Toradora! opens with a mistake. Ryuuji Takasu walks into his second year of high school, and everyone reads him wrong. His eyes glare. His face threatens. He is, in fact, gentle, tidy and kind. That gap between appearance and truth runs through all 25 episodes of the 2008 anime, and it is the reason the show still holds up.
Trailer, via Hanabee Entertainment.
Ryuuji Takasu and the delinquent face
Ryuuji is frustrated by his looks. He has his mother’s soft nature and his late father’s intimidating stare, and the stare wins every first impression. He is happy to land in the same class as his best friend Yusaku Kitamura and Minori Kushieda, the girl he likes.
Then he runs into Taiga Aisaka. She is tiny, sharp-tongued and infamous for a temper. She takes an instant dislike to him. She also lives in the apartment next door.
The setup is a romantic comedy, and Toradora! knows it. What lifts the show is how quickly it turns the setup into a friendship. Ryuuji discovers Taiga has a crush on Yusaku. Taiga finds out about Minori. They agree to help each other.
A deal to set each other up
The plan is simple and doomed. Ryuuji and Taiga stage romantic situations to push each other toward their crushes. Most of them backfire.
Their classmates notice the time they spend together and start rumors that they are a couple. Both try to stamp the rumors out. Neither quite manages it.
Taiga starts coming to Ryuuji’s house for meals. Ryuuji checks on her and cleans her messy apartment. The show lets these small acts carry the weight. No grand confession, just a girl eating dinner at a neighbor’s table.
That is the engine. Toradora! is less interested in who ends up with whom than in how two guarded people become necessary to each other.
Ami Kawashima arrives
Later, Yusaku’s childhood friend Ami Kawashima transfers into their school. She is a popular teen model. She presents herself as friendly and a self-proclaimed ditz.
The facade hides a meaner, more spoiled side. Ami and Taiga clash almost immediately. Taiga puts up with the antics anyway, because Yusaku wants the group to get along. Ami, meanwhile, begins to develop feelings for Ryuuji.
Ami is the show’s sharpest addition. She gives the story a second kind of dishonesty to set against Ryuuji’s. His face lies about him. Her charm lies about her. Taiga, who hides nothing, is stuck between them.
The cast behind the voices
The performances carry the tone. The Japanese cast:
- Rie Kugimiya as Taiga Aisaka
- Junji Majima as Ryuuji Takasu
- Yui Horie as Minori Kushieda
- Eri Kitamura as Ami Kawashima
- Hirofumi Nojima as Yuusaku Kitamura
Kugimiya’s Taiga is the anchor. The character could be a one-note joke about a short girl with a short fuse. Kugimiya finds the hurt underneath it, and the show follows her there.
From light novel to screen
Toradora! began as a light novel series written by Yuyuko Takemiya and illustrated by Yasu. ASCII Media Works put out ten volumes between March 2006 and March 2009 under the Dengeki Bunko imprint. A spin-off series, Toradora Spin-off!, ran to three volumes.
Zekkyō drew a manga adaptation for Dengeki Comic Gao! from September 2007 to March 2008, then moved to Dengeki Daioh in the May 2008 issue. The title comes from the names of the two leads.
The anime, produced by J.C.Staff, ran 25 episodes on TV Tokyo from October 2, 2008 to March 26, 2009. It also aired on TV Osaka. An OVA episode followed on December 21, 2011.
What the show gets right
Toradora! refuses to make anyone a villain. Minori is not an obstacle. Yusaku is not a rival to be defeated. Ami is difficult, not evil. Everyone in the circle is a little lonely and a little bad at saying so.
The comedy lands because the show takes the feelings seriously. When a plan backfires, the joke is usually at the expense of two people who care too much, not two people who care too little.
The pacing is the other strength. Twenty-five episodes is enough room for the crushes to shift without the story stalling. The middle stretch, when the rumors start, is where the show earns its ending.
Where Toradora! stumbles
The first act leans hard on Taiga’s violence for laughs. It works less well now than it did in 2008. A running gag about a small girl beating a large boy reads differently when the boy is the one who never fights back.
Ami’s introduction also arrives late, and it crowds the back half. She is a good character, but the show has to work to fit her in alongside a cast that was already complete.
None of this breaks the series. It dates it.
The verdict on Toradora!
Toradora! is a romance that understands its own premise. The title joins two names because the story is about those two people, not about the crushes they chase. Ryuuji and Taiga are social outcasts who fall in love while trying to help each other get with someone else, and the show never pretends that is a clean arrangement.
The published audience score sits at 8.2 out of 10 across 684 votes on TMDB. That is a fair number. Toradora! is not flawless. The early comedy has aged, and the back half is crowded. But the core relationship is built with patience, and the last stretch pays off what the first stretch set up.
What matters most is the thing the show does quietly. Ryuuji spends the series being misread by strangers. Taiga spends it being misread too, as nothing but a temper. The romance works because each one sees the other correctly first. Everything else in Toradora! follows from that.
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