ToraDora! Review

Cover art of the first DVD compilation released by King Records, featuring main characters Ryūji Takasu and Taiga Aisaka (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have finally completed ToraDora! leaving me with only 4 anime on my list of shoujo series to watch.  I wasn’t sure how I would feel about this show, but I ended up liking it quite a lot.  I wouldn’t say it is super different or a game-changer, but it is certainly quite good.  I really enjoyed this anime and it didn’t drag at all.  It was quite addicting and I ended up watching it very quickly.  Both the plot and characters are unique enough to pull the show out ahead of other shoujo anime I have watched and I became very attached to what was happening.  Read on to learn about ToraDora!.

The plot of this series follows a high school boy named Ryuuji Takasu.  He is very sweet at heart and loves cooking and cleaning, but because he was born with his father’s mean face he is labeled a delinquent by most of his classmates.  Ryuuji ends up bumping into and angering Taiga Aisaka, also known as the Palmtop Tiger.  She is extremely small and delicate-looking but she has a temper and is prone to violence.  The two discover that they are next door neighbors through a series of accidents invoking a lost love letter and they form an alliance in order to confess to their crushes.  Taiga likes Takasu’s best friend Kitamura and Ryuuji likes Taiga’s best friend Kushieda.  The two become closer as Takasu ends up taking care of the clumsy Taiga who lives alone.  They eventually discover that they may have feelings for each other as well as their crushes.

The main characters of Toradora! (from left to right): Ryūji, Yūsaku, Taiga, Minori, and Ami. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The characters in this show are really wonderful.  They are all very relatable no matter their amount of characterization.  My stand out favorite would have to be Ryuuji.  He has essentially ruined all my expectations in men because he is so perfect.  He is caring, cooks well, loves to clean, and is ridiculously cute when he twirls his bangs between his fingers in an embarrassed manner.  I was always sympathetic towards everything that he had to put up with because he was so likable.  Taiga was also really funny and enjoyable to watch.  The real stand-out side character would be Kushieda because she had a lot of nice characterization.  She was really strong in that she wanted to make her own happiness and fate.  I really enjoyed her goofy personality as well.  The only miss I would say the show had was Ami, a model who moves to the school a bit later in the series.  She seemed like a pointless addition to the cast that only caused drama with her bitchy personality and her crush on Ryuuji.  The only time I was glad that she was there was when she was telling everyone they were dumb for not realizing that they liked each other.

I really enjoyed the plot because it was unique enough to keep me interested.  The familial relationship between Taiga, Ryuuji, and his mother was really sweet to see over the entire plot.  There were also lots of events that happened that weren’t completely cliché to the shoujo genre.  The only critique I would have is that it took too long for the main couple to get together.  I also disliked the treatment that Kushieda got at the end of the series because I think that her depression before she let her feelings go didn’t suit her.  I didn’t like to think of her as a love-sick girl, but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t more realistic this way.

I really enjoyed this show and would recommend it to anyone looking for a unique shoujo experience that also keeps with some of our favorite typical elements.  The show feels both familiar and different and that is a nice way to feel about a show.  It is fairly short and doesn’t take too long to watch.  I would give this show a 3.5/5 for my anime review.

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