Hey everybody! Today we’re beginning a journey through a show I’ve actually been meaning to rewatch for a long, long time. The last time I watched Toradora was almost a decade ago now – in fact, it was possibly the first show I ever watched along with its active broadcast, back in my junior year of college. At the time, my overarching impression of the show was that it was essentially the adolescent romantic drama that all the other ones were trying to be – insightful, emotionally rich, solidly produced, consistently rewarding. That year was a very difficult time in my life, a time when my social life had just dissolved into painful, identity-shaking backbiting, and I mainly just distracted myself through lonely hours in my dorm room. Most of that year sucked, but Toradora was a very welcome comfort.

Toradora was also one of the first shows I watched during that particular wave of anime interest, meaning that along with its important emotional space in my heart, my ignorance as an anime consumer might also have improved my experience. It was my first show starring a tiny tsundere Rie Kugimiya character, an archetype whose appeal would require two and a half seasons of Shakugan no Shana to thoroughly stamp out. It was also my first show featuring Masayoshi Tanaka character designs, a style I’d chase through both Anohana and Anonatsu before eventually realizing “these characters look like they’re from the same universe” wasn’t actually a useful indicator of quality. Even something like the show’s crappy, tired “spinster teacher” gags were at the time new to me, though probably just as tiresome. But on the whole, my experience with Toradora was so far removed from my present-day life that I was actually a little nervous starting this first episode, uncertain how my old friend would hold up.

At least as of this first episode, I am very happy to report that Toradora is still friggin’ great. Lively characters with fleshed-out lives, terrific art design, and a striking mix of melodramatic “fated love” iconography and very grounded circumstances. There’s a reason people still talk about Toradora. Toradora is a heck of a show.

The show opens with idyllic suburban shots and gentle strings over our two leads Ryuji and Taiga articulating a fanciful conception of love – love as a “destined” thing, where the difficulty of its pursuit is only matched by the rightness of its ultimate validation. The show’s actual narrative will undercut the simplicity of that vision, but this romantic concept of love is embraced by much of the show’s framing, from the idealistic dialogue of these early scenes to the way Taiga and Ryuji’s first meeting is given a sense of mythic import through its mirrored lead-up shots. Toradora strives for a difficult, almost contradictory balance of tones regarding its views on romance – it desires to convey all the ugly, human messiness of romance, but also frame that within a romantic template festooned with all the “love will conquer” certainty of a shoujo melodrama.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The first great strength this show actually introduces to us is its character designs, exemplified through the terrific profile shot introducing us to Ryuji Takasu. It’s sometimes difficult to see the direct dramatic benefits of embracing variable line density in character art, but it really makes an impact here, establishing the various subtleties of Ryuji’s face as delicate or pronounced through the width of the lines alone. Toradora’s opening conflict is “my dad left me with a permanently delinquent-looking face that scares people off,” and is generally preoccupied with the various faces we all wear, so it makes sense to open with a shot emphasizing the true beauty and nuance of Ryuji’s own face.

Tanaka’s flexible designs pay dividends all through this episode, offering Toradora an emotional range far outstriping shows that stick firmly to strict character models. It’s clear throughout exactly why Ryuji’s face inspires fear, but as we spend more time with him, his own expressiveness demonstrates his true emotional range. Later on, more action-filled scenes demonstrate how Tanaka’s blocky hair naturally lends itself to loose and expressive character movement, while the fluidity of Taiga’s facial structure is consistently abused to bolster her own expressiveness. Tanaka’s designs result in a show that is not just visually pleasing, but actually both further humanizes its characters and underlines its own “presentations of self” theme through its base character art.

After a brief opening focused on Ryuji’s unhappy self-image, we’re introduced to his larger family life: a hostess mother who really doesn’t seem to have her shit together, a gross parakeet, and an absent father. Ryuji’s world feels natural and real, a set of circumstances he accepts because, well, that’s his life, right? The show’s illustration of Ryuji’s family circumstances points towards its general wider dramatic focus. Romantic dramas often prioritize their romances over all else, but people have larger lives, and their love lives can’t really be separated from the circumstances that otherwise contributed to their overall nature. From his father’s inheritance to his likely mother-prompted role as the house’s general keeper, Ryuji’s personhood cannot be separated from the life he has lived.

Moving on to Ryuji’s first day of what’s presumably his second year in high school, we meet his friend Kitamura, crush Minori, and new nemesis Taiga Aisaka. Ryuji’s insecurities about his appearance are both solidified by the strangers around him and undercut by his own personal relations, leading into a first confrontation that emphasizes both Toradora’s focus on the masks we wear and its understanding that high school is always a public performance. From the unique designs granting personhood to Ryuji’s classmates to the focus on whispering and reputations, Toradora already seems preoccupied with high school as performance, and the ways we can all be cast in roles we don’t actually want. Like with Ryuji’s home life, all these designs and asides serve both a dramatic and thematic purpose, underlining these larger ideas while also bolstering the lived-in reality of Ryuji’s high school.

After two strange, brief, and unexpectedly violent confrontations, Ryuji and Taiga face off for a final time in Ryuji’s apartment, as Taiga fights to reclaim a love letter meant for Ryuji’s friend Kitamura. Toradora’s comic violence seems to exist in a separate tonal dimension from the rest of its drama; obviously a character like Taiga would be suspended and then expelled in real life, but we accept that an anime tsundere is allowed to clock people without that being a sign of outrageous sociopathy. More potentially debilitating to Toradora’s drama is Taiga being a “tsundere” in an emotional sense – though the idea of “I can’t tell someone how I really feel, so I lash out” is common enough, the tropes that specifically define “tsunderedom” don’t tend to align with believable human behavior. Some of that unbelievability is already coming through in Taiga’s treatment of Ryuji as a “dog,” but so far, I can still sorta see what Ryuji is getting out of this relationship. Taiga is defined by brash strength and direct action; it makes sense that the diligent house cleaner Ryuji would gravitate towards that strength. But again, I somehow watched through two and a half seasons of Shakugan no Shana, so I’m gonna be keeping an eye on how much Taiga gets away with in an emotional sense because she is small, sad, and cute.

By the end of this first episode, both Ryuji and Taiga have learned the other has a crush on their best friend, and Ryuji has already agreed to help Taiga with her romantic pursuits. Of course, even if Ryuji says that, the circumstances of his own love life clearly indicate this is a case of the blind leading the blind. Toradora’s opening song is well-chosen – this is a story all about that “pre-parade,” when you’re all dressed up for romance but not sure how the procession actually begins. I’m happy to be visiting these kids again, and wish them luck on their long, bumpy road.

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