Said notes ended up longer than expected, so I’ll have to split them into three parts. I invite you to take advantage of the lag time between posts to rewatch Toradora! yourself!

Episode 1

Taiga casts an ominous shadow over Ryuuji’s life before the two ever meet.

Said shadow breeds mold. Ryuuji cleans the mold.

The show actually sets up its B-plot — by which I mean all the family troubles that occur throughout — earlier than I remember. Ryuuji can’t bear to be compared with his dad; as far as the first-time viewer knows, Yasuko is kind of a deadbeat, foisting the role of adult off onto Ryuuji. And of course there’s not a parent to be seen in Taiga’s big, empty apartment.

I’m almost convinced that this is Rie Kugimiya’s best work ever. If she’s this good elsewhere, tell me now so I can rectify the grievous holes in my experience.

Episode 2

Ryuuji is so lame. His hobbies are cooking and cleaning, and sometimes he says ridiculous things.

Hazukashii serifu kinshi, dude.

But of course that’s why I so enjoy him. There’s generally more going on in the mind of the teenage male than, you know, mammary taxonomy. Maybe the anime Ryuuji is somewhat less normal than the novel Ryuuji — and that’s alright, I say. I don’t know where this puts me in the spectrum of literary opinionists, but I think the main character of a story needs to be a little atypical, or else why’s the story about this person in the first place? Human nature is best explored through the eyes of someone who is a little off, as truly “normal” things are rendered pointed (though ideally not quite stark) in contrast. Look at Leopold Bloom, for example, or Akari Mizunashi.

Episode 3

You may know that I always side with the tsundere. I should find Minori a little annoying, at least. But I don’t, which I suppose is a testament to how well-written these characters are.

She’s more than a genki girl, that Minori Kushieda. She’s outright weird in the most delightful way. And she remains an intriguing mystery.

Why, after all, does she spend all her time at school and work — what is it about her home life that keeps her away? Or maybe she’s simply restless, as later evidence seems to suggest. Or maybe…maybe we could speculate all day, and that says something about Minori’s effectiveness as a character: she keeps our interest, an impressive writerly feat in itself.

Episode 4

Dammit, Kitamura.

You know what this is? This is a shoujo show for men. You’ve got all the romantic thrusts, parries, and feints, but it’s all from the point of view of a young man — a young man who shares certain things in common with shoujo protagonists, most notably his dauntlessness (and his domesticity? Don’t know; not going there). And I don’t suppose I need to explain how the female characters are moe constructs — in fact, I especially appreciate that Toradora! demonstrates how characters born of moe can still be compelling in terms of their relationship to a plot, though it’s hardly the only example of that.

I didn’t realize previously that Toradora! was written by a woman, which is interesting in itself.

Episode 5

Oh, Ami — how I longed to hate you! How, in the end, you didn’t let me!

Taiga’s flyswatter attack feels immensely satisfying — even now, when I know that Ami will eventually say all the things I’d say to these people if I could, and that, in a certain late episode, Ami’s fist will carry with it all my hopes and dreams.

Ami’s a strange specimen. In most everyone else’s case, we see how virtues become flaws, and thereby balance out into traits; Ami is introduced as flawed from the beginning, with the provision (via Kitamura) that the friendly (and manipulative) act she puts on is less desirable than the selfish, conceited Ami who emerges in the presence of people like Taiga, people who won’t stand for her nonsense. But even the latter seems like an extreme, and what we observe in Ami’s case, as things move along, isn’t really the shedding of one facade; it’s the shedding of two, or perhaps the integration of personality variants into a more functional whole.

Episode 6

Do we see the real Ami in this episode? Not to any great extent, I’d say; even her more genuine lines sound forced. But this is only the beginning for her, after all. She’ll get better.

Probably the closest thing we get to the Ami who shines in the second half happens when she confronts the stalker.

I remember being a little dissatisfied with all the Ami-heavy episodes prior to the midway point the first time through. Watching this again was a good idea.

Oh, and Kitamura is kind of a douche, isn’t he? I’m talking about his using Taiga for things like his Ami Restructuring Project when he knows damn well how things stand with her. Though at least he has already given Taiga a straighter answer than Ryuuji gets from Minori throughout most of the show.

Episode 7

Taiga is a bro.

This episode is about breasts. No, actually, it has a lot to do with Taiga and Ryuuji’s physical relationship at this point.

We see that Ryuuji isn’t too terribly concerned about confronting Taiga in his underwear:

Maybe not a huge deal, but it’s something.

Then, of course, there’s Taiga’s revelation of her swimsuit problem:

Ryuuji has the grace to show a little shame at this point.

But that notwithstanding, they’re pretty comfortable around one another, physically speaking. There isn’t any pressure on them to succumb to the mating urge with one another. And it’s for this reason that the climactic grope is something far more (or far different — or far less?) than the harem romance grope to which we’ve become used. It worries both Ryuuji and Taiga, to some extent, but it isn’t really a tremendous deal. It’s an unfortunate accident, but not something to get hung up on — in short, it doesn’t really matter, and that’s unusual.

tl;dr Taiga and Ryuuji have something rare, even by episode seven. Theirs is something between a sibling relationship and the relationship between two same-sex straight friends. It’s no wonder that they worry so much about messing things up in the end.

Episode 8

I still don’t think that Ami becomes too terribly interesting until this episode. And of course we have the beach episodes coming up, too.

More than anything, this episode simply feels necessary, so it’s difficult to say much about it. Taiga becomes confused about her feelings right around the time that either her or Ryuuji should’ve. The initial wingman relationship wouldn’t have carried the show forever — and so I suppose I should say that this episode is an example of good pacing.

There’s the end, too, which, while a little weird, is hard not to feel good about.

By the end of this episode, the nakama has assembled, and while I remember episode 13 being a killer midway point, I wonder now whether the show isn’t more logically divided into thirds. We’ll see how that turns out.

By the time you read this, I’ll be on a plane to Texas. I’ll be out of town until the 30th, and mostly absent from the internet, so if I fail to address your comments in a timely fashion, that would be why. But keep an eye on this blog and pontif.us; I’ll have posts scheduled through the end of December.

With that said, today’s title references one of Schneider’s moments, which, if you’ve read it, may act as a kind of complement to this post. Though, as a Minori fan, he may not be too thrilled that I’m pointing to his moment as complementary to this one.

I always liked Minori, actually. I was prepared to like her from the beginning. Yui Horie had something to do with it, granted, but Minori was generally just a fun character. And that thirteenth episode — I mean damn. I watched it last Christmas, in the late morning or early afternoon, and I remember thinking that Japan and its media-producing machinery had given me a fine gift, and being annoyed that I hadn’t seen it early enough to include it among my twelve moments of 2008.

But this post isn’t about that episode. This post is about Ami.

You may recall the cadre of bloggers who threw their support behind Ami nearly as soon as the show introduced her. I was not among them. Toradora! seemed to posit her as a wrench in everyone’s gears, a generally not-very-nice person, and I bought it wholesale. But as the show progressed, something happened. Ami changed — either the “real” Ami began to emerge from behind her stalwart shield of bitchery, or her two personalities, the public and the private, began to merge into a more “complete” Ami. Possibly I changed, too. I finally began to get a sense of her depth. I realized at some point that her criticisms of her friends’ romantic foibles were my criticisms. She was my voice personified as a high school girl.

And when, during the eventful twenty-first episode, she just couldn’t stand for Minori’s bullshit anymore…

…her fist was my fist.

But by the same token, Minori’s face was my face, her chest was my chest. I didn’t realize this until it occurred to me how much this scene hurt.

Minori’s tactic for dealing with Ryuuji’s feelings is simple: “If I ignore it, maybe it’ll go away.” It’s rough, being on the receiving end of that. I get how Ami feels; I tend to be a little upset, too, when I see my friends being jerked around by people they have feelings for. Ami’s way of dealing with her frustration here is not exceedingly mature, no. But to her credit, Minori hit her first. And it’s not as if she hasn’t been embroiled in this tangled and sometimes melodramatic web of teenage romance all along — she just succumbs to a moment of exceptional weakness here.

But I get how Minori feels, too. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve employed her tactic. Oh, have I employed it — my talent for avoiding telling people how I really feel about them has become legendary. I’m not proud of myself, but it is what it is, and so I think I understand Minori’s reasoning. As long as she’s able to ignore it, things don’t have to change; everyone can remain friends, and everything can carry on as it always has. What’s more, she doesn’t want to cause problems for Ryuuji and Taiga, regardless of what form their relationship takes in the end. Minori certainly isn’t acting out of ill will; if anything, it’s the opposite. I’d guess that she simply doesn’t know what else she should do.

You can see how problematic this scene is for me when I relate to both characters involved. Ami, my more jaded, self-aware, reasonable side, attacks Minori, my well-intentioned but cowardly side. Who do I side with? Well, neither, ultimately, because I’m both. It was a little shocking to see one of my internal conflicts represented in animation like this. And it’s still difficult to watch; I never know whether I should laugh or cry.

Remember me? It’s Pontifus, that guy who has successfully ignored the blog he created for about a month! Why, you may or may not ask? Because I’m embroiled in another of my regularly scheduled methodological crises, and those are well and truly crippling. But that’s boring, so let’s move on.

I realized recently that Baka-Tsuki and its cadre of rogue translators are working their way through the Toradora light novels, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to indulge. Normally I would resist; I don’t like to be in the middle of more than one adaptation at a time. But I’m willing to make exceptions when I’m far enough in one that I’m well past the beginning of the other, and when I really like the franchise in question.

In retrospect, I almost wish I’d exercised some restraint.

I really like the Toradora anime, and I mean really like it. A lot of people do, it seems. It reminds me so much of my own high school and college years that it’s painful to watch¹ at times, which is, come to find out, a good thing by my reckoning. I suppose this means I’m even more predisposed than I normally am by pure literary douchebaggery alone to find flaws in the Toradora light novels.

And that’s all well and good, but why is it so? I have a few guesses, several of which may apply. There are, by my reckoning, two repeat offenders: disparity of written imagery and visual images, and disparity of narrative techniques. These differences are not in themselves bad things, but they go a long way in rendering my response to the Toradora light novels less positive than my response to the show.

Join me, if you will, as I examine a few lines from the first chapter of the first Toradora novel² and try to explain what in God’s name I’m talking about (with the help of plenty of spoilers from the show, so if you haven’t seen much of it, turn back!).

A frustrated hand wiped the mist from the mirror. The run-down bathroom was foggy due to an early morning shower. So after wiping the mirror, it returned to being cloudy. It was pointless to take anger out on the mirror no matter how frustrated one was…

Make yourself gentle with floating bangs — That slogan was seen in the latest men’s fashion magazine. Takasu Ryuuji’s bangs were now “floating”. As the article instructed, he pulled his bangs at length, blow-dried them until they stood up, and then gently rubbed them sideways with some hair gel. He specifically woke up a half-hour early in order to make his hair resemble that of the model’s and have his wish granted.

Even though he had always wiped the steam off, even after spending a whole day last week cleaning out the mold in the kitchen and bathroom… All his effort had gone to waste in that horribly humid room. Biting his lips begrudgingly, Ryuuji tried to see if he could wipe off the mold with some tissues. Of course, it was never going to be that easy, and he ended up tearing the tissues to shreds.

Ah, right, this scene — you know, I barely recognized it at first as the same scene with which the anime opens. This is one of those narrative technique issues I mentioned. In the show, it’s a very kinetic scene, all movement and very little language, and it’s entertaining for that reason; we begin to get a feel for Ryuuji without any need for straightforward exposition. But, here, that movement is slowed by the explanation (maybe necessary, maybe not) of certain minutiae: we’re told that the bathroom is foggy in the aftermath of a shower, for example, and that Ryuuji has a habit of cleaning things. We could probably figure out the cause of the fogginess for ourselves, and the obsessive cleanliness could just as easily be shown later on — we can see it when Ryuuji attacks the mold immediately with whatever cleaning implements he has on hand. Note that this is not a criticism; the novel’s way of doing things isn’t necessarily bad, as it does serve the purpose of situating us more thoroughly in Ryuuji’s thoughts. It’s probably safe to say that film is better at conveying movement while literature excels at conveying thoughts and emotions, and the writers of the respective adaptations may have been playing to the strengths of their media. In this case, though, I prefer the movement, and while this may be the fault of bias set in place by my having seen the show first, I suspect it may have more to do with general personal preference; I like movement and physical response in novels more than long, unbroken tracts of description. I wouldn’t describe the above excerpts as long, unbroken tracts of description, mind you, but they certainly aren’t as active as the corresponding animated scenes, and again, maybe it’s a constraint of the medium.

Last year, just a few meters from the south side of this house, a ten-story luxury apartment building was built. As a result, the sun no longer shone through. This had driven Ryuuji to the brink of madness and frustration countless times already — the laundry could no longer dry; the tatami now expanded due to the humidity, curled at the corners and grew moldy; and sometimes it would even get frosty. The wallpaper was starting to peel, which must have had something to do with the humidity as well. It doesn’t matter since this is just a rented apartment, Ryuuji wanted to tell himself. Yet being extremely sensitive about keeping a place tidy and clean, Ryuuji just could not get himself to tolerate and compromise on such a thing. Looking up towards the white-tiled high-class condo, there was nothing those two poor people could do but stand shoulder to shoulder with their mouths open.

There’s something to be said for well-placed exposition, though. As someone who knows what’s coming, I like this description of Taiga’s apartment as a shadow over Ryuuji’s home and a blight upon his tatami mats — he’ll be tossed out of his comfort zone, and whether that’s a good thing is a matter of reader opinion, but it’s certainly a thing that happens to most (if not all) teenagers at some point. I wonder if first-time readers would find this passage tedious — the lead-up to the above paragraph seems to make it obvious enough to me that the apartment will be important later, but then, I knew that much from the beginning.

In order to give birth to Ryuuji, Yasuko dropped out of high school when she was still a first year, so she was not familiar with what life as a second year was like. Ryuuji felt a sense of sadness for a moment.

Wait, wait, wait…did they just make Yasuko tragic? I always wanted the show to give her more depth — single mothers are characters for whom I can muster a lot of sympathy — but I imagine it may have been hard for the writers to balance sympathy with her visual portrayal as altogether ridiculous. In animation (and probably any film, really), I suspect a character’s layers of depth will always be seen through the shadow of their physical form. Surely some film critic has written about that, but I don’t really know film criticism. It reminds me of literary mind-body dualism (which Cuchlann mentions toward the bottom of this post, if you’re curious), but unavoidable insofar as making judgments at first sight, however cursory, is unavoidable³. We might say that the dualism, if there is dualism, is an end rather than a means.

…[Ryuuji's reputation] could be partly blamed on his rough personality. He spoke in quite an unrefined way, which had something to do with his extreme sensitivity. This was why he rarely joked around or said anything foolish.

Interesting; I didn’t get “rough” or “unrefined” out of the show’s characterization of Ryuuji. Where social class is concerned, though, I suppose he isn’t exactly at the top of the pecking order. If anyone could give me this paragraph in the original Japanese, I’d appreciate it, as certain connotations of whatever words Takemiya used may have been lost when they became the English “rough” and “unrefined,” and I’d like to try to puzzle through it myself.

To use soccer as a metaphor, Ryuuji would be a center defender who hardly ever had any chance of participating in offense.

OH LOL, for lack of a better term. Ryuuji is a professional wingman, of course, a groundskeeper of the friend zone, and it caught me off guard when the novel came right out and said so. Maybe it shouldn’t have; it’s funny, I suppose, but Ryuuji’s unfortunate predicament is pretty obvious anyway.

Her various cheerful expressions.

Her delicate body and exaggerated movements.

Her innocent smiles and clear voice.

Despite his intimidating appearance, she still managed to keep her usual cheerfulness in his presence, even to this day.

That’s Kushieda Minori for you.

As I read, I found myself trying to poke holes in this description of Minorin in spite of better judgment, which tells me it’s best to consider adaptations as independent entities, at least during the initial reading of each. I wonder now if that’s even wholly possible — it may be possible for someone, but my record is perhaps suspect, and it’s not as if I don’t know better. Is it related to my broader inclination to compare things with other things often and at length? Is it possible that those who disparage the Toradora anime for not being more like the novels (just as I feel inclined to disparage the first chapter, if not vocally or with any belief in the objective rightness of doing so, for not being more like the anime, or perhaps for not being the anime) aren’t consciously at fault? Perhaps we’re dealing with some mechanism of reading here, some attribute of the body of narrative art. Or — and this is of course an implicit corollary of all artistic interpretation, analysis, and such — maybe it’s just me.

For my part, my impression of Minorin does include some of the novel’s descriptors, but is best summed up by the three particular incidents from the show which come to mind when I think of her — the first, representing her genki girl craziness, which rubs off on her friends once or twice…or thrice:

The second, representing her dedication and dauntlessness:

And the third and most recent, in which Ami throws all her flaws in her face (and for great justice):

These are the images which really stick with me, and pull the most weight in determining Minorin’s character for me — the first because it made me laugh for five minutes, the second because Minorin is fucking gar, and the third because I still feel anxious just thinking about it (for about an hour prior to the writing of this sentence, I’ve been jittery at the prospect of having to watch that scene again for the sake of grabbing the screencap). Regardless of their taking place later in the…not shared narrative, as the two adaptations give us two different narratives, but maybe the Toradora proto-narrative…I can’t help bringing these and other scenes with me when I read the novel. Perhaps they’re confounding influences, mere distractions, but even if they are, they exist; when the novel cues me with “Kushieda Minori,” I need to mentally construct a character to attach to that name, and if I’ve already done so for an alternate adaptation, I don’t know how I could completely and utterly disallow that Kushieda Minori from lending qualities to this one, considering the importance of prior knowledge and experience in reading.

Specifically, expressiveness, physical exaggeration, and cheerfulness are all things I associate with Minorin, and so I didn’t have trouble accepting those traits when the novel handed them to me. But “delicate body” gave me pause — maybe she looks delicate, but she’s proven her ability to hold up under physical duress more than once in the show, rendering half the connotations of “delicate” inapplicable. Granted, that may be attributable to a translation nuance, but “innocent smiles?” We viewers all know what lurks beneath that presumed innocence by now. Of course, there’s no way the novel could convey all that in one chapter, and Ryuuji doesn’t know Minorin well enough at that point to judge her accurately. I comprehend that on a conscious, logical, intellectual level, just as I comprehend that the two Minorins are not practically one and probably should not be considered as such, but that isn’t going to stop impatience and jadedness from being emotional byproducts of reading, and it isn’t going to stop my mind from being hypersensitive to possible “inaccuracies” against my will. Knowledge of the one version affects the experience of the other, and there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it (and I try, believe me).

Oh, and let’s not forget that the light novel offers its own visual depiction of Minorin…

…which isn’t wholly analogous to the Minorin I’m used to lately, who is prone to romantic dilemmas and hitting people who point out her flaws. These alternate depictions and their discrepancies inform and perhaps confound one another, especially when the adaptations in question are fairly similar; I’m starting to suspect that whether they should or not is of little consequence.

Her long straight hair softly fluttered and covered the tiny body of the Palmtop Tiger.

Speaking of those illustrations present in light novels, I wonder if we should consider them separate in terms of characterizing influences from the descriptions of the characters they represent, and, if so, to what degree. I mention this because this…

…is not “straight hair.” Is this a minor discrepancy? Yes, but it illustrates that different creators bring different agencies to different depictions of the same character, and this isn’t mitigated by the two depictions coexisting in the same physical text. I don’t know how much this matters, but it could certainly lead to situations in which the reader must contend with differing adaptations in deciding, consciously or not, what to include in their mental image of the text.

At the end of the day, I’d maintain that adaptations of the same “proto-narrative” should be considered separate texts, and that “I like this less because it isn’t like the other thing” shouldn’t be considered an objective basis for making a value judgment. As Cuchlann more pithily suggests, we should at least try to appreciate varying adaptations on their own merits rather than simply throwing them against one another. But personal preference is a shifty bastard, and if knowledge from one adaptation creeps into the experience of another, I don’t suppose there’s a whole lot we can do to keep the resultant webs of influence from becoming significant and often complex.

Of course, much of what I’m talking about here depends heavily upon my own reading nuances, as those are the only reading nuances about which I can speak accurately. Maybe you can erect impenetrable walls between adaptations, in which case I’m curious to know what that’s like.

Endnotes

¹See also Casshern Sins and Clannad ~After Story~. Damn this season is deliciously painful. Damn that last sentence sounds creepy in retrospect.

²You can find the chapter in question here, though, due to the wiki nature of Baka-Tsuki, the wording of the translation may have changed since I quoted it.

³See this recent article from New Scientist for more on that. I’m not so sure about “new physiognomy,” but I suspect that the idea of judging by appearances and the inevitability thereof carries over to fictional characters with visual representations. Even in the case of Ryuuji, whose fierce appearance is deliberately mismatched with his gentle personality, that sense of being mismatched is a ubiquitous element of his character, as we’re reminded of it by his physical form, central as that form is to the depiction of his thought, speech, and action.

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!

I want you to know I had to work very hard to keep myself from embedding a Youtube mash-up of something, anything, set to “Don’t You Forget About Me.”

Hopefully I got you curious.  That was the plan.

My eleventh anime “moment” isn’t one so much as many.  It’s Legion; it is many.

Specifically, nearly any moment in Toradora!

You may still be wondering about the Breakfast Club image above.  If you’re one of the true and faithful, you’re just smiling while thinking about o-haaaa! or the general opinion on people who call themselves ditzy.

I don’t, generally, find myself supsceptible to moe.  At least, not when it’s readily identified for me.  Mikuru is, for me, one of the least interesting characters of Haruhi Suzumiya.  (That is, until I read the part in the book where Daisuke. . .  Uh, I mean, Koizumi,¹ tells Kyon she’s putting it all on because they know Kyon likes that kind of thing, then she got interesting to me).  Anyway, what I mean is, if everyone’s feeling, during their moe-feeling-time, the way I feel much of the time when I watch Toradora!, then I finally get it.

Possible-moe isn’t the whole thing for me, no, that would be too simple, too pure.  I also like the way the show’s constructed, the way it plays with themes, blah blah.

Never mind that shit now — we’re here to share moments, mother-fuckers.

Essentially, I feel all warm, fuzzy, and possibly cry-ey (criey? — yes, I know weepy, damn you, I’m coining neologisms here, step away) whenever I watch Toradora!  Meanwhile I’m also engaged in a strong arc of soul-shaping, for the characters and sometimes me (when I’m not busy being cry-ey).  It’s more than footage of cute puppies.  It’s cute puppies that make you feel like you can take on the world (more on things that make me feel that way later in the countdown).

Now I’ll explain myself.  I’ve never seen The Breakfast Club myself, but I get the impression it serves as that kind of film for a lot of people around my age (25 this year, if you’re curious at all — August, if you want to mail me wonderful things on an annual basis).  I hear it has a lot of great, heart-warming moments that still have a backbone behind them, telling a story about interesting characters that rise up out of their obvious stereotypes to become something more to each other and the viewer.

Does any of this sound familiar to you?  Now, I don’t know if I’ll ever watch The Breakfast Club.  A person I didn’t like all that well kept trying to foist it on me a few years ago.  This is irrational, I know.  The feeling remains.  However, Toradora! does the same things for me, and in a time when I think I needed it a lot.  Not to get too heavy on you, but I went through a break-up that, while not violent, ended up being awful in new and special ways.  Also, I finally ran into a creative writing teacher who, as I’d always been warned about and had never had to deal with personally, came out and said the sort of writing I’m pursuing isn’t work pursuing; at one point he shouted at me for daring to turn in a zombie story, as they’re puerile and no one gets anything out of them any longer — this from a professor who admits to reading nothing new unless someone he knows wrote it, so he probably hasn’t noticed the rising zombie tide that seems to emblematize something meaningful for our society now.

Anyway.  Short version:  a lot of shit went down.  Probably more on this later in the countdown.  But for now, I can end by saying I was just plain old happy whenever I watched an episode of Toradora! this year, and I plan to feel the same way next year.

HOLY SHIT IT’S NOT TOO LATE!!!

¹: Yes, I just made a voice-actor joke. It won’t happen again. Probably.