Toradora! halfway thoughts
My high school romcom track record is atrocious. It all began with Kare Kano back in the day: a masterful combination of Hideaki Anno’s genius as a director and Masami Tsuda’s enchanting characters, it’s one of my all-time favourite anime shows. It was touching, romantic, artistically innnovative and laugh-out-loud funny; ignoring the ending, obviously. Bokura ga Ita in contrast had a nice watercolour style and a relaxed pace but it felt so insipid I grew bored and dropped it. Similarly Itazura na Kiss lacked that special something to make me care about the everyday dorama of characters who are a decade my junior and I grew impatient with that too.
I must confess I dismissed Toradora! after one episode as being another generic dollop of frivolous froth held together with unfunny slapstick and featuring unfunny characters you just want to slap. With a stick. After reading about how even my most esteemed co-bloggers such as Bateszi-senpai were enjoying it I wondered if I’d underestimated it somewhat. Now I’ve crossed the halfway mark I’ve come to realise how Toradora! could be one of the surprise hits of the last twelve months…I never saw it coming. At all.
The reason why I think the aforementioned titles fell short in my eyes is one inescapable fact for this sort of series: characterisation is king. No matter how much you try to polish the artwork, squeeze in jokes or spice up the soundtrack it’s all for naught if the characters aren’t engaging. Toradora! isn’t exactly made on Clannad’s budget but it shares its focus on the fundamental idea that stories are at the end of the day all about people. Granted, the OP theme’s fuzzy bass, cute vocal and hyperactivity remind me a bit of electropop princesses Perfume but in terms of music and aesthetics it’s nothing to write home about at all. It succeeds because it takes the usual templates of stock characters and breathes life into them…most importantly they’re likable, which makes the world of difference. A job for Captain Obvious? Perhaps.
Complaining about the tropes and clichés is a lazy way of judging stories like this, although we’re all guilty of it at some time or another. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel, really, but what I’ve come to realise is that even the most tired and over-used archetypes are simplified reflections of real people. In Toradora! we’re presented with the energetic girl, the tsundere girl and the class idol but beyond those superficial elements they’re given…sod it, I might as well say it. Depth. The setup is also more than a love triangle or – heaven forbid, a harem – because the gender ratio is a more interesting 3:2 and the male characters have personalities of their own.
Toradora! is still mindlessly silly on occasion but it seems to be calculated silliness in that it knows when to goof off and when to give the characters the moments of introspection and pathos they deserve. Considering how it often relies on teen angst the storyline seems to take quite a respectful stance on portraying the lives of these kids; it’s predictable stuff one moment then a heartwarming or surprising twist jumps up at you the next.
She isn’t nearly so simple
Ami is a case in point. Her introduction gave a sudden and quite entertaining send-up of the moe archetype – or rather, the perception of the idoru, which might warrant a train of thought on its own – but no sooner than her true colours are presented to the viewer we’re shown her insecurities too. Painting her as the one you should love to hate was too easy it seems so the story instead reminds you that as scheming and bitchy as she is, Ami is still human. Behind the fake-ness and vanity is a character who is the opposite: a girl who is a sensitive victim of real feelings like everyone else.
What’s to say about Taiga? She’s the tsundere of course but the reason why she’s one of the most effective uses of that character type is the way in which the conflicting dualities in her personality struggle to reach the surface; a smooth and interesting ride down a well-worn path. I can understand why her obnoxious side could grate on you but those moments of dere-dere where you see the real Taiga for a moment are so perfectly timed: she’s given background, her feelings are given context and relevance and she’s outrageously funny into the bargain. I find her to be a great character despite her tsunderisms, not because of them; which may not sound like an important distinction but I can assure you that it is.
Minorin doesn’t really come from any one set template but for me she’s still extremely interesting because I still can’t figure her out. Her background is less well-explained than Ami’s or Taiga’s so all I have to go on is that she’s hiding her real emotions behind a fabricated persona as they are, but for reasons that are unclear. The moments where she opens up to Takasu don’t contradict my initial impression that she’s a good person through and through but she goes so out of her way to be over-the-top in her enthusiastic and gregarious behaviour I can’t help but feel she may be hiding something especially painful.
Takasu and Kitamura are, unusually, given almost as much attention on the character development front as the girls are. I find this to give the series a rare and wonderful sense of balance: this isn’t about placating fanboys. Rather, it seems to be appealing to both genders in that the viewer is given cause to care about all of them equally, leading me to assume that the original manga-ka is female (I suck at Japanese names but I’ll stick my neck out this time). Kitamura is likably clueless without being nauseatingly so; he accepts the admiration of the girls with good grace, perhaps oblivious to it but never letting his popularity go to his head. He’s just a decent guy, pure and simple.
Takasu isn’t bad…he’s just misunderstood
Takasu is also a thoroughly decent fellow but his unfortunate background stacked the odds against him from the outset: he’s a child of a single parent family, which means his mother works unsociable hours and is the one who requires looking after rather than her child because his father is notably absent. It wasn’t until the Cultural Festival segment and the appearance of Taiga’s own old man that we really saw how much this domestic setup had affected him: his judgement was pretty severely clouded by the memories of the dad he hardly knew, unknowingly judging Taiga’s situation by his own unusual standards. It’s hardly his fault of course, but with this and the way in which people judge him unfairly purely because of his appearance I think he deserves credit for being as down-to-earth and thoughtful as he is. I must say it’s a refreshing change here too in that the male lead is neither a perv nor a complete dolt.
Overall then I’d say that Toradora! is still in the realms of trivial, everyday soap-opera/sitcom but it’s getting the simple and crucial things right, which makes the difference between just another forgettable show and something that will actually stay with you. As I type this various moments flash up in my memory as ones that were outragously funny, sweetly touching, or indeed both. It’s this dry wit and sympathetic warmth that makes it just enough to stand out from the crowd, and makes me actually look forward to each new episode. So again, if it’s so simple, why don’t we see series as good as this more often?
I think your conclusion nails why I have a hard time trying to talk about this show in a positive way. Toradora! is a nice thing all around, but nothing about it makes me want to elevate this entertaining fluff beyond…entertaining fluff status.
Maybe, just maybe, just because a show doesn’t have total stereotypes for its characters and relationships, it doesn’t mean much to me.
Yes. I adore its sense of timing(?)/balance(?); I too find it awkward to identify what exactly makes this show excellent. Intuitively I think it is.
Whenever I want to strike at who I feel is an overly angsty teenager I look back at my own youth and realize how much angst I generated per second. I’ve been more considerate since I started this habit. However, it doesn’t mean angst is entertaining, no matter how realistic. The portrayal of angst in Toradora remains entertaining. I’m not sure why, but I suspect that the respectful stance you talk about has something to do with it.
Your observations regarding the characters in the 1st half of the series are spot-on, though I read into Kitamura further than you have. I think Kitamura was critical in setting up the characterizations going forward that allows these kids to change before our eyes and make us care.
If this where I get to say “I told you so”? ;)
In all seriousness, for me this is the best series of the last twelve months – Ironically, the best since True Tears, which (in a rather different way) played to exactly the same strengths of compelling character depth as this one.
Much like True Tears, I feel like the characters in Toradora are people I can either directly relate to in certain ways, or remind me of people I know for various reasons, and that’s always a good start. It’s also rare to find a series centred on romance where I don’t actually mind who ends up with who, but that continues to be the case here even as I’m moving towards the last few episodes.
I totally agree on the mindless silliness this series uses so well – Some series try to throw in light-hearted moments but make a terrible job of it, but Toradora has managed to make me absolutely laugh out loud countless times, then minutes later had me crying thanks to some of its more powerful emotional moments. It takes a lot to do that, which makes it a work of minor genius in my book (and if you enjoy this series, please check out the light novels too) – I suppose to answer your closing question if all series along these lines were this good we’d soon get bored of them.
[...] It isn’t really about how good Toradora is. To me it’s an above average show that didn’t do anything special. If “did nothing seriously wrong” was a special quality. Remember, that’s just [...]
It’s refreshing to read thoughts about Toradora from someone who’s actually behind me on the episode count. I can’t stand the subbers who are leading this series, so I’m about four or five episodes behind everyone else, and I’ve been trying to avoid commentary on this series for fear of spoilers. The problem is, it’s such a frequently discussed series that avoiding spoilers is proving very, very difficult.
I completely agree, Toradora! takes the seemingly banal and makes it work because there’s such a massive emphasis on characters. Pretty much everyone is deeper than they initially seem. The characters might start out as tropes, but the fact that they’re fleshed out beyond their initial archetype is what makes them interesting and sympathetic. Particularly Ami, who’s put up a few hints here and there that she’s a very deep and complicated character. Having only seen up to ep 16, she strikes me as a character who’s constantly battling with image and personality and desperately wants someone to see through her facade. There are a few silly moments which come off as overly melodramatic (eg, end of ep 16), but for the large part, it’s a series that knows the limitations of its genre, but still makes the most of them. I think it’s fair to say it’s a genre piece, but its sense of balance and execution make up for its lack of ambition.
Well I dropped this at first episode for obvious reasons, although strangely I’m hearing good things about it from more discerning viewers. Which might not be that strange as it’s directed by the guy who did Honey Clover II.
I’m also interested because someone at Anipages linked the below youtube clip of end of episode 19. It was very touching, and this is coming from someone who didn’t watch anything beyond episode one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qOKQquwVNI
I think everyone warmed to this show at different times. I was just watching it because it was just a little too good to drop, and then was floored when Minorin pwned Taiga and Takasu in the haunted cave episode. At that point I realized I was watching more closely than I thought.
“So again, if it’s so simple, why don’t we see series as good as this more often?”
I’ve been scratching my head like everyone else, wondering how the hell they’re doing it. I’m not sure it’s a question of character depth, though that’s part of it. It’s not only the heartfelt moments, because for me many of those fall a little flat. It’s partly that the humor arises from what we know about the characters and seeing how they react to a situation, okay, character-driven, yet some of the situations are so “romcom” (to use your word), and thus silly, that can’t be entirely it, either. Though these situations are no less silly than those in a comic opera … Maybe it’s just terrific source material and a smart director. Maybe they caught lightning in a bottle. Maybe the more I analyze, the less sense I make.
I just can’t like Kitamura after certain events in the show. He’s become a joke in comparison to the rest of the main cast. At least with Haruta, we know that he’s simply comedic relief, but with Kitamura it just feels like he showed up, angsted and then was pushed into the background.
Toradora makes me want to sit in between two bookshelves. By the way, I think it’s outstanding, much more so than True Tears.
@Omo: it’s entertaining fluff for sure, but it’s the best fluff I’ve seen in ages! What I love about the show is how it chooses to do simple things well rather than ambitious things and fail. I can understand why it makes it easy to watch yet hard to write about though.
@Ghostlightning: yeah, it’s hard to pin down exactly why you find yourself caring about them, but whatever the reason that’s the thing that makes it work. I think Kitamura was the catalyst but I really appreciate how it gives all of them plenty of screen time. Nice post BTW…dunno why I hadn’t read it earlier!
@Hanners: there are light novels?! Interesting. Oh, this.
I know exactly where you’re coming from. hopefully this’ll mean that even if the ending is unsatisfying it won’t ruin my enjoyment of the series as a whole.
@Sorrow-kun: It’s getting back to the competency vs ambition issue I guess, where the writers seem to know where the boundaries are but have the dexterity to make the most of what lies within them. The characters are cliched in some ways, but that makes it all the more satisfying when they do or say something unexpected!
@gaguri: I’ll pass on the vid for fear of spoilers but thanks for pointing out who the director is – I was getting a bit baffled by the H&C comparisons, which didn’t make a lot of sense to me. But then, I haven’t watched much H&C either (shameful, I know).
@Peter S: yeah, it sometimes feels like the sun and moon are in alignment or something because sometimes the component parts don’t work at all, while other times some unlikely combination creates a winner. I’ve given up on trying to figure it out now and just resigned to enhjoying it!
@Omisyth: it’s a shame to hear Kitamura takes a back seat later on but I can understand it if he was the one who unknowingly started the chain of events, as Omo suggested. His work is done here, as they say. I’ll have to keep watching now!
@Sasa: art-wise I think true tears was stunning, but this is much funnier! To me it’s what Itazura na Kiss could have been, if the characters hadn’t been so damned annoying!
I believe the seiyuu performances deserve a bit of credit for that indiscernible something that makes this series great.
I’m at the halfway mark as well right now. I have to say, this along with Honey and Clover completely nails the emotional experience that is one’s final years in high school. The culture gap here is breached with the same sort of well-placed off-the-wallness (I took some liberties there) that allowed me to make my way through the sometimes overwhelming nostalgia and melancholy that seems to be present through the entirety of both shows. Sometimes Toradora borrows a little too much however. The dance after the culture festival seemed so reminiscent of that scene where the group from H&C is picking clovers for their professor’s safe journey. The narrative seems almost identical, but it could be that my memory’s just a little foggy. I think the director is the same for both, so maybe I’m not too crazy.
Opinions? Thoughts?
@Gen: yeah, I think the VAs deserve a lot of credit, considering how character-driven the series is. Rie Kugimiya’s turn as Taiga reminds me a lot of her work as Shana, but that’s no bad thing.
@Santori Time: I’m at a real disadvantage in that I’ve not seem much H&C at all, but the comparisons have been flying around thick and fast so there must be some solid basis for it. The director could well go some way to explaining it, yeah.
Toradora! is the real deal. Don’t watch a lot of Rom-com, but with Kare Kano as the benchmark, it was a a perfectly decent blast to watch (and every fifth episode wasn’t filler or recaps! A testament to KK, though, was despite massive structural flaws, it remains one of my favorite all-time animes as well). Some of my favorite moments were whenever Minorin’s outer shell cracked a bit. She was probably my favorite seiyu in the series as well, since there was so much range to it (and she did the op theme.)
i personally think that in some ways every anime is good story wise. but there r way to many repeats out. please someone come with something new!