Toradora!

Toradora!
	;
Original Manga
Director/Artist	Tatsuyuki Nagai
Format	Anime (TV)
Made By	J.C.Staff
Episode Length
# of Eps/Volumes	25

Genre

Comedy, Drama, Romance, Recommended Dub

Sum it up in a Sentence:

A high school student has trouble talking to his crush and must enlist the help of her best friend.

Main Description

Ryūji Takasu is high school student with a good personality, but eyes that make him appear to be a delinquent. Because of this he lacks the confidence to talk to his crush, Minori Kushieda. Also in his class is Minori's best friend, Taiga Aisaka who is considered very unfriendly to say the least. Luckily Taiga has a crush on Ryūji's best friend, Yūsaku Kitamura. Taiga and Ryūji agree to help each other with their problems; drama, bro-mance, and more drama ensues.

If You Liked This, You Might Like...

Lovely Complex

Personal Opinions

KenjiKaizoku

Since this is a show that recently finished airing, I'm sure a lot of people already know about it and have their own positive/negative opinions. As for me, I really enjoyed the show. I thought it stayed consistently funny, and was touching at all the right moments. I will concede that it got a little annoying somewhere near the end, but the ending made up for that, in my opinion. 4/5

Indiana_Krom

I don't really have much to comment on this other than I enjoyed it all the way through. It is one of the more solid animes in its genre within the last few seasons: 5/5 for having the perfect mix of comedy and drama.

Avocado Pigeon

I really enjoyed this. It was very funny, had a cast of likable characters, and some drama that kept me glued to the series until the end. I thought the ending was good, as any other option wouldn't make much sense based on how the characters develop and the preceding events. I did think it was too obvious from the start, though. 9/10

Also, Ami and the mom are the best characters.

D13FOOL

Quirky little show about highschool life and such. Funny, insane at times. A bit too much drama at other times. 4/5.

LeosBoots

My boyfriend wanted to watch this, so I joined. It was excruciating. The voices were all extremely high pitched. Taiga was a six year old physically and mentally which made the relationship appear unhealthy and creepy. Oh how cute she can't talk about her feelings. How cute she hits me instead of verbalizing her thoughts. Oh, look how adorable she is, being unable to clean her room. Aww, she's throwing a temper tantrum because she didn't like the way things have turned out. Her personality was so childish and abrasive I don't understand how even the loneliest basement dweller would be able to tolerate it for very long. I was able to predict the ending from the first ten minutes of the show. The show is character driven, but it's about a physically and emotionally stunted girl and the man who loves her. (-100/5)

Aliginge

A completely typical tsundere-romance which happens to have some of the most astonishingly well-animated and gratuitously visceral cat-fights you've ever seen. 10/10.

Grenadier

3/5 - just half a step above average if you're familiar with the genre.

Vargatron

I found this series to be fairly well done in an extremely formulaic genre. The comedy elements were well placed and didn't overshadow the drama elements later in the season. Of course there are times where the plot becomes fairly difficult and laced with fan service, but you really can't expect much given the recent output of slice of life anime.

Clanpot Shake

I hated this show. I kept watching it, hoping it would get better, but no such luck. The main characters are completely unlikable in every way, and the situations that are supposed to be funny just come off as annoying. If you want a high school comedy/romance, watch Lovely Complex (it's really good). If you liked Lovely Complex, stay the hell away from this. I agree with LeosBoots on every point. This show offers nothing at all.

Ferretts

Don't let the many initial cliche's throw you off. Toradora takes them, applies rock solid writing, and makes an exceptional series that masquerades as mediocre. I may be alone here, but I hold this show in very high regard. By the end, the characters are genuine, likable, and play particularly well off each other. Much of the show seems simple and blatant, but (and I know how pretentious this sounds...) there's subtlety to it that makes it memorable and endearing. It also has a complete, satisfying, and particularly well executed ending (regardless of your romantic preference). I can't recommend it for everyone, but I loved it and rewatch episodes often (and I don't like tsundere). So if you don't hate it by the 2nd episode, you'll probably really like it by the end (if not 16).

Resurgam40

This show took me right by surprise, and to be honest, I still don't know how I really feel about it. My warning lights went on as early as the opening, telling me that this was a generic, tsundere romance that has nothing new under the sun. But the premise of the show seemed different enough, and I was in a shoujo mood in any case, so I thought, what the heck. And as I continued watching, a very strange thing happened: I found myself wanting to watch more, but the warning lights never actually went away until the very last episode. See, this is the thing about this show: it has every bad cliche you can care to name in shoujo today: an aggressively violent tsundere lead and her nice-guy love interest who takes it with a smile, quirky non-sequiter friends, a jealous rival who's also an idol, and a string of coincidences compounded by the awkwardness of the characters not being able to just bite the bullet and make their feelings known. On paper it sound like trash, but in practice... not so much. About a few episodes in I genuinely started to feel for the characters, and then a few more episodes in I stopped being able to predict what they would do. This show is surprisingly well written, playing some romance cliches completely straight and totally subverting others without ever giving hints as to which would be which, and the characters I thought were so stock at the beginning have some really surprising depth to them. Of particular note is the best friend of the female lead, who began the series as quirky comic relief and ends it as one of the most tragic characters in the piece.

So in conclusion, this show incorporates everything wrong with the shoujo dramas of today, but then does so many things right that it demands you follow to the end. So give it a try, by all means.

quaunaut

I honestly thought it was one of the best shows I've ever watched. Aside from a hiccup near the end that seemed absolutely unneeded, it was perfect. The characters are all interesting and have just enough depth to get you by, and the two main characters are incredibly fun to be around. When the series finally gets serious about romance, it performs it beautifully, and has one of the best scenes I've seen out there. Pretty outstanding.

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