Toradora! - 03
You are already dead.
Summary:
Ryuji gets on to Taiga about leaving tissues in her clothing while on the way to school with her, because it was in the way while he was doing her laundry. Taiga only expresses her annoyance with him in response, but the two are then distracted by noises close to the school. When the two reach the source of this activity, they find that Minori is doing quite well in a baseball match against the opposing team. Ryuji is absorbed in Minori’s appearance as usual, but Taiga beats on him because of it. When Yusaku meets with Minori, the two notice that Ryuji and Taiga are getting along as they always do. In class, Ryuji notices Minori decorating several phones. Minori offers to decorate one for Ryuji when she sees that he is interested, but when Ryuji sees Taiga’s expression, he has to deny the offer. Ryuji can only be excited about his chance to talk to Minori when he reaches home, but this annoys Taiga who wonders how dinner will be that night. Taiga finally gets Ryuji’s attention, but when he looks into the rice cooker, the two find that they would have to change their plans.
Ryuji and Taiga go to the town’s family restaurant because of their circumstances, even though Ryuji believes there were other options. When the two are suddenly treated to parfaits in the restaurant, Ryuji is surprised to see that Minori is working at there. He also learns from the girls that she has been working several jobs, simply because she has the time and energy. When Minori expresses how well Taiga and Ryuji are getting along, Taiga shows her annoyance to her. Ryuji is again absorbed in Minori’s appearance as she leaves to help another table, but this gets him another poke in the eyes from Taiga. While walking home with Taiga, Ryuji wonders if there are other reasons that Minori would be working so much. Taiga denies his guesses that there are family issues she is dealing with, then warning him that it would be better not to act as if he knows everything about Minori. When Ryuji expresses how poorly Taiga always treats him, she only leaves him with another beating.
In the morning, Taiga unenthusiastically follows Ryuji to the family restaurant again to meet Minori. On the way, the two meet one of Yasuko’s customers. After a fairly awkward situation with him, they also see Minori performing yet another job. It turns out that Minori is actually working for Yasuko’s acquaintance, and that they are short on help at the moment. Seeing this as a chance to get close to Minori, Ryuji agrees to help along with Taiga. This only annoys Taiga when she is forced to do physical labor, but when Ryuji sees that she does not know how to ride a bike to make deliveries later, she rushes away with the bike in defiance and a bit of embarrassment. Ryuji then takes the chance to help Minori in a storage room, but while they are inside, they become locked inside. Taiga meets Yusaku next to the river after completing her job, who is surprised that she has learned how to ride a bike. Although this information is wrong, Taiga wonders how Yusaku knew she did not know how to ride one before. Yusaku states that he watched Taiga quite a bit during the past year, only to leave her with a farewell a bit later. With tears in her eyes, Taiga then does her best to ride the bike back.
Ryuji and Minori find that no one can hear their calls from the storage room. Expressing that she has started to get cold, Minori suggests that they imitate a baseball game to warm up. Watching Minori as they do this, Ryuji notices that she is really shaking. When he wonders if Minori is truly nervous, she attempts to deny the fact. After seeing how energetic Minori continues to be, Ryuji realizes that the reason she is so active may be because she is trying to defeat her weaknesses. This makes Ryuji recall that, ever since he first saw her, Minori was always glowing. The two finally find that there is a way out of the storage room, but when Ryuji reaches the exit in the form of a high window, he meets an angry Taiga who had been looking for them for quite some time. Taiga punishes Ryuji by stomping on him inside, but this only leaves the three trapped inside again afterwards.
Preview: New character~
Impression:
Taiga! Why so violent!? To be honest, most of this episode felt pretty repetitive until the end. Sure, it’s never anything new in a lovcom, but how many times are we going to see Ryuji get beat up by Taiga for looking at Minori? The pacing was a lot slower this week too, and since nothing that meaningful really happened, I can only wonder if there could have been other ways to do this arc. Since I recall things like Ryuji and Taiga meeting Minori in the family restaurant from what I read in the manga, it looks like JCStaff decided to alter the timeline a little bit for episodic purposes. I guess I can’t really complain about that though, since the transition from text to animation almost always has this effect. I will say that, after three episodes, my expectations for this show may be dropping a little bit. This isn’t to say that I’m not enjoying it though, because this episode still gave me a heartwarming feeling by the last few minutes.
Minori’s energetic nature has always been fun to watch, and since most of this basically focused on her, it was nice to see a bit of her character fleshed out. I’m still really appreciating how the personalities in this show can be so easily related to those in true to life situations. I, for one, have known several people like Minori in the past. It always seems like they don’t have a care in the world, but people are obviously always hiding something beneath their usual faces. Even though Taiga may be possessive towards Minori simply because she is her friend, I also wonder how jealous she really might be when Ryuji goes gaga over her. (Because, I think we all know how this show is suppose to end…)
As great as I think Taiga is, the combination of her violent nature and multiple “urusai”s really isn’t helping shake off that Shana/Louise stereotype. Along with Minori, it’s also getting really hard to get used to how she talks like a yakuza or something. On the other hand, it was still fun seeing her crazy stances and interaction with Ryuji (that forced smile was good). I really loved her scene with Yusaku too. Seeing her try so hard to get on the bike was pretty sweet, and it even reminded me of Honey and Clover for some reason. I do wonder how the “sidewalk by the river and bridge” scene is always so common in anime though. Does it really look like this all over Japan!?
Other notes:
- The Japanese….they love baseball!
- Sakura petal transition was nice. Show is still looking pretty.
- 23….really?
- Dat man just grab dat boy’s balls, cuz!
- The OP is growing on me.
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I was afraid J.C. Staff would make her Louise.. and they did. The original thing with the sundae was, IIRC, just before they met Kawashima, and they spun it out into a whole episode. With more violence.
She didn’t beat him up elsewhere for looking at Minorin; she did verbally threaten him for putting down her looks, IIRC, but not this. This is NOT how the original source material went… and my fears appear to be well founded.
I hated episode 2 and I was worried about episode 3, but I was Ok with the direction they took in this episode.
Best way to look at the source is as an inspiration for the series rather than the model for replication. They’re making their own show, although that might still work out as an enjoyable product in its own right.
Newsflash to J.C. Staff: This is NOT Zero no Fucking Tsukaima. If they want to make a new season of it, they should do so and not license ToraDora to try to make it one. This is like the “I, Robot” movie which had nothing to do with the novel by Asimov.
Did they license Toradora, or was it the other way around? AFAIK, most arrangements are handled by a production company, such as StarChild or Genco (also responsible for Zero no Tsukaima and several other J.C. Staff shows). The anime studio works as a subcontractor, which is why a series might change hands between seasons.
While I’m sure J.C. Staff is eager to capitalize on Tsukaima/Kugiyama’s successful formula, they probably aren’t the only ones. Someone else chose to bring them aboard.
Bill: They were the ones who licensed ToraDora, IIRC, for an anime. The issue here is that the whole point of the source was that it wasn’t a typical tsundere story… but J.C. Staff and the director seem to have given this the Negima treatment, and thus taken out anything semi-original from the source to pander for the perceived desire for more Louise.
This isn’t even an interpretation anymore - that’s the reason I brought up the “I, Robot” movie; the only thing it has in common is the name… and it should be noted just how far ZnT’s anime deviates (completely jumps off the rails from) its light novel origins, as far as plot and characterization goes. Just like this show is starting to.
It’s perfectly alright if they don’t do a frame-by-frame adaptation… but if they’re going to ‘reinterpret’ the characters, then they might as well create an original property or continue with a series where these actions would fit in better with, due to precedence.
Oh, I’m not arguing for or against J.C. Staff’s direction. They’ve been doing it since the beginning, so I’ve come to expect it from the company (their head producer is some young, hot shot guy who seems to see himself as a content creator rather than a manager. That attitude of tailoring content to his tastes or to a perceived audience must be ingrained in whatever culture they have, although I’m astonished that they’ve taken the same approach with the otaku market).
As for my opinion on quality, I’d say they’re hit or miss in terms of delivering fun content. Despite some flaws, the new versions of Asatte no Houkou and Kimikiss (which possesses little of the original spirit) pleased me quite a bit. Tsukihime became an average drama that was partly enjoyable, partly bad (watched it after clearing all the game routes). Tsukaima was thoroughly uninteresting to me, so I stayed the hell away.
On the whole, I’d prefer it if a studio stuck close to the source, if only because there’s a better chance of not screwing up. Nevertheless, drastic recreations don’t bother me if they’re enjoyable entertainment, so my feelings are neutral.
Hey, it was new material for me, shows I need to read more novel, but I thought it was good. Though, 66% of the episode was fluff, having a week between each ep helps… a marathon would not do this good if it keeps up with it’s character casting, while the development takes the back seat.
There has to be some reason they skipped a wad of source, so I hope there’s meat on the plate… CARNIVOROUS LOLIS!
Um yes, PITCH BIBITERU HAY HAY HAY!
Well, there’s a risk in changing the source material, which is twofold:
1) The people who go into the show expecting a frame-by-frame adaptation get upset with the large changes to the characters and setting, then start bashing the show openly, or refuse to buy the merchandise which is where the show makes most of its money back.
2) The people who go into the show fresh and enjoy what they see, then go for the related manga/novels that they’re derived from… and then, when finding they’re not what they were expecting, based on what they saw in the show, begin bashing or refuse to buy merchandise.
That’s my issue with J.C. Staff - I agree with you that, in recent years, they’ve been hit or miss with adaptations. The main concern I have is that, in trying to pander for Shana/Louise fans now, is that in a year or two this show will be old news and unsellable… and may damage the novel/manga property it’s attached to. I -think- this is what’s happening with To-Love RU whose popularity has tanked in Japan after the anime showed up, and is rumored to be possibly facing cancellation due to its non-presence in manga magazine popularity polls.
What this anime series needs is a side character hijack!
Zero no toradora!
Urusai urusai! More like Shakugan no Taiga!
As much as I loved the novel and the manga, I’m still enjoying the anime for its own merits. A faithful adaptation is nice, but I’m watching toradora as though it were an original production as opposed to an adaptation, since it’s more enjoyable that way. I don’t intend to nitpick at whats been changed and done poorly according to some; I’d rather just enjoy it without minding the minor details. Besides, Toradora is pretty episodic in nature anyways, and even the novel isn’t complete yet, so it’s sort of a given they’d need to go off with their own original direction at some point. That’s why I think that them giving an original spin on the series isn’t such a bad idea. On another note, it isn’t as though they’ve completely bastardized this production, and changed EVERYTHING, which is what some studios have been known to do. They’ve kept the important stuff from what I’ve read of the novel in the anime. Also, it’s refreshing to see some changes being made as opposed to no changes for some people.
Haesslich, the novels/manga had a large gather before the anime. A bad anime won’t all of the sudden make that following disappear, seeing as they were following the novel and not the anime, so I don’t think that it’d hurt novel sales in any way. It might hurt potential new fans of the novel if the anime was bad, but overall, the novel is so good that it’d be hard for them to be disappointed that they got something different from the anime. And chances are, novel fans are the only ones who would be disappointed that they changed things up in the anime; people who came into the show without reading the source material would enjoy it for its own merits regardless of how faithful it is though.
Rawr: The To-Love RU manga -had- a fairly large fanbase before the anime (manga with just a few readers don’t usually spawn anime adaptations)… which has since the anime’s showing apparently evaporated. As I said, adaptations are one thing; but here they’re looking like they’re setting up a complete derailment of the atypical tsundere character in favor of another Kuguyuu vehicle which is JUST LIKE HER LAST TSUNDERE appearance.
There’s a reason they keep coming out with new shows instead of showing the same DBZ or same Gundam series ad-infinitum; the viewers want something new and fresh, or a new twist on an old formula… not the exact same goddamn show over and over again. And as I also noted earlier, the problem here is that they may lose the novel readers… and also lose the anime viewers who go onto the novels and then find out she’s not Louise, and then who go on to abandon the whole thing.
There’s a reason certain anime adaptations succeeded spectacularly, which is why they’ve started mining light novels more and more. Shakugan no Shana at least didn’t completely abandon the characters and character development which made the novels popular; Haruhi screwed around with the timeline and drew elements from more than one novel, but was recognizably an adaptation of the existing work, rather than a complete reinterpretation which abandoned the characterization but retained the names.
This felt slow, stale and fillerish, it obviously was a filler. But the question i now have, if they make fillers so early on, what are they planning to do with this show!?
Also i would disagree to this week looking “well made”, if anything i would think that the artwork dropped noticably.
Wishlist: I think they could have force fed us this entire episode in about 14 min, leaving just enough time to do a:
“Yasuko-Mirano-chan Speriaru!”
that would have been great.
The voice of taiga is the same of shana and louise?
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…
…
Where have you been living emilio?
Can you not see the arisa resemblence?
Or the tsuntsun and deredereness?
I thought the fact that she actually DID yell “Urusai urusai!” in the beginning of this episode was evidence enough…
Oh and the fact that saying Ryuji sounds SO much like she is saying Yuji. And the way she carries that wooden sword sometimes. It’s almost like they were trying to imitate/parody Shana…
So behind but trying to get back on the anime thing… starting with this. I was not looking forward to this from what I saw of production stuff coming out, having liked the novel and the manga I was scared but on watching it, I was so surprised by how good it was.
Weirdly, I found it a little fast pace… but that is alright. Also, it was such an obvious choice who Tiaga’s voice would be. Why is she always the one for this archtype?
Sorry Di gi kazune but i a child in anime, i live in guadalajara mexico.
For some odd reason I love the Ed of this show. Anyone else with me?