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Over the last week I decided to pick up and watch Toradora from start to finish as I had all the episodes lying around.

What I expected was a romantic comedy slice-of-life anime that I enjoy so much…and it started out so well. The humour was on the mark and the characters were well portrayed but the novelty started running out by episode 10. Aisaka Taiga was portrayed as the typical moe tsundere girl and it worked well for a while…but as with all Slice-of-life anime, you expect to see change. Change that didn’t appear until around episode 20.

I’ll quickly summarise the story by saying that we follow the life of Takasu Ryuuji as he enters his second year of high school. Ryuuji is very kindhearted but his face and eyes make him look like an angry deliquent which earns him a fearsome reputation for no reason. He befriends many people throughout his high school life (most notably Aisaka Taiga) and his goal becomes to date Kushieda Minorin while Taiga’s is to date Kitamura Yuusaku. Other people get mixed in with the strange love scene and you can predict very quickly what is bound to happen.

Its essentially the daily life of a group of friends trying to find some love while learning from a teacher with bipolar or something.

Let me say quickly that while I enjoyed this anime, it was far from what I would have liked. It started out as a fantastic romantic comedy but turned into a serious drama from ep 10. By the time ep 20 rolls on by, the drama is so serious that there just isn’t any humour to be seen which in my eyes degraded the anime. I watched the first 15 episodes almost back to back but I struggled to watch anything from there on because I knew what was coming and I didn’t like it.

The last episode was almost completely world shattering (I expect only 1-2 people will get that joke) until the credits rolled on by and the season outro played…the last 10 seconds of the anime saved it…if they had not been there I would have eaten my own arms off. It was actually gut-wrenching waiting for it to happen not knowing if it would and I was starting to get seriously angry at the sudden turn of events in the second to last episode which simply made no sense at all and served only to create a “dramatic suspense” which turned out to be “a joke”.

Anyway, good anime but can be a little tedious when the drama gets real heavy…but I enjoyed it.

Also, forgot to mention…the OPs and EDs were very cool…loved the soundtrack.