I also feel quite perturbed
Merry Day After Christmas, Happy Boxing Day, etc. I hope everyone is enjoying their holidays, I certainly have been. It’s nice to have the time off to relax, play some games, watch a bit of anime. And regarding anime, let’s talk about the last two episodes of Toradora.
As frequent readers of my work may have surmised, I am not a fan of drama in my comedies. So I generally frown on such developments and may on occasion skip covering an episode because of that. This was one of those episodes unfortunately. It would have taken some amazingly written drama to get me to care a whole lot about it.
Sad and angry Minori is no fun
I do like the changed Ami though, because she got rid of some of the bitchiness and traded it for some maturity. However, she can still keep a wonderfully violent and nasty sparring with Taiga going without missing a beat. We love you Ami.
Nope, she looks better with her hair down, sorry
I may just have to convert to masochism, whoa there Ami.
Overly dramatic music, an extremely cheesy plot, and overflowing emoness…this was somewhat painful to watch at times. I’ve seen worse though, at least I actually watched the whole sequence this time. One hopes they get back to the funny next episode because I could do without this.
I can only wish, and wish for doujins of the same. It is unfortunate that Japan does not produce yuri doujins with the same enthusiasm that they do yaoi. That has not stopped me from compiling a multi-gig collection of said doujins, but still…I could have more.
It turns out we will have a 2 season showing of this show, which is both surprising and awesome. These days its very rare to see a lovecom of this nature get more than one, but I’m pretty glad. I look forward to continuing coverage of it as much as I can as well as *gasp* perhaps picking up Maria Holic. Now if only I could find the keyboard shortcut to making the cross to go in between the words in the title…
16 Comments
Another season of this drek? Please, do we really need another school-life comedy at this stage? These “School-Life Romance-Comedies” are going the way Arnold and Sylvester films – into utter repetitive oblivion. Can’t the Japanese make comedies that are not school-oriented? Shoot, this one wasn’t even funny, because 99% of the gags have been done before.
Why the hell would Japanese School-kids want to watch shows about school? Whatever happened to escapism, especially in the animated medium? The reason Western writers use the same dingy apartments, houses and same-old neighborhoods in their soap operas is because the budget doesn’t afford a myriad of locations. The animated medium does not have such restrictions, so why not use it?
This show goes onto the same dingy pile along with Hyakko, Kannagi and Rosario+Vampire Capu2.
lubczyk: Ha ha, someone OBVIOUSLY is not a slife-of-life/lovecom fan. Pick up another genre, ’cause this one isn’t your thing.
Well… regarding the episode, I didn’t find it quite as bad as you made it out to be. Sure, it was cheesy and overly dramatic at times, but I felt that the emotions were conveyed well, and some of the scenes were also quite epic. The drama in this show is for the most part well-paced, and easily identifiable for most of the audience, so it hardly feels forced or out of place to imo.
Seeing as this show falls under the slice of life lovecom category, it shouldn’t come off as a surprise that drama is inherent in it. I’m not a fan of heavy drama, but at the same time, I’m not a fan of mindless comedy. Lovecoms strikes a good balance between the two, which is why I like the genre. The drama fits with the comedy; it shows that to enjoy good times you need to endure through bad times. The drama in that sense could be considered the bad times for some, but I don’t think it’s bad per se in the sense that it’s unnecessary. The drama further develops the characters and reveals their different sides to us, which imo makes watching them that much more interesting and enjoyable.
For me, watching the characters go through rough times, and coming out stronger than they were before, endears them to me. I’m able to empathize with the character that much more, so I enjoy the show that much more. At the same time, it makes this show, and the characters in it, that much more memorable. Although there are plenty of good shows out there, there’s only a handful I can call favorites, or even recall off the top of my head upon being asked for a recommendation. If I were to rate my favorites, they wouldn’t be based on how good the series was as a whole, but rather based on how endearing I found the characters, and how memorable my time with them was.
Of course, this is all my opinion (I’ve probably gone off on a tangent ranting about it). You’re free to judge the episode however you want, seeing as you’re entitled to your own opinion; I’m not going to persuade you into changing your opinion either. I just wanted to give my 2 cents on the episode and say that it was by no means a bad episode, and the drama, albeit cheesy and heavy, was by no means poorly done. It got across the emotions it wanted to convey. Sure, not as subtle as some may like, but it got it certainly did get them across. For that, I think it was a well-done arc.
In case I didn’t make it clear though, I, for one, liked this episode, and found it to be a thoroughly sublime experience with no pain involved at any given time whatsoever (face palms were induced as a result of cheesiness at some points though, but that’s not entirely bad, seeing as some moments were mandatory face palm moments).
It didn’t feel that cheesy to me, or well I guess in retrospect it was cheesy, but not in a way that made my eyes rolls. I need my heart warming cheesiness.
@ lubczyk
Oh boy, I agree with Myssa Rei on this one. You definitely should find a different genre. Personally, I still consider this escapism because you know why? It’s fun! Also, Hyakko to me is great too because it seems like everyday is fun and the school itself has nice architecture and beautiful school grounds unlike my school where it’s not always fun and the school itself is pretty bland even though it’s relatively new.
Yeah, thus far, I’d say Toradora is at times handled clumsily and likes to lay on the extra cheese, but the emotions feel genuine and the character dramas are compelling. I still have doubts about its ability to fully escape the cliche ridden situations that usually plague shows of this kind, but it has its heart in the right place, which keeps me watching every week.
I advise you to stop watching this series NOW. I’ve only read up to book 6, but apparently it’s only going to get more dramatic and dark from now on in, so you might as well stop at this point.
I do disagree with you on the show’s quality though. Toradora is excellently written, and the anime staff have done a fabulous job so far of bringing most of it across to this medium.
Let me clarify things a bit. It’s not that I dislike drama per se, it’s that I don’t watch these shows for the drama aspect. I realize that they are a part of such shows, and I expect that some will come up, but it’s not my favorite part. I generally kind of gloss over the really cheesy or hamfisted ones.
In some instances I love the drama, see KeyAni shows like Clannad or Kanon, which combine comedy and drama exceedingly well. But my primary reason for watching these shows is funnies and moe girls.
Some that are more fans of drama (such as Rawr above) may have enjoyed the episode, but it just wasn’t something I could connect with. Yes, the character development is important, but that doesn’t stop me from looking forward to the return to comedy part =)
I agree that the father-daughter drama wasn’t played out too well; barebones story didn’t touch me and felt like the producers were trying too hard (or not at all).
Pretty glad there’s a continuation, the character development’s coming along very nicely, especially for Ami and Minorin. Poor Taiga, she got the short end of it (no pun intended). Moar Ami-chan!
Like FF said, comedy takes a backseat in the later novels, so be forewarned. I agree some of the subtleties in the novel/manga were fast-forwarded in the anime.
I’d have to say that drama takes precedence over comedy here. This is, we know, directed by Tatsuyuki Nagai, who also did H&C and Chobits (where indeed drama takes precedence over comedy).
I can’t really see how you like Clannad’s comedy/drama mix but don’t like Toradora’s…but that’s just taste.
But they even had comedy in this episode….Minorin’s spinning body slam, Ryuuji’s crazy black eye stuff, the pew pew pew part, yeah…given that all the comedy was within dramatic situations (it being a vehicle), that shouldn’t necessarily detract from its comic value per se.
Calawain, don’t know what OS you’re using, but on a Mac the little cross symbol (†) is made by pressing Option+T. Dunno for PCs. Maybe Alt+T (same thing)?
Toradora can compete with ZnT when it comes to novels, and probably wins out on manga. But on anime, it gets completely annilated. I actually disagree on Ami being cooler now, because her “maturity” growth seems rather bleh and meh compared to her bitchiness that made her stand out. Ami carries the show in many ways unlike where in ZnT you really don’t have anyone who can carry the show but rather rely heavily on the plot to carry. Toradora isn’t very strong plot based, and while many of you guys said you didn’t roll your eyes on these two episodes, I had to pause and take a breather quite a few times. Maybe my tolerance for this stuff is low, but very cheesy/over dramatic scenes coupled with terrible animation in a real life setting is very irritating for me.
And can someone explain to me the whole going in the bag and coming out deal? I was totally stumped on that. And yeah, Minorin not being like Kirby running around doing kiddie things is not cute at all. Unlike Nagi, Minorin doesn’t have the character depth to have a good serious side to her. Nagi has her “mystery” while Minorin is “just another girl with problems”.
Actually, let me rephrase the first part. TD gets owned by ZnT S1/2 maybe at least in most ways. S3 was pretty much bleh so I’ll give it a tie.
Windows is alt + 0134 = †
Ami-chan is love, I don’t look favorably on Taiga’s antics but I suppose more Ami-chan is always good.
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