The main characters of Toradora! (from left to right): Ryūji, Yūsaku, Taiga, Minori, and Ami. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Well, I just finished my Blu-Ray Deluxe edition of Toradora! last night, including the OVA. Without a doubt, the best Blu-Ray Pre-order purchase of Anime I've ever made. I thoroughly enjoyed that series from start to finish.
I know a lot of people complain about the ending, and yeah, it's kind of bullshit, but I wonder how many of the people complaining the loudest simply #ragequit at the credit scroll and stormed off? Because if you want your happy ending you have to put yourself in Marvel Movie viewing mode and sit through all the credits through the end and f*cking pay attention. In a perfect ending, Taiga should've broken the fourth wall and cursed the viewer out..."You think I'd give up on my man after all THAT? DUMBASS!!" Anyway, it was great, even if the midway point to the credit scroll of Ep.25 was kind of a big middle finger to the audience. The true ending (post credits) redeems it.
As great as the main characters are, I think the one I feel most for is Minori Kushieda. That pained expression on her face in the penultimate episode, where Ryuji is attempting to lie about having rescued Taiga in the snowstorm, it was so well rendered as to be simply heartbreaking. The pain in her quivering eyes was palpable. Her look of "...how fucking could you!" at Ryuji. Minori just breaks and refuses to be a part of the farce any longer. She blurts out the truth, that it was Ryuji who saved Taiga and not Kitamura. She could've added for emphasis "I was f*cking there!! I started to go after you but HE (points) pulled me back to go after you himself. Because he loves you dammit and you love him."---of course, the beauty of this anime is that all that extra dialogue is unnecessary, because Minori's face says ALL of it in that scene.
She's totally justified at blowing up at them both...She spends the latter half of the series in a deep depression...because she's in love with the same guy as her best friend whose life is way more effed up than her own and who desperately needs Ryuji to keep her world from falling apart...Minorin has to push aside her own feelings and suffer in silence while Ryuji and Taiga keep deceiving themselves about the nature of their relationship and their feelings for each other. The series did a good job keeping me guessing at Minorin's true feelings right to the end. I knew she was upset and in pain and putting on a brave face for several episodes, but her confession did genuinely surprise me a little. Though I suppose in hindsight it was alluded to indirectly when Taiga forced the two of them together on the street and Minori had to grab Ryuji by the hand to keep him from wandering into traffic and immediately blushed with embarssment and muttered "Stupid Taiga Stupid Taiga Stupid Taiga" under her breath. The show does a good job of keeping Minorin's feelings opaque and does dangle the possibility of her being an in-denial lesbian. Minorin even says as much out loud, questioning herself. Plus she's a jock and aggressive softball player, and a little weird generally. Hell, she could actually be bi. But it was oddly gratifying to learn she did have love for Ryuji after all, though that love also caused her enormous pain, too. But you can't really help who you love...a lot of it's involuntary and it does sometimes hurt, especially when other considerations prevent you from acting on those feelings. Minorin is the very best friend you could ever want. She's loyal, quirky, cheerful, and willing to endure a great deal of emotional pain for the friends she loves and cherishes.
I had trouble relating to Ami Kawashima...one of my Twitter friends kept insisting Ami was "best girl" in the show, and I held back my judgement until I had finished, but I just don't see it. I get that she has strong feelings for Ryuji and she's right to point out and criticize the almost creepy, quasi "(surrogate)father-daughter" dynamic at play in Ryuji and Taiga's day to day relationship...but Ami's such a passive-aggressive b*tch it's no wonder she only knows how to catch Ryuji's attention with her body, but instantly repulses him when she opens her mouth and starts talking.
Anyway, besides Toradora! I also recently watched and finished Flowers of Evil. I know the rotoscoping is very off putting to a lot of viewers but I didn't mind it myself. As you know, I generally don't go for sub-only shows but I made an exception for this one. It was good, but its stock in trade is the emotion of dread, and the episodes themselves have such emotional intensity that I could only stand to watch 2 maybe 3 episodes back to back. The "bad girl" chick, Nakamura, is actually kind of hot. I joked on Twitter that I only later realized that she's essentially a gritty "real life" tsundere, insofar as she treats him like shit and curses him out and it takes a long time to figure out she actually has feelings and desires for the main character. The main character idolizes the popular girl Saeki, but feels unworthy of her. The whole arc of the show is learning that rough-and-tumble Nakamura is more closer to who he really is rather than what he merely wishes himself to be. He can't actually handle angelic Saeki as a flesh-and-blood girl. The real thing could never live up to his abstract ideal. On the other hand, earthy, vulgar Nakamura represents the dark, untamed female sexuality he actually craves but is too chicken-shit to admit it to himself or acknowledge it. She's his dark soulmate, every bit as misanthropic and nihilistic and self-loathing as he is. I'm glad this was picked up by Sentai Filmworks and given a North American home video release (I bought it on Blu-Ray), but it was a commercial flop in Japan, so it's highly doubtful a Season 2 will be forthcoming, which is unfortunate, as the final episode contains a lot of "flash forward" style previews of what a Season 2 would've looked like, and it looks freaking awesome. *Sigh* So, like Roundpeg of 2Lazy2Botaku so often says, yet another case of "f*ck you, read the manga" (which I am doing and it is pretty awesome in its own right).
I also liked Knights of Sidonia. In fact, I liked it so much, I'm rewatching it again on Netflix in Spanish this time for the sheer hell of it.
Other anime I'm futzing around with include the usual Toonami stuff (Space Dandy, Attack on Titan) and also a few selections from Crackle.com, such as old episodes of Ruroni Kenshin (aka Samurai X) and a mediocre sci-fi action series Viper's Creed that I'm mainly watching because it's dubbed in English and looks kind of cool. I sometimes watch an episode before bed on my iPad, mostly.
Oh, and lastly I'm working my way through Psycho-Pass on Netflix as well, which is a damn fine anime in its own right. Dystopian sci-fi police drama and dark as hell. Likeable main character, strong supporting male character, etc.
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