic comedy (or harem) series that do the same general thing without so much drama. Some similar picks would be the action-oriented Full Metal Panic and its all-comedy sequel Fumoffu! for the humor, and maybe Ouran High School Host Club for some of both.