Now, word of mouth is oftentimes a good way to get a good idea of how good or bad something is, whether that may be a series, movie, game, or product. Raves are showered upon pros, and boos or casual mentions are rained onto the cons. When a series gets near universal praise, I oftentimes have curiosity set in, but sometimes curiosity brings in doubt and skepticism as houseguests.Toradora! has been pretty widely regarded as excellent, a brilliant concoction of characters, romance, and humor, refreshing yet still full of room for interpretation. However, upon looking at the premise of this romantic comedy, I had an uneasy feeling the series would be like the next Haruhi Suzumiya to me, a series where I would blanch at the excessive amounts of hype that surround it. The plot is simple enough: Takasu Ryuuji and Aisaka Taiga, two students whose personalities grind gears with each other in every single way possible, form an alliance to help each other obtain a significant other, their counterpart's best friend. Throughout the series, another more unexpected romance starts to blossom.
Ryuuji the dragon and Taiga the Palmtop Tiger don't exactly get along when they first meet.
Now, in a romance series, the characters and their chemistry with each other are the bread and butter to the series' enjoyability. Unfortunately, below the surface of the characters' personalities, the complex nature that is necessary to build up the depth of the series is rather disappointing. An attempt is made to portray Taiga as an unfortunate result of a happily negligent father, which does work to an extent. Unfortunately, the emotional detachment that she displays towards her father lacks depth- it's not hatred, it's not anger (Taiga reserves that feeling towards her mother), but it's portrayed more of a supervisor-employee disconnect rather than a parent-child disconnect. On a day-to-day basis, Taiga is oftentimes unbearably textbook tsundere. One minute she can get into a tantrum that makes toddlers wince, the next minute she's huddled in the kitchen in anticipation of an F5 tornado. The transition is extraordinarily quick, and both sides attempt to portray depth, but come off as lackluster due to the speed in which she transitions. Finally, her attitude and voice towards any subject comes off more middle school than high school.
Ryuuji fares a bit better, complete with a good heart, good cooking and cleaning skills, and an attempt at trying to get past his looks, which say "I'm a gang member." But don't expect a clone of Ichigo Kurosaki here. Instead, his development, along with the development of many other secondary characters, is stagnated due to simplistic dialogue, as if the scriptwriters only had a middle-school vocabulary and sentence structure. Even the family bird (a green parakeet named Inko-chan) has better vocabulary. If only he didn't look like he was choking on something all the time. Ryuuji's introverted nature, which makes him seem flat and dull, isn't doing him any favors, either, and attempts at coming out, while not all utter failures, merely amount to nothing higher than a C+, and this weakness is only slightly improved upon by the end of the series.
The attempts at humor and secondary characters (Kitamura on left, Minorin center and right) are middling at best.
I attempted to try and find a liking in the secondary characters, specifically Kushieda Minorin (Ryuuji's crush and Taiga's best friend) and Kitamura Yuusaku (Taiga's crush and Ryuuji's best friend). Unfortunately, I was disappointed yet again. Minorin's eccentricities do provide some entertainment, such as working multiple jobs and a happy-go-lucky personality that can come off as air-headedness, but again, depth, dialogue, and a lack of complexities conspire against her. The same applies for Kitamura, whose comes off as a cardboard cutout of an academic overachiever with socialization issues. The characters become less likable as I branched out further from the two wishful relationships. A later addition to the quartet is Kawashima Ami, a model with an absolutely rotten personality. An individual who is afraid of expressing her true thoughts and feelings, she nonetheless manages to come across as a condescendingly rich snob with absolutely no backbone when she opens her mouth. Another dislikeable character is Yasuko Ryuuji, Takasu's young mother, who oftentimes would rather be fed by her son, drunk, and asleep rather than helping her son succeed. While this gives character kudos to Ryuuji for being self-sufficient, it really drives down the likeability of Yasuko. Her constant whining makes her feel like Takasu's toddler sister or daughter, and her ditzy smiling makes her look like she's high on LSD. She does display a caring side, but this side plays a secondary rather than primary role in Ryuuji's life, and does little to offset how she is the other 80% of the time.
Aside from the below-par character development, the plot and day-to-day events make the series have an episodic rather than linear feel, with the romance and attempted proposals occurring in the background. While the development is there, the romance and interactions amongst characters is vague and you have to feel and search for it. This weakens the theme and is disappointing considering that the romance should play a front-and-center role here. The events that further each relationship stepping stone push it forward jerkily, leading to an expression of applause or disappointment when the event is reached, but the path towards it is lined with jagged conversations that drag and expressions of frustrations asking for events that are long overdue to occur. The effects of the events also seem to be short -lived, and oftentimes the characters themselves are forced back to square one and the entire dreadful cycle starts over again.
The emotion you get from the major events wears out rather quickly. Most of the series the main question is "Who will he [Ryuuji] end up with?"
Thus, I found myself riding on a rollercoaster of emotions getting through this anime, from hatred to apathy to approval. There were characters who deserve nothing less than a punch in the face, while others whom I would seriously recommend go and spend several hours at a therapist's office. But none of the characters in Toradora rise above middle-of-the road for me, which is a disappointment since this is a romance anime first and foremost. Not even the humor could sway me from the lackluster plot and character development. I'll give the producers credit for trying, but the series is nothing to gush over. It's not a complete bore, but its inconsistency in terms of thought put into the story lead to some high moments offset by plenty of mediocre and low points. The boxset has just been released, but to me, the series is only worthy of consideration either borrowed from a friend, rented from Netflix, or at most bought secondhand.
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