Review for Toradora! Complete Collection

Introduction

Talk about saving the best for last! Toradora is MVM’s final release for September, and that’s in a month that has already seen them release Kokoro Connect, From the New World Part 2, and upgrade Bodacious Space Pirates to Blu-ray. But Toradora is the show that I have wanted to watch the most this month, and that’s even ahead of the big hitters like Ghost in the Shell, Psycho-Pass, and Attack on Titan. And the fact of the matter is that I haven’t even seen it before. I barely know what it’s about, and until I got hold of these check discs, I didn’t even know what the show looked like. It’s not so much the hype, but the word of mouth that caught my attention.


Toradora is one of those shows that comes out every once in a while, which just grabs hold of the fandom and doesn’t let go. It’s not one of those breakout hits like Attack on Titan, and neither is it one of those genre redefining shows like Kill La Kill, Bakemonogatari, or Madoka Magica. Toradora is just very brilliant at what it sets out to do, the best in its genre. And just through how well accomplished it is, it captures an audience. When this show was airing, everyone was talking about it. Taiga and Ryuji memes were flying through the Internet, and those like me who were out of the loop found themselves feeling left out. NIS America licensed the show and released it as a subtitle only title. It sold like hotcakes. They then recently went back and dubbed it, and released it again this time on Blu-ray. It sold like hotter cakes this time. We take advantage of this re-release, and go straight to the dub and sub, Blu-ray and DVD in the UK courtesy of MVM, although I’m taking a look at the DVD release.


Ryuji Takasu has a problem with his appearance. He’s a kind, pleasant, thoughtful guy, who from his father has inherited the looks of a delinquent. He might wish to convey a mild-mannered gaze, but it always comes across as a defiant glare. That’s made making friends a little difficult. On the other hand Taiga Aisaka may be petite, cute, and to all intents and purposes adorable, but she’s got the personality of a firebrand, and a tendency to emphasise her opinions with a dropkick. For neither of them is there a lot of success when it comes to love, but by coincidence, Taiga has a massive, shyness inducing crush on Ryuji’s best friend, Yusaku Kitamura, while Ryuji simply worships the ground that Taiga’s best friend Minori Kushieda walks on. It only makes sense that the two team up to help each other with their respective love lives, even if Taiga doesn’t see it as a team, so much as a master-dog relationship. But the path of true love never goes smoothly, and it’s made even more complicated when Kitamura’s childhood friend and professional model Ami Kawashima transfers into their school.


Twenty-five episodes of Toradora, plus extras are presented across four discs from MVM.

Disc 1
1. Tiger and Dragon
2. Taiga and Ryuji
3. Your Song
4. That Look You Had
5. Ami Kawashima
6. True Self
7. Pool’s Open

Disc 2
8. Who Is This For?
9. When You Go to the Sea
10. Fireworks
11. Ohashi High School Cultural Festival 1
12. Ohashi High School Cultural Festival 2
13. Ohashi High School Cultural Festival 3
14. Palm-Top Tiger of Happiness


Disc 3
15. Distant Stars
16. One Step Forward
17. Mercury is Retrograde at Christmas
18. Underneath the Fir Tree
19. Christmas Eve Party
20. Stay Like This Forever
21. Can’t Help Myself

Disc 4
22. When You’re Around
23. Path to Take
24. Confession
25. Toradora!
OVA. Bento Battle

Picture

Toradora gets a very agreeable 1.78:1 anamorphic native PAL transfer, which has gone via the NISA-Hanabee route to get to the UK. The image is clear and sharp throughout, there are no issues with glitches or visible artefacting, and the animation comes across smoothly. It’s a very appealing animation, with memorable and distinctive character designs, fluid and detailed movement, and a likeable world design. The animation serves the story well and the quality of the transfer does the show justice. That said, I did feel that the opening and closing credit sequences were unduly soft in comparison to the show, but that might have been by design.

Incidentally, MVM are also releasing Toradora on Blu-ray, but apparently that is an upscale. If it’s an upscale of the sort that Samurai Champloo and Baccano! got, then the Blu-ray will still be the preferable option for the native frame rate, lower compression, and a richer colour palette.

Sound

You have the choice between Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo English and Japanese, with optional translated subtitles and a signs only track. I was very pleased with the original language audio, after all, when you have the queen of all things tsundere, Rie Kugimiya cast in the role of Taiga, then there really is no other option. Indeed all of the voice actors are suitably cast for their roles, and it’s very much an enjoyable experience to watch the show in its subtitled form, especially as the subtitles are accurately timed, and free of typographical error. I gave the dub a try, and I choose to pass.

Extras

The discs are presented with static menus, and it’s notable that there are no English language credits for the episodes. You’ll have to resort to the Encyclopaedia on Anime News Network to know who’s who.

All of the extra features are on disc 4.

The Hurray for Gourmands 1-4 short animations are here, with SD versions of the characters debating whatever food takes their fancy for that episode. There’s just over 21 minutes of material here, and it really works the one joke to death. This is available in dub as well as subbed form.


You get both of the textless openings and textless closings.

Ami’s Impressions (2 mins), is ostensibly a scene deleted from episode 6, although I tend to see it as an extra created after the fact given the paucity of animation. It’s available in subtitle form only, and the subtitles here aren’t perfectly in sync.

You get 24 TV Spots, just over 6 minutes worth.

Finally you’ll also find trailers for Ground Control to Psychoelectric Girl, Medaka Box, and Majestic Price, none of which have been licensed for UK release to my knowledge.

Conclusion

There’s one scene, or rather one point of trivia about a scene, which encapsulates all that makes Toradora special in my eyes. It’s one of those clichéd school rooftop scenes, where so many Japanese school students tend to escape from classes, have lunch, confess their feelings, or just act out their angst. One of the characters early on in this series has gone up to the roof to wallow in a fit of depression, which is when the student council president appears, atop the roof of the stairwell, the one roof higher than the main roof, to declaim a speech of inspiration and enthusiasm, striking a triumphant pose in the process. It’s an utterly clichéd scene that has happened in countless other high school anime. What makes Toradora different is that someone has drawn in a ladder. Someone has taken the time to ask, just how did the student council president get up there? And they’ve taken that into account in the animation.


That’s what’s so special about Toradora, on the surface just another anime romantic comedy, replete with unrequited love, quirky characters, and awkward situations. Toradora manages to invest its situations and its characters with a degree of realism beyond that of any similar anime I have yet seen. Despite all the silliness, the jokes and the pratfalls, there’s a heartfelt honesty to the emotions and feelings of the characters that the viewer can really invest in, and you may have tears of laughter at some scenes, but then it can turn at the drop of a hat, and you’ll suddenly have tears for a wholly different cause. The main reason is that it develops its characters so well. There’s no single note character here, no simple comic relief, and no delineation between protagonist and antagonist. All of the characters are developed to a greater degree than you would expect from an anime, you learn about all of them, warts and all, and no matter which pairing you wind up rooting for, you’ll care about them all.


It’s a great set-up for a romantic comedy. You have Ryuji, a boy who so looks like a delinquent that everyone is scared of him, but he has a kind and sweet disposition. Then there’s Taiga, who’s small, cute, adorable, and has a vicious personality, so much so that she’s earned the nickname, Palm-Top Tiger. She’s got a crush on Ryuji’s friend Kitamura, while Ryuji’s head over heels for Taiga’s best friend Minori. It turns out that Ryuji and Taiga are neighbours, so they make a deal to support each other in their respective quests for true love.


It’s never as simple as that, as Kitamura originally asked Taiga out, and she turned him down flat, before developing her crush. And when Minori sees Taiga and Ryuji start spending more time together, she gets the wrong end of the stick, and decides to support her best friend’s ‘romance’, despite the fact that she might actually have feelings for Ryuji herself. And if that isn’t complicated enough, Kitamura’s childhood friend Ami transfers into the school, a gorgeous, professional model, who puts on a sweet, adorable personality in public, but has a cynical catty side to her, which Taiga happens to bring out in the worst possible way. While Kitamura knows her true personality, when Ryuji sees through her facade as well, she begins to see him in a new light, which only complicates matters further.


The characters are so wonderful. Ryuji’s got a world worn edge to him that contrasts with his positive attitude. He’s not had the easiest of upbringings, with an absent father, and a young mother whose personality and lifestyle really make him the parent figure in the family at times. His family is completed by the oddest parrot in fiction, which gives him a mission to teach it to say its own name. Taiga is a classic tsundere, hard on the outside but soft on the inside, but her back-story gives her a reason for it, coming from a broken, if wealthy home. His father simply pays for her to live alone in grand apartment, next door to Ryuji’s run-down dwelling, and it turns out that she’s a slob. Which suits Ryuji just fine, as he’s OCD about hygiene. Nothing makes him happier than a stubborn bit of grime to clean, and after he sees Taiga’s junk food diet, he’s soon cooking for her as well.


Kitamura’s a ball of enthusiasm, he’s what you would expect from a grade-A student, hardworking, likeable, on the student council, but he has the oddest sense of humour that crops up at the unlikeliest of times. And it turns out that he’s moved on from Taiga, and has his own crush on someone else, that declamatory student council president I mentioned earlier, and when things don’t go well for him, we see that he doesn’t react all that well. Minori Kushieda on the other hand is my favourite character in the whole show, an off-the-wall oddball who has the goofiest attitude to life, but who wears most of her feelings on her sleeve. You can see why Ryuji would fall for her. It’s as if you take Mako Makanshoku from Kill la Kill, and tone her down enough to be realistic.


The path of true love never runs smoothly, and that is certainly true of Toradora, where the tensions between friendship and romance are explored. Of course it would be rude of me to spoil the story, but suffice it to say that despite, or maybe because of Ryuji and Taiga’s secret scheme, their respective romances aren’t plain sailing, and there are many unexpected developments along the way. Toradora is funnier than you’d expect from an anime romantic comedy, but it’s more realistic as well (certainly very little in the way of fan service), and it draws its characters with an emotional honesty that gets the viewers invested in the show as well. The episodes too are written just as well as the characters, with so much story and narrative that you can hardly believe that each episode is merely some twenty minutes long. It really is a perfect little show, one which transcends what we’ve come to expect from anime by a wide margin. It’s only the OVA episode that actually feels like an anime. After watching Toradora, for the first time in ages, I felt like putting disc one back into the player and starting all over again that minute. It is that good, that I cursed the other review discs on the pile that would prevent me from doing so. This could very well be the best anime of the year...