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abymageToradora!
Takasa Ryuuji is a highschool student with a scary look to his eyes (apparently inherited from a long dead yakuza father) with the result that everyone fears him and takes him for a deliquent, though his personality is pretty sweet and shy, with an obsession for the domestic (his hobbies are cleaning and cooking). As the new year starts, he realises that Aisaka Taiga, the petite yet fierce (exactly like that, random French reference at your service!) girl nicknamed "Palmtop Tiger" by the whole school, lives alone next door (and next window) to him and is in love with his best friend (and he in turn has a crush on her best friend). She bullies him into helping her making her confession, and more broadly taking care of her and they become friends of sorts.
Adapted from a series a light novels, Toradora! is that elusive jewel, the good and entertaining shounen highschool rom com, mainly by virtue of having some excellent comedy and some very endearing characters. It doesn't escape all of the flaws that shounen romance tend to have, but it does well enough I was willing to overlook them and just enjoy the series
The series is very solidly hilarious, with some excellent comedic timing, and very well built on the characters. Ryuji is just a little bit more interesting than your average shounen romance lose male lead, thanks to his supposedly scary design which actually makes him adorable and his domesticity. Taiga, asides from the archetype violent and tiny Tsundere character design, has enough subtleties and and shades to be wholly three dimensional and loveable (though her flaws are perhaps a little bit too much exploited for moe for my taste). The rest of the cast is also pretty damn awesome, with Minori, Ryuji's crush and Taiga's best friend, being an extremely energetic and cheerful girl with some quirky ideas who totally steals the show when she appears; Kitamura, Ryuji's best friend and Taiga's crush, being the popular class representative with some eccentric attitude; and Ami, the two faced bitch queen who is a popular model and Kitamura's childhood friend and who is the other show stealer of the series. They each are all well enough developed in narrative arcs to be more than stereotypes; and the series almost (almost! ;_;) escapes harem dynamics in the complicated and endearing relationships between its five main characters. I especially really liked how richly all the female-female relationships were depicted, this isn't a series that has any problem passing the Bechdel Test.
The drama part of the series, which increase in its second half with more emphasis on the romantic plot as well as the two main characters' respective family background, is a little less solid, coming across as a little bit too forced, trite and melodramatic for my taste, though it's touching enough and reinforced by continuous usage of humour in that undercutting way that tends to make emotional scenes more emotional by the whiplash. In the end I wasn't entirely convinced by the way they resolved the romantic plot, not because of what it involved, but because of how it was done.
Still, Toradora! remains an extremely entertaining and well crafted high school romance.
Takasa Ryuuji is a highschool student with a scary look to his eyes (apparently inherited from a long dead yakuza father) with the result that everyone fears him and takes him for a deliquent, though his personality is pretty sweet and shy, with an obsession for the domestic (his hobbies are cleaning and cooking). As the new year starts, he realises that Aisaka Taiga, the petite yet fierce (exactly like that, random French reference at your service!) girl nicknamed "Palmtop Tiger" by the whole school, lives alone next door (and next window) to him and is in love with his best friend (and he in turn has a crush on her best friend). She bullies him into helping her making her confession, and more broadly taking care of her and they become friends of sorts.
Adapted from a series a light novels, Toradora! is that elusive jewel, the good and entertaining shounen highschool rom com, mainly by virtue of having some excellent comedy and some very endearing characters. It doesn't escape all of the flaws that shounen romance tend to have, but it does well enough I was willing to overlook them and just enjoy the series
The series is very solidly hilarious, with some excellent comedic timing, and very well built on the characters. Ryuji is just a little bit more interesting than your average shounen romance lose male lead, thanks to his supposedly scary design which actually makes him adorable and his domesticity. Taiga, asides from the archetype violent and tiny Tsundere character design, has enough subtleties and and shades to be wholly three dimensional and loveable (though her flaws are perhaps a little bit too much exploited for moe for my taste). The rest of the cast is also pretty damn awesome, with Minori, Ryuji's crush and Taiga's best friend, being an extremely energetic and cheerful girl with some quirky ideas who totally steals the show when she appears; Kitamura, Ryuji's best friend and Taiga's crush, being the popular class representative with some eccentric attitude; and Ami, the two faced bitch queen who is a popular model and Kitamura's childhood friend and who is the other show stealer of the series. They each are all well enough developed in narrative arcs to be more than stereotypes; and the series almost (almost! ;_;) escapes harem dynamics in the complicated and endearing relationships between its five main characters. I especially really liked how richly all the female-female relationships were depicted, this isn't a series that has any problem passing the Bechdel Test.
The drama part of the series, which increase in its second half with more emphasis on the romantic plot as well as the two main characters' respective family background, is a little less solid, coming across as a little bit too forced, trite and melodramatic for my taste, though it's touching enough and reinforced by continuous usage of humour in that undercutting way that tends to make emotional scenes more emotional by the whiplash. In the end I wasn't entirely convinced by the way they resolved the romantic plot, not because of what it involved, but because of how it was done.
Still, Toradora! remains an extremely entertaining and well crafted high school romance.
