Subculture Anime Blog

Teenage rebellion!

Summary:

• Yusaku suddenly denies his willingness to take the position of student council president, and bleaches his hair.
• Sumire is suspected to be the source of the problem, but no specific information is gained.
• Ryuji and Minori visit Yusaku’s house to find him absent, but Minori describes her respect for his childhood friend Ami along the way.
• Yusaku turns out to be at Ryuji’s house with Taiga, so the two have dinner with Ryuji that night.
• Late that night, Ryuji and Taiga leave the house to visit the convinience store. Looking at Yusaku’s sleeping face, Taiga realized that she was being selfish while being unable to do anything for him.
• Looking at the stars, the two realize that the distance between them and the stars is much like those of people. Though they appear close, they are actually quite far away.
• Ryuji, Yusaku, and Taiga are sent out of the house in the morning after interrupting Yasuko’s sleep, so they visit a batting cage.
• When Taiga takes her turn, she scores a homerun while trying her hardest to bat just for Yusaku.
• Upon reaching home, Yasuko plans on dying Yusaku’s hair back after hearing from his parents.
• At school the next day, it is revealed that Taiga is running for the position of student council president.

Downtime, beeping ads, and school starting back up made me lose the motivation to provide a timely summary this time around. This will have to do unless I suddenly feel inspired to come back to this post.

Preview: Student council fun.

Impression:

Wanting to make your own choices….pretending to be happy…. Man, where have I scene these themes before? I can already see a lot of people complaining about the sudden switch to seriousness in what should be a comedy, and though I would usually agree, I will state again that I feel like Toradora has established itself as something much more than the typical lovcom. There were several pieces of strong dialog in this episode, from Minorin trying to hide her deep thoughts early on to Ryuji and Taiga’s late night gazing of the stars. Sure, maybe we’ve heard a lot of these cliches in anime before, like the comparison in distance with stars and people, but I don’t think this episode suffered at all from that fact.

I’ll admit that Yusaku isn’t exactly my favorite character in this show, but his rebellion to expectations made me laugh since it reminded of my old days (come on now, don’t act like you didn’t go around in studs and break stop signs with your skateboard in high school). His problems are obviously more love related though, and I’m sure everyone already has a pretty good idea of what Sumire did to make him fall into such a depressed state. Minori’s talk was interesting too, but I was honestly too busy laughing at her bringing up the fact that Ami is Yusaku’s childhood friend. I mean, I completely forgot about that! Way to break the stereotype so easily, Toradora. I love it.

Other than that, Taiga’s usual rampage was fun too. Her getting super dere over Yusaku is getting kind of old though. At least Ryuji can freaking speak to Minori normally by now. Geez. I also wonder why the Japanese always go back to baseball or bats to letting out anger in anime. I realize that the country is a lot less violent than other nations, but aren’t there still other things to do than swing a bat?

Notes:

• It was so big…
• Burnt eggs aren’t actually that bad.
• Mad Yasuko is mad!
• All night gaming! Where’s the energy drinks??
• TAIGA PUNCH v2
• This was actually really intimidating. Taiga and Ryuji ultimate alliance.