Way back in the first Voice Module, Pontifus challenged me to apply mythology to Toradora! I am here today to accept that challenge, no matter how many souls I destroy in my mad quest for the perfect explanation. This is definitely exploratory writing, so I have no idea if I’ll arrive at any kind of useful conclusion by the essay’s end, but we’ll just find out, won’t we?
Typically I start a myth-post by defining each character according to some mythological analogue, the better to gauge their positions in my madly-constructed framework. So let’s do that. Ryuuji feels an awful lot like a mimetic version of the hero of a romance. For a while I thought Ya-chan was his sister, and thus he was entirely orphaned. Oops. It’s pretty telling, thematically though, as he is effectively estranged from the society that spawned him in the way an orphan is: his father is gone, his mother is, uh, not very motherly (though very loving, bless her), and his appearance has, like the Phantom underneath the opera house, removed him from society despite his other social graces. He’s similar to Lancelot as portrayed in Steinbeck’s re-telling of the Arthur stories (in that version, Lancelot was incredibly ugly, but he found renown in Arthur’s court *cough* and Guinevere’s heart *cough* anyway). In that sense Ryuuji is a kind of knight-errant, and I’m not just saying that because he reminds me of Lancelot. He is fearsome, making people around him afraid at the sight of him, and yet he typically does good deeds for no reason, like turning in those wallets in the first episode. There are a few Arthurian stories of knights winning tourneys or other challenges and renouncing or returning their gifts.
Taiga has two roles as I see her. The first is from Ryuuji’s point of view. She is a kind of mystical spirit — since I’m going with Arthurian stuff here, let’s see how far I can extend the comparison. There are several Arthurian stories about witches, hags, or other nasty lady-folks who beg a boon of the questing knight — the one who gives it to her gets lots of good stuff, up to and including kingdoms, sometimes. Taiga, for most people, would be a problem too big to countenance. She doesn’t exactly ask Ryuuji for help, but what sort of knight would pass up the chance? He promises, despite her prickly nature — which could be a kind of mimetic replacement for the physical loathesomeness the Arthurian hags typically hid behind — to help her with her own goal, that of netting Kitamura. He is offered, instead of a kingdom, something perhaps better still: Minorin.
There’s her second role, one of a quester on her own terms. But while Ryuuji quests with no particular goal in mind (he has one, but his adventures aren’t furthering them at the time), Taiga is trying her best to head straight for Kitamura. She is not only pursuing her love, but righting a past wrong. Taiga accidentally rejected him, and we learn early on it weighs on her mind continually until she manages, with Ryuuji’s help, to, well, right that particular wrong. Unfortunately I can’t remember particular names, but there are several Arthurian knights who don’t know their own strength until they learn how to control themselves — they’re analogous to Cuchulainn from Celtic myth, who was powerful but untrained until he met the witch Scathbad. Taiga is this kind of untrained knight, and Ryuuji can serve as a model for her, in a sense.
Minorin, of course, is more than a goal: she’s a fisher king. Something is wrong in Minorin’s kingdom, and she needs a knight to say precisely the right words, or do the right task, to make everything bloom again. As of yet (episode fifteen), I’m not precisely sure what’s turning her bounty to ash, aside from her growing affection for Ryuuji.
Ami is an interesting case. I suspect she’s, at her core, a princess or queen figure — this comes as a surprise to no one — but filed down further into the world of the mimetic than the show normally bothers with. Her problem is that she has no problems; she is a delicious paradox of the lower-mimetic / satirical world. She is a high profile person with no iron in her backbone strong enough to withstand the pressure, because it was never forged properly. Usually these royalty figures snap, like Guinevere or the ladies of several tragedies, such as Desdemona. Ami isn’t going to, though, she’s getting better over time. This is due, again, to our knights-errant, who now number two.
That’s a lot of words, around 700 I see, about analogies between characters and myth-figures. You may be wondering what the point is. I think I have discovered one, just in the writing of the last paragraph. Toradora! is a quest after the Holy Grail. These characters, in the act of trying to attain their loves (the surface level goal for almost all of them), are trying to make themselves good enough to have their own goals. They are paragons of self-improvement, striving always to find the things that will lift them up, while simultaneously hefting themselves towards those things by their own power. This quest can only end happily for all of them when they are all so much advanced that the loss of their perceived goal will no longer injure them. The uneven cast distribution is, in this light, incredibly telling. One of the characters will not end up with another of the characters (though I suppose, if a complete, sappy Happy End is required, Kitamura could finally win over the class president’s flinty heart). They will only be happy when they can all accept the moment in which they are not the one their chosen love, in turn, chooses. I can go so far as to say they will only be capable of attaining their chosen love in the moment that they accept that chosen love may turn away.
Contrast this with something like Lovely Complex (I showed TheKittyMeister the first episode this evening). All the characters pair off by the end — or start off that way. Neat, compact, like a Victorian ending which flourishes into a neat bow rather than trailing edges into the floor. Toradora! can’t end that way. It’s all very reminscient of Buddha and his quest for Enlightenment. Rejecting it, or finally being able to do so, is the only way to attain it (forgive me if I’m paraphrasing the Buddha’s story poorly, but hopefully you’ll take my intention in this case if I have strayed too far).
So, you want me to bottom-line it for you? Toradora is Enlightenment!
Haha, that was enjoyable.
Well that post was certainly enlightening. I don’t know Steinbeck’s portrayal of Lancelot, but T.H. White also makes him a really sorry guy. White’s Lancelot, aside from being ugly (he’s described as looking like a Neanderthal), is self-loathing and masochistic, and he tries to hide these faults by being the best knight in Arthur’s court. White’s Arthurian retelling seemed to have glossed by the Fisher King motif though.
IMO Ryuuji is very different from ugly Lancelot. His looks are fearsome, but they are just that–inherited genes–and nothing else. He’s incredibly good and kind to the core and this characteristic of him makes itself known in the first episode alone: he takes care of the house (which is superhuman for a teenage male in anime), takes care of his mom (I initially thought Ya-chan was a sister too from how Ryuuji treated her, like an annoying sibling you can’t just leave behind), and even unwarrantedly takes care of Taiga. I think he developed his OCD trait in order to become the good guy all the time so that nobody would mistake him for a delinquent, but things just don’t work that way. So in that case, he does good things for a reason, because he’s fundamentally good.
The way I see it, Taiga wants happiness. It’s not just Kitamura, but he’s a part of it. She’s actually doing great, even if she falls flat on her face at times. Minorin seeks love, and it’s still an open question. But she’s breaking down, that genki armor of hers, and somehow I feel profoundly moved as the crack becomes larger and larger. Why the facade in the first place? For Ami, I think she longs for understanding, and Ryuuji is the perfect man for the job. He’s incorruptible, and Ami’s sure that he’ll deliver what she wants without strings attached. He doesn’t judge her, he tolerates her, and that’s a big thing for someone who sees her true self as repulsive. Ryuuji also seems to believe that Ami’s true self can be good, which is why he sticks around. I see a deep friendship amidst the playful, teasing banter.
I’m with you on Toradora not needing a “everyone hooks up” end. The infatuation isn’t as important as the journey, which by itself is a portrait of human self-improvement. These people want something, and they strive to get better with the help of others. It’s beautiful growth. The moon is there, but I’m all for the finger pointing to it instead~
I think you’ve simplified Ryuuji a bit too much there. While he certainly obeys a moral code, due partly to his natural instincts of right and wrong, I feel he’s trying to prove something to himself. His most common acts of decency are fairly private affairs implying he’s not trying to impress the general public but trying to prove to himself, or maybe the universe in general, that he’s not his father and he’s not what his outward appearance suggests he is. Yes he is a very good person but I don’t think you can say he is naturally fundamentally good, he has trained himself to be so.
Though Lovely Complex is very neat and convenient I prefer it for it’s characters.
Well, a guy in weird home circumstances being a good guy all the time, as you say, is a pretty typical anime trope, so you’re probably right in that case. Except I’m not sure he’s nice all the time. Of course, it could be the alterations his new relationships are making that gives him the ability to be something else — I’m thinking of the ep 13 race, which, to me, seemed very out of character for Ryuuji. I think he could learn that a good person isn’t necessarily “good” all the time — he’s certainly helped Ami out more by telling her off, even if he was polite, rather than just smiling and nodding, which he was inclined to do in the beginning.
There are a few other family resemblances, too. There’s the presence and study of female desire (Taiga’s), which is apparently (I’m reading Cooper’s The English Romance in Time at the moment) an unusual feature of medieval romance (especially in the insular English and Anglo-Norman tradition), and the presence of magic which may or may not be working (the business of touching in the fourteenth episode). That said, I find this all a bit forced, and I’m not convinced by the point you find (though I may not have understood it). But then I am not used to using or indeed reading myth criticism.
This is probably not how a myth critic is meant to think, but I find Toradora too everyday in its scale, like a lot of modern romances (in the modern sense of ‘romance’), which is one reason why it doesn’t grip me like a medieval romance (in the medieval sense of ‘romance’). I’m not clever enough to be interested in an entirely metaphorical quest, and the story also lacks that division between Indoors and Outdoors which I find very stimulating.
@ schneider: I think (I haven’t read either author) Steinbeck and White were both cribbing from Malory (I would assume Caxton’s Malory, not the Winchester MS), and, if I recall correctly, Malory’s Fisher King is split between several figures and is less important compared to the character in Chrétien and the writers who continued/adapted his work.
Well, myth-criticism isn’t for everyone, but I do think you’re getting caught in some of the details. Really, every story is a quest story, in some way — my thought for the essay wasn’t illustrating that Toradora is a quest, but what it is the characters are looking for, and looking at that in a new light. However, what I ended up saying might not be *new* in any sense of the word.
Now that you mention it, I actually do think there’s a sense of difference between the indoors and outdoors. I’m not sure, but the biggest moments in the anime that I remember happen outdoors, like Kitamura’s confession, Taiga’s confession, Ami’s realization she doesn’t have to accept the stalker as a part of her life, the race in ep 13, and the batting cages. You might be able to make a case for the “locked in the shed” scene being “outdoors,” as it’s a shed, and not really a building — it’s away from the typical comforts of an indoors world. Meanwhile, indoors the characters just brood over their problems, or pal around when they aren’t feeling bad about them. The outdoors seems to be the place where things happen in Toradora, which I hadn’t realized before.
My interest in Toradora doesn’t come from the “metaphorical quest.” That’s just one way I have to try to explain the interest I already have in it. *I* made the metaphor, rather than the show, and I’m just hoping something useful arises from the comparison. :) It did, for me at least, so there you go.
Also, I don’t think Lancelot was physically ugly in Malory’s version. I could also very well be mixing Steinbeck’s and White’s, if White’s version has the ugly Lancelot. I read both Steinbeck’s and White’s versions really close together, many years ago, so they may have blurred.
This is me too lazy to do a proper Fate/stay Night post – but am quite preoccupied by its Arthurian references.
If Toradora! is in the Fate/stay Night setting, then Taiga is Saber, agreeing somewhat to your casting her as the ‘magic’ girl. However in F/sN Saber has another role, which I won’t spoil here – and I don’t really know how to shoehorn this.
I too, don’t really want to see an everybody hooks up ending – but I want either of two things:
1) one of them hooks up, clearly and in no uncertain terms; or
2) they all part as bitter enemies
A lot of melancholic potential for each I think, and is something I can appreciate.
Yeah, I really need to watch more F/sN. It’s so slow I can only watch it every so often. Like Death Note. I really like both, but my constitution’s not made in such a way that I can deal with it properly.
Toradora AKA The Pursuit of Happyness.
Great allegories. However, the entire thing reminds me more of Irish myth than Athurian Lore. Since, like Irish myth, Toradora goes nowhere, has no plot