Something tells the note “Enjoy” was written out of sarcasm or sympathy.
I had plenty of impressions of Toradora from other fans who pretty much like it only because of Taiga and the typical use of Tsundere (Tsundere will always sell, after all). Some scenes made her look like she’s just a pretty pissed off girl than the former. But alas, another romantic comedy is another romantic comedy.
Professor Otaku, sir, I want to ask you, and answer me honestly now, did you even finish Toradora? From the review I got the impression that you didn’t bother finishing it. You merely scratched the surface of the show by complaining about the insignificant stuff in it without giving any kind of attention to the story, and questioned, like a little kid, why people like romantic comedies. You completely disregarded Taiga’s father and the entire second half of the series.
I hate shows with the main girl ALWAYS & I say ALWAYS are hitting & yelling at the poor guy – Maybe that’s why I dont have that many farvorite females in the anime/manga world.
& I will never watch ToraDora, because every time I see something with it, the girl always hit the poor guy.. He had to do something really really bad all the time since he always are getting hit by something.. it’s just like ‘My little sister cannot be this cute’ that poor brother always got hit without reason.
it’s easy to say that I hate female characters there are always hitting the man without reason.
- Even if it’s one of my farvorite shows. Still hate it.
Why do people still watch romcoms? Because you get to know (kinda) new characters, and their relationships which fuels the drama are always (kinda) different. What makes Toradora stick out is the relationship between the three girls, and how seriously it’s taken. I think that could be a reason for TRDR’s success. When it takes itself seriously it takes itself fucking seriously. (Echoing slovenianotaku’s question, did you really finish it?) Also maybe the fact that the OTP weren’t in love to begin with, they just started out as… should we call it “forced friends”. It’s way better development than most shows of its kind.
I’ll also argue Sturgeon’s law. 90% of -everything- is crap. If you’re gonna argue that almost all romcoms follow the exact same formula, that applies to any genre of anything, so that’s not really an argument why romcoms are worse than anything else. Just that you can’t see past it here.
Unlikable characters? Iunno. I guess i never really dislike characters for being bitchy. Only for being stupid. Most of the character traits are played for laughs, anyways.
That said, i didn’t like Toradora as much as i would have liked to. I loved the first half, because i simply found it funny as hell, but the second half drops almost all the comedy and becomes the most melodramatic, exaggerated, unrealistic love story i’ve seen. And the characters -do- become stupid. It’s not as bad as Kimi ni Todoke, though. When i see stuff like this i always feel like rewatching Lovely Complex, because i loved that show but have forgotten most of it. I want to see if it’s really as good as i remember it.
By the by, yandere means to first show love towards someone but then going crazy and killing him. It’s more or less the same as obsession. Loving someone so much that you can’t respect their choices, are always jealous, and ultimately turn their life into hell. Minori is nowhere near being yandere.
I think the reason I like this show is because with all the mentally broken characters, it makes me feel a little better about myself.
I’d also argue that Taiga’s one of the better written tsunderes out there, but I have a low tolerance for that archtype, so I might be a bit biased, due to her mental brokeness.
I will admit, however, that this anime could have been solved (theoretically) in the first episode, if Taiga had flat out told Minori that Ryuji liked her and Ryuji did the same with Kitamura. Sure, these pairing would have never worked, with Minori being a whole bucket of crazy and Kitamura being in love with someone else, but at least people’s feeling would have been out in the open.
My favorite part of the show is when Ami decided she liked Ryuji and he shuts her down. This may be a LoveComedy, but it’s not a harem show, like the genre is often likely to devolve into.
Despite never watching the show, I never understood the appeal to it in the first place. I only knew of it from small video segments that appeared like Ark’s Music List, and the clips seen in the Taishi awards. But it just never got my attention. Heck, I will even admit that during the Taishi awards, I kept asking myself “Why is this so popular?” Even seeing the small amount of clips from the show, I never thought it was a good show to begin with, all with what looked like a small girl just going out to beat up someone 2-3 times her size the moment she saw him.
While there are character’s I like that have a Tsundere trope (Ex: Kallen from Code Geass), I never understood the use of such a character in multi-pairing shows anyway, other than to possible annoy those of us who have a lick of sense. (Kaname Chidori from Full Metal Panic got on my nerves quite a bit throughout the first season).
“I imagine hooking up with her would be like trying to fuck Pinkie Pie.”
Disturbing analogy, but I understand it.
Nice review Prof, and it was nice to see Profette for a short-time. Now I’m going to work on class assignments, and then probably take some time to look for a subbed copy of Gundam SEED Stargazer so that I can send it your way.
Ah, the whining/complaining joke always amuses me.
Looking through comments and thinking about things, I’m kind of amazed how easily media can make people I’d never want to associate in life because of attitude or actions into someone people like and defend.
That’s because characters are not people, especially not in comedies. You are not supposed to picture yourself being around them, you are just supposed to enjoy watching them. If you don’t enjoy watching them, that’s fine, but arguing “i don’t like their personality” is ridiculous. There are a lot of characters in comedy who are fucking assholes (or insert other unlikable trait), but people still like them because they find them funny. In fact, being assholes may very well be what makes them funny. That’s because fiction isn’t real and comedy isn’t serious.
You’ve done some great work in the past and introduced me to shows I never thought I’d like.
That being said, I don’t believe you watched this show the whole way through. To back up that assertion, I point to the fact that you didn’t even have a single solitary comment about the Epic Chick Fight around episode 16. Sure, you might have thought it was shoe-horned in or that the build up to it wasn’t earned. That’s fine. But that is probably the most brutal fight of any shoujo comedy that it should have at least showed up on your radar.
I can understand if it’s an Ouran situation where you just can’t make it through the first few eps, but at least then you SAID you didn’t. As I said earlier, you’ve done great work in the past. As such, we expect more from you.
I watched the goddamn show. The whole way through. The chick fight was fucking retarded. I know the people who made the show shoehorned it in, but I didn’t feel that there was any room in the review to talk about something that was shoved in there awkwardly just to try and spice up a dreary show with some admittedly harsh fighting. My opinion remains the same. Why would I put in something that might encourage people to watch the show and undermine my entire argument? If you’ve got your mind set on not thinking I watched this pile of schlock to completion then I can’t very well stop you or the others, but it won’t change a damn thing about what I think about it.
To give an honest presentation of a show so that people can fairly decide for themselves whether they want to watch it or not? That’s usually what a review should do.
Well most of your complaints can be applied to any genre of anything in any medium ever lol. 95% of everything that is entertainment is just a rehash of something else that’s been done before. I guess I don’t expect something to be original anymore? I love Mass Effect but everything in that game is just a rip-off off of other sci-fi. It’s by no mean’s terrible though. Heck I could even go as far to apply that to Cowboy bebop and no one would disagree that it’s one of the finest shows ever made. So what I am saying is I get why people watch stuff like this over and over and over again. It’s just the genre they enjoy.
This genre is a bit worse then others because it doesn’t have anywhere to go. Not much you can do with a standard high school setting to make it seem different without adding other genre’s into the mix. At least in sci-fi/fantasy you can rip-off stuff and mix it into something different.
Well after that Rant, I’ll get to the point, I enjoyed this show. It wasn’t a masterpiece and you were right about everything you said. Still I guess I don’t expect this genre to be original anymore and I just watch it when I feel like a break from what I usually watch. I also didn’t have a disdain for the characters like you did. I actually liked the dynamic between the two main characters and also thought they had some meaningful development over the course of the show. Nothing new, nothing special but it kept me entertained and had it’s moments. The melodrama got to me though by the later half, oh god the melodrama.
This has gone on for way to long and I have no idea why I even wrote it. I guess it’s two in the morning and I’m bored. Later!
Well….I guess that you really hated that anime. I haven’t seen Toradora, have heard absolutely nothing about it, but it seems pretty accurate. You seemed pretty….pissed off through the review, and I guess getting through a show you despise can do that to a person.
P.S Was the “thundercunt” insult a reference to Blade Trinity?
I appreciate your honesty Prof, however brutal it might be. Because of SO MANY recommendations, I went into Toradora expecting something special about this particular romantic comedy–and I didn’t find anything special. I didn’t hate the show, but nothing really jumped out at me to make it unique either. I had my normal romantic comedy feelings about it: you know the ending from square one, I liked one member of the main couple way better than the other, and I could practically count off all the stock background characters. What I really don’t get is why this one is so popular, I really don’t. It took way too long for me to get into it, over two thirds of the way through. And I’m a girl. I am very much female. And I don’t understand why its appeal is so widespread compared to other anime of its genre.
I disagree with Prof, but maybe it’s because I very rarely watch RomCom anime. This is one of the few I watched and it really resonated with me. I guess if it IS based on the tropes, the examples they give are very good. I felt for the characters. He did not. And if you don’t, then watching a show like this is not only not entertaining, it is a chore.
I would feel much the same way Prof does about this watching most giant robot shows, because I don’t watch them. But if I watched one with all the things that people find good about them, and it was done well, I’d probably enjoy that as I enjoyed this. I think Prof is just too jaded to try investing himself in characters he doesn’t like. You don’t have to like something to understand and sympathize with it.
Thanks for watching and getting back to us Prof. I just wish your review was a bit more… Professional?
Regards,
Raze667
I’m continually impressed by how polarizing this anime is. I’ve rarely seen anything like it.
For every person who loves the show there’s another who hates it and every argument about it tends to settle itself on disputes over the same stock sets of issues, whether it’s how cliched the show is, whether that even matters, if Taiga is a good character, the prevalence of the tsundere trope, all among other things. The most remarkable thing is how very few people take a neutral stance. And it’s the same no matter where on the internet I go to.
It’ll be interesting to see how the comments section looks once Arkada gets to his review. I think it’ll look more or less the same.
I was only vaguely interested in this, but since it has a tsundere in it I’ll pass. That character type is my most hated. The minute I see one as the lead you can bet that will probably be the last episode I see. There is only one thing that can make it even worse, the male lead is a complete pussy, example : Occult Academy. Couldn’t make past episode 3. There has one been only one Tsundere that I could watch and that was Hitagi Senjougahara from Bakamonogatari. But then again she was bat-shit crazy which have her some depth. Thanks Prof.
September 19th, 2011 | 
Author: 
Posted in
Your argument against high school dramas could also easily be applied to giant robot shows, in every aspect.
Something tells the note “Enjoy” was written out of sarcasm or sympathy.
I had plenty of impressions of Toradora from other fans who pretty much like it only because of Taiga and the typical use of Tsundere (Tsundere will always sell, after all). Some scenes made her look like she’s just a pretty pissed off girl than the former. But alas, another romantic comedy is another romantic comedy.
I tried watching it, and hated Taiga. I couldn’t stand how cliche she was!
Professor Otaku, sir, I want to ask you, and answer me honestly now, did you even finish Toradora? From the review I got the impression that you didn’t bother finishing it. You merely scratched the surface of the show by complaining about the insignificant stuff in it without giving any kind of attention to the story, and questioned, like a little kid, why people like romantic comedies. You completely disregarded Taiga’s father and the entire second half of the series.
I hate shows with the main girl ALWAYS & I say ALWAYS are hitting & yelling at the poor guy – Maybe that’s why I dont have that many farvorite females in the anime/manga world.
& I will never watch ToraDora, because every time I see something with it, the girl always hit the poor guy.. He had to do something really really bad all the time since he always are getting hit by something.. it’s just like ‘My little sister cannot be this cute’ that poor brother always got hit without reason.
it’s easy to say that I hate female characters there are always hitting the man without reason.
- Even if it’s one of my farvorite shows. Still hate it.
Why do people still watch romcoms? Because you get to know (kinda) new characters, and their relationships which fuels the drama are always (kinda) different. What makes Toradora stick out is the relationship between the three girls, and how seriously it’s taken. I think that could be a reason for TRDR’s success. When it takes itself seriously it takes itself fucking seriously. (Echoing slovenianotaku’s question, did you really finish it?) Also maybe the fact that the OTP weren’t in love to begin with, they just started out as… should we call it “forced friends”. It’s way better development than most shows of its kind.
I’ll also argue Sturgeon’s law. 90% of -everything- is crap. If you’re gonna argue that almost all romcoms follow the exact same formula, that applies to any genre of anything, so that’s not really an argument why romcoms are worse than anything else. Just that you can’t see past it here.
Unlikable characters? Iunno. I guess i never really dislike characters for being bitchy. Only for being stupid. Most of the character traits are played for laughs, anyways.
That said, i didn’t like Toradora as much as i would have liked to. I loved the first half, because i simply found it funny as hell, but the second half drops almost all the comedy and becomes the most melodramatic, exaggerated, unrealistic love story i’ve seen. And the characters -do- become stupid. It’s not as bad as Kimi ni Todoke, though. When i see stuff like this i always feel like rewatching Lovely Complex, because i loved that show but have forgotten most of it. I want to see if it’s really as good as i remember it.
By the by, yandere means to first show love towards someone but then going crazy and killing him. It’s more or less the same as obsession. Loving someone so much that you can’t respect their choices, are always jealous, and ultimately turn their life into hell. Minori is nowhere near being yandere.
I think the reason I like this show is because with all the mentally broken characters, it makes me feel a little better about myself.
I’d also argue that Taiga’s one of the better written tsunderes out there, but I have a low tolerance for that archtype, so I might be a bit biased, due to her mental brokeness.
I will admit, however, that this anime could have been solved (theoretically) in the first episode, if Taiga had flat out told Minori that Ryuji liked her and Ryuji did the same with Kitamura. Sure, these pairing would have never worked, with Minori being a whole bucket of crazy and Kitamura being in love with someone else, but at least people’s feeling would have been out in the open.
My favorite part of the show is when Ami decided she liked Ryuji and he shuts her down. This may be a LoveComedy, but it’s not a harem show, like the genre is often likely to devolve into.
Prof,
Spice and Wolf.
Now.
It’s on Hulu.
Both subbed and dubbed
Watch it.
Despite never watching the show, I never understood the appeal to it in the first place. I only knew of it from small video segments that appeared like Ark’s Music List, and the clips seen in the Taishi awards. But it just never got my attention. Heck, I will even admit that during the Taishi awards, I kept asking myself “Why is this so popular?” Even seeing the small amount of clips from the show, I never thought it was a good show to begin with, all with what looked like a small girl just going out to beat up someone 2-3 times her size the moment she saw him.
While there are character’s I like that have a Tsundere trope (Ex: Kallen from Code Geass), I never understood the use of such a character in multi-pairing shows anyway, other than to possible annoy those of us who have a lick of sense. (Kaname Chidori from Full Metal Panic got on my nerves quite a bit throughout the first season).
“I imagine hooking up with her would be like trying to fuck Pinkie Pie.”
Disturbing analogy, but I understand it.
Nice review Prof, and it was nice to see Profette for a short-time. Now I’m going to work on class assignments, and then probably take some time to look for a subbed copy of Gundam SEED Stargazer so that I can send it your way.
Ah, the whining/complaining joke always amuses me.
Looking through comments and thinking about things, I’m kind of amazed how easily media can make people I’d never want to associate in life because of attitude or actions into someone people like and defend.
That’s because characters are not people, especially not in comedies. You are not supposed to picture yourself being around them, you are just supposed to enjoy watching them. If you don’t enjoy watching them, that’s fine, but arguing “i don’t like their personality” is ridiculous. There are a lot of characters in comedy who are fucking assholes (or insert other unlikable trait), but people still like them because they find them funny. In fact, being assholes may very well be what makes them funny. That’s because fiction isn’t real and comedy isn’t serious.
Prof,
You’ve done some great work in the past and introduced me to shows I never thought I’d like.
That being said, I don’t believe you watched this show the whole way through. To back up that assertion, I point to the fact that you didn’t even have a single solitary comment about the Epic Chick Fight around episode 16. Sure, you might have thought it was shoe-horned in or that the build up to it wasn’t earned. That’s fine. But that is probably the most brutal fight of any shoujo comedy that it should have at least showed up on your radar.
I can understand if it’s an Ouran situation where you just can’t make it through the first few eps, but at least then you SAID you didn’t. As I said earlier, you’ve done great work in the past. As such, we expect more from you.
I watched the goddamn show. The whole way through. The chick fight was fucking retarded. I know the people who made the show shoehorned it in, but I didn’t feel that there was any room in the review to talk about something that was shoved in there awkwardly just to try and spice up a dreary show with some admittedly harsh fighting. My opinion remains the same. Why would I put in something that might encourage people to watch the show and undermine my entire argument? If you’ve got your mind set on not thinking I watched this pile of schlock to completion then I can’t very well stop you or the others, but it won’t change a damn thing about what I think about it.
<>
To give an honest presentation of a show so that people can fairly decide for themselves whether they want to watch it or not? That’s usually what a review should do.
Uhhhh….he was honest. You just didn’t like his opinion.
Well most of your complaints can be applied to any genre of anything in any medium ever lol. 95% of everything that is entertainment is just a rehash of something else that’s been done before. I guess I don’t expect something to be original anymore? I love Mass Effect but everything in that game is just a rip-off off of other sci-fi. It’s by no mean’s terrible though. Heck I could even go as far to apply that to Cowboy bebop and no one would disagree that it’s one of the finest shows ever made. So what I am saying is I get why people watch stuff like this over and over and over again. It’s just the genre they enjoy.
This genre is a bit worse then others because it doesn’t have anywhere to go. Not much you can do with a standard high school setting to make it seem different without adding other genre’s into the mix. At least in sci-fi/fantasy you can rip-off stuff and mix it into something different.
Well after that Rant, I’ll get to the point, I enjoyed this show. It wasn’t a masterpiece and you were right about everything you said. Still I guess I don’t expect this genre to be original anymore and I just watch it when I feel like a break from what I usually watch. I also didn’t have a disdain for the characters like you did. I actually liked the dynamic between the two main characters and also thought they had some meaningful development over the course of the show. Nothing new, nothing special but it kept me entertained and had it’s moments. The melodrama got to me though by the later half, oh god the melodrama.
This has gone on for way to long and I have no idea why I even wrote it. I guess it’s two in the morning and I’m bored. Later!
Well….I guess that you really hated that anime. I haven’t seen Toradora, have heard absolutely nothing about it, but it seems pretty accurate. You seemed pretty….pissed off through the review, and I guess getting through a show you despise can do that to a person.
P.S Was the “thundercunt” insult a reference to Blade Trinity?
I appreciate your honesty Prof, however brutal it might be. Because of SO MANY recommendations, I went into Toradora expecting something special about this particular romantic comedy–and I didn’t find anything special. I didn’t hate the show, but nothing really jumped out at me to make it unique either. I had my normal romantic comedy feelings about it: you know the ending from square one, I liked one member of the main couple way better than the other, and I could practically count off all the stock background characters. What I really don’t get is why this one is so popular, I really don’t. It took way too long for me to get into it, over two thirds of the way through. And I’m a girl. I am very much female. And I don’t understand why its appeal is so widespread compared to other anime of its genre.
I disagree with Prof, but maybe it’s because I very rarely watch RomCom anime. This is one of the few I watched and it really resonated with me. I guess if it IS based on the tropes, the examples they give are very good. I felt for the characters. He did not. And if you don’t, then watching a show like this is not only not entertaining, it is a chore.
I would feel much the same way Prof does about this watching most giant robot shows, because I don’t watch them. But if I watched one with all the things that people find good about them, and it was done well, I’d probably enjoy that as I enjoyed this. I think Prof is just too jaded to try investing himself in characters he doesn’t like. You don’t have to like something to understand and sympathize with it.
Thanks for watching and getting back to us Prof. I just wish your review was a bit more… Professional?
Regards,
Raze667
I’m continually impressed by how polarizing this anime is. I’ve rarely seen anything like it.
For every person who loves the show there’s another who hates it and every argument about it tends to settle itself on disputes over the same stock sets of issues, whether it’s how cliched the show is, whether that even matters, if Taiga is a good character, the prevalence of the tsundere trope, all among other things. The most remarkable thing is how very few people take a neutral stance. And it’s the same no matter where on the internet I go to.
It’ll be interesting to see how the comments section looks once Arkada gets to his review. I think it’ll look more or less the same.
I don’t think I’ve seen this much backlash in a while. I’ve got to check this, see what the big freaking deal is.
Well then how about Highschool of the Dead prof? Or Najica Blitz Tactics? Or Pumpkin Scissors.
I was only vaguely interested in this, but since it has a tsundere in it I’ll pass. That character type is my most hated. The minute I see one as the lead you can bet that will probably be the last episode I see. There is only one thing that can make it even worse, the male lead is a complete pussy, example : Occult Academy. Couldn’t make past episode 3. There has one been only one Tsundere that I could watch and that was Hitagi Senjougahara from Bakamonogatari. But then again she was bat-shit crazy which have her some depth. Thanks Prof.
oops! sorry, spelt Bakemonogatari wrong.
This is too simple so go watch another high school drama that has better value then this.