2009-04-11
My overall view of Toradora! (and some thoughts)
I've been mulling over this for long enough, so it's time to actually write something (warning, some spoilers):
Ultimately, I think Toradora! is a good series overall but not an exceptional one. In hindsight (and after Author spurred me into rewatching the first two episodes), I feel that it had a strong beginning, a good but relatively ordinary middle, and ended very strong with a powerful ending, partly because it was willing to have its characters grow and change and partly because it is willing to be decisive. In this it managed to be that rarity, an anime show that gets much better in its final stretch (I would say the last three episodes).
One of the interesting things about Toradora! is how atypical and oddly structured it is. There are no romantic complications that show up (Ami does not count, because everyone else is oblivious), and part of its strong and fast start is how it decisively disposes of the Taiga/Yuusaku issue in the second episode. In an ordinary romcom, I would have expected at least one romantic rival and for it to take ages before Taiga approached Yuusaku.
Another thing I noticed (due to rewatching episode 1) is the difference between the narration that opens the first episode and the narration that closes the last one. Based on the final line, it seems that over the course of the show Taiga and Ryuuji have gone from thinking of love as something that is found to thinking of it as something that is created.
(This fits well with their overall growing up and especially their decisions in the final episode.)
2009-04-09
The case of the disposable first episode
One of the things that I've seen repeatedly in anime is what I call 'disposable first episodes'. The purest form of the disposable first episode is where nothing in the first episode is ever seen again; it takes place in a location that the story never revisits, involves characters (apart from the protagonists) that we never see again, and the events are never referred to or affect anything.
(The most recent pure form disposable first episode that I can remember is the first episode of D.Gray-Man.)
One common pattern I've seen is that a disposable first episode will be used in a shonen action series where the real start of the story has the protagonists looking wimpy or otherwise uninteresting. Here, the disposable first episode serves to have the protagonists show off and exhibit their trademark powers (which they may not use again for many episodes), instead of just having them look unimpressive for quite a while in the main story.
(I can see the appeal of this to the creators; it gives the audience some action to get them interested or to pacify them so that they don't get bored when you start in on the slower bits, like the character backgrounds.)
This was brought to mind by the first episode of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, which at least felt like a partial disposable first episode in that it seemed like it was there mostly to run us past a lot of important characters doing their trademark thing in their typical way. Personally, I prefer more leisurely introductions.