Toradora! – When in doubt, feed the loli.
October 3rd, 2008 by Vadigor
With the new broadcasting season starting properly this week I have the honour of starting of AniAri’s writing season with the latest series from J.C.Staff, Toradora! Named after the lead characters (more on that later), Toradora is a romantic comedy adapted from the original light novel series by Yuyuko Takemiya. I saw the first episode with little more to go on than the premise and I was pleasantly surprised by the simple yet endearing plot and the character design that backs it up.
Ryuji Takasu is your average highschooler where it not for his intimidating eyes, a gift he inherited from his runaway father. While he’s actually a caring and gentle guy, his constant glare gives him a bad reputation. Apart from some hinting to the yakuza, little else is said about his father while his mother seems to be a complete airhead who works as a bar hostess. Ryuji is now the one taking care of the household, cooking, cleaning and removing the mold caused by the enormous skyscraper next to his house.
Keikaku Doori
With the first day of the new school year starting, Ryuji finds himself isolated until his best friend Yusaku Kitamura shows up, one of the few who managed to look past his threatening appearance. One of those few is Minori Kushieda for whom Ryuji has developed quite an impressive crush over the years.
On the way to class, Ryujii has a run-in with Taiga Aisaka, a short girl with a fierce temper and a reputation to match his own. She has been given the name “Palmtop Tiger” due to her short stature and brutal behaviour. Quick to anger, she sucker punches him to the face without even saying a word. In class we see that Minori is one of her only friends. (plot device anyone?)
Unlimited Desk Works?
After being called to the teacher’s office, Ryuji goes to fetch his bag where he interrupts Taiga. Possessing inhuman speed, she rushes into a cabinet in a not so subtle hiding attempt, knocking over half the desks in the room. She seems obsessed about Ryuji’s bag, only conceding the fight over it after her illness starts to act up. (Going through ten handkerchiefs a day with my cold, I can certainly relate.)
When he gets home he finds a love letter from Taiga to a Kitamura Yuusaku in his bag, which she mistakenly put in there. Not only that, the letter even turns out to be empty. She really does seem to be the clumsy type.
Ryuji is awoken that night by Taiga who has broken into his home with a bokken. Bent on killing him for reading her love letter, but willing to settle for amnesia she chases him around the room. However, upon hearing that the letter was empty she collapses out of exhaustion and hunger. Not knowing what to do, Ryuji decides to fix her a meal.
After trying to teach her some table manners, he puts her embarrassment into perspective by showing off his secret obsession for Minori. Ryuji has everything planned from poems to music, lacking only the resolve to actually confess to her. After a brief introduction the Inko, a sickly though not quite dead parakeet, Ryuji tries to work Taiga out of the house before his mother gets home, going so far as to promise to obey her like a dog.
The next day, while cooking breakfast, Ryuji’s interrupted by a phone call from Taiga, ordering him to look out the veranda. There he finds her staring back at him from her apartment next to his house. Going over with breakfast, he finds her place in a state of total squalor. After noticing the total mess his cleaning Ryuji’s Cleaning Power kicks in, tidying up the room and indirectly curing Taiga of her runny nose by getting rid of all the filth.
[insert preferred meme here]
So far Toradora seems to be a promising series. Rie Kugimya’s voice acting is once again exceptional, fleshing out her character without falling back on her typical Shana voice, even with the occasional Urusai thrown in. Rie is probably the best voice actress out there for tsundere characters and she puts down another excellent performance here.
We haven’t seen enough of to be sure, but Taiga seems to be set up for the typical “Tsundere with a troubled past.” stereotype while Ryuji is certainly the more interesting of the two. He’s reminding me a lot of Genzo from Cheeky Angel for some reason. Just a quick note, the series’ Title is taken from the names of the two leads: Taiga is the phonetic equivalent of Tiger, which when translated back to Japanese becomes Tora. Similarly, Ryu is Japanese for dragon, pronounced doragon in Japanese.
Urusai! Urusai! Urusai!
There are certainly some character similarities to be found to J.C.Staff’s earlier work, notably Zero no Tsukaima and of course Shakugan no Shana. What little we’ve seen of the plot so far seems to put it in the romantic comedy or slice of life genre which I think would work perfectly by keeping things simple yet charming.
I’ve yet to see any information on how long it will run, but I’m guessing it will clock in at your standard 13 episodes. I will certainly be following this in the following weeks to see where they take the story.
Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream
13 Responses to “Toradora! – When in doubt, feed the loli.”
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Hooooooooooly crap. It was p. mediocre for most of the show and I thought it might be fun to watch with a group of friends and riff on, but then the end showed up with Show ▼
That I went, “Welp, now I want to kill myself.”
This and Strike Witches have taught me that you have a MUCH higher tolerance for shitty anime than I do. I’m impressed you don’t bleed from the eyes watching stuff like this on a regular basis.
e: Wooo, first comment!
Well, she DOES have a troubled past. I just wish that the character designs were closer to the manga… and pray they won’t butcher this the way ZnT was.
It was actually half-decent, compared to previous assumptions. Her voice is waaaay too similar to how she handled Louise’s though. And that urusai urusai urusai didn’t exactly help either.
@Linall: I’m not sure why you disliked it so much, it’s certainly not the next Evangelion or even this season’s Haruhi or whatever, but it’s an amusing watch. The characters obviously make or break the show here, but I like it so far. As for Strike Witches, I wanted to write about something other than the usual popular series, and Pantsu Witches seemed to fit the bill. There are other reasons why I picked it but I digress. I haven’t seen anything past what I blogged, mainly because there hasn’t been much of development from what I’ve read on other blogs. I might marathon it at the end and write a series review but that remains to be seen.
@Haesslich: From what I’ve read on a few messageboards, it’s supposedly a very faithful adaptation of the original novels. I’m not sure how close the manga is to the original though.
@Zeroblade: I haven’t seen much of ZnT, but I think she puts down a fairly distinct performance here, and it fits her character quite well. The urusai was blatant fanservice and out of character, but it can overlook it for now. I just hope they don’t keep forcing it for the rest of the series.
I think Haesslich was talking about the character designs from the manga, not the actual story (which was, yes, quite faithful). You take one look at the manga and see the pretty big differences in art, as the designs were adapted from the light novel art and not the manga, which is a shame. Regardless, it still turned out very good.
Actually, the light novel art doesn’t look like this either. The manga art improves on the LN art… and this takes the ‘ugly’ cake compared to either. About the only character design they didn’t touch was Inko-chan… but as I’ve said elsewhere, there’s only so many ways you can draw a deranged parrot who looks more strung out than Mick Jagger after a concert tour and heavy doses of booze and cocaine.
The manga adaptation’s fairly faithful to the light novel, however. So far, so good for it. This… we’ll see.
Only about 11 chapters in the manga though right?
I’m still debating whether to watch or not, I was kind of fearing what Zeroblade had said about Taiga’s voice being indistinguishable from Louise’s.
Well, her voice is pretty distinguishable from Louise in that it’s deeper, but her “inus” and “mongrels” quickly brought me back to the failure that was ZnT:PnR.
@RogerOsk;Haesslich: As I said I haven’t read the manga or the original light novels, the few things I know about the differences between them I found out from discussions on other blogs and sites. It gives me the advantage of being able to watch the show without fearing for J.C.Staff messing up another good series. I might look in to the manga though, just to see the differences for myself.
@Jay: As ItAintEazy said, their voices are fairly distinct though. I’d certainly give this series te benefit of the doubt for now, I certainly enjoyed the first episode.
@ItAintEazy: I’ve heard the dog-remark quite a lot, but it seems that it is actually used in the original novel, so I’m not sure whether it’s some sort of throwback to ZnT or simply a faithful rendition of the original dialogue. My guess is that it’s both, given how they had no qualms about bringing back the Urusai as well.
Vadigor: Or you can go to Baka-tsuki and check out the illustrations to see how the art differs. The main thing they’ve done here is add more violence. That’s my worry – they’ll make her just like Louise to satisfy fans of the yandere who didn’t exist in the original novel series which ZnT is based on.
Tsu-tsun-tsun tsundere!
really… i cant trust xebec at all
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