First Impressions / Toradora!

Summary:

Ryuuji arrives at Taiga’s apartment with breakfast one morning and finds her still in bed. While she’s getting up, he notices a box sticking out of a closet, and inside the box is a photo album filled with blurry pictures of Kitamura. Taiga is angry when she sees him going through the album, but she admits that she has a hard time taking pictures of Kitamura, so Ryuuji offers to take some for her. This gets Taiga into a daydreaming mood thinking about the potential pictures, but the mood is partially spoiled after she screws up a run-in with Kitamura at school and then finds out how popular he is with girls. She also gets quite pissed off at student council president Kanou Sumire during the morning assembly and has to be restrained by Kitamura. Taiga becomes depressed for having caused Kitamura trouble by arguing with Sumire, but her mood swings again when Kitamura and Minori joins her and Ryuuji for lunch. The problem there is that Kitamura thinks that Taiga made her own lunch, but Taiga points to Ryuuji, and Ryuuji has to claim that he does it to earn extra income. Minori and Kitamura then get called away, and Taiga panics when she realizes that Kitamura now knows that Ryuuji makes her lunches for her.

Later that afternoon, Taiga drags Ryuuji to the softball field and wants him to take pictures of Kitamura playing softball. She gets so impatient waiting for him to configure the camera that she grabs it from him and starts frantically taking pictures herself, but all of her shots are still horribly blurry. Taiga drools over the photos and later that night, she helps Ryuuji in cooking since he had earlier promised to make lunch for Kitamura and Minori. Peeling potatoes doesn’t work out so well for her, so she ends up just making onigiri. After dinner, Taiga is all over the Kitamura photographs again, so Ryuuji tells her about laminating them. However, after going through some more pictures, Taiga suddenly slows down and then gets angry at Ryuuji, culminating in her deciding to go home to choose which to laminate. The next day, Ryuuji gets his wish of obtaining a picture of Minori when she brings by a photo of her eating the pudding she made in a bucket. After class, he finds Taiga still looking through the photos, and she decides to have him choose photos for her. As Ryuuji is looking through them, he’s approached by Kitamura and accidentally lets Kitamura know that the photos belong to Taiga. This in turn prompts Kitamura to show Ryuuji the photo he keeps of Taiga in his student handbook, and Ryuuji is shocked to find out that Kitamura has this because he had feelings for Taiga. Kitamura even confessed to her, but she immediately rejected him.

When Ryuuji asks Taiga about this, she admits that she had been surprised when Kitamura confessed and had initially rejected him, but she had then started to like him. She also reveals that Kitamura’s specific confession had mentioned her not hiding her anger and how he preferred a straight personality. Taiga knows that it was a strange confession for Kitamura to make, but it still made her happy because she felt needed. Concerning the photos, she had wanted one of Kitamura where his face was like that of when he confessed, but there were none like that. In thinking about all this later that night, Ryuuji wonders what meaning being needed by someone has for Taiga, and he decides that it would have been better if she hadn’t answered Kitamura right away.

Preview

Since this was mostly an episode about Taiga getting Kitamura’s picture, it had her acting embarrassed and blushing more than she spent being her normal pissed off self. That’s fairly uncommon for this kind of Kugimiya Rie character, but it’s part of what makes Taiga interesting. The best part (or at least my favorite) came at the end when it’s revealed that Kitamura actually confessed to Taiga a year ago, but she turned him down. This appears to be a reworking of the novel storyline when this came up during Taiga’s attempted confession, but it works out all the same. If there’s a formula with this series – and after only a few episodes, it’s not clear that there is – it appears to be that they build up a set of circumstances to get to one of these reflective moments that reveal something about the characters. Considering that I enjoy how those moments turn out, I think that that’s not a bad formula for them to keep using.

Incidentally, someone told me Inoue Marina was going to be voicing Sumire, the student council president, but it was actually Kaida Yuuko. It would have been nice to hear the former, but I can live with the latter. Next week also should have the introduction of Ami voiced by Kitamura Eri.

41 Comments

  6. ya Kei is right, … so now they told us that Kitamura already confessed and was rejected. and i think this just makes it that much less likely that he wants to get back liking her, seeming that he may have already gotten over it. and now we are gonna get Ami soon, its gonna be interesting. and also doesnt Kitamura already likes.___.

    Chimasternmay
    Reply

  8. “-Someone told me Inoue Marina was going to be voicing Sumire, the student council president, but it was actually Kaida Yuuko.”

    Somebody with the source for that is gonna have to update the ANN page, then. :/

    Cat Megex
    Reply

  14. Oh thank God, they remembered to reveal that Taiga shot him down. And FINALLY Kawashima shows up… albeit in a preview. I think that’s her anyways.

    Still disappointed with extra physical violence.

    Haesslich
    Reply

  27. Ami is going to make or break this show for me, I think. I disagree with many parts of this episode – or more like I don’t understand why JC Staff has chosen to approach it the way they have, when there are better ways of doing it that will raise overall quality. Ami herself is one of the harder parts to get right, and since they didn’t do a good job with Minori, I hope they do much better with Ami.

    FF
    Reply

  37. Great episode. Taiga was absolutely adorable (or maybe I should say, Toradorable? Yes, you heard me right), nice character and plot development, good comedy, Kitamura’s confession was manly as hell (and they finally included it, with good timing as well), very good episode. Inko-chan suddenly speaking normally at the end was hilarious. Really pleased with this one, I had a smile on my face the whole time, especially in comparison with the very dissapointing episode 3.

    God, I hate you so much, JC Staff. If you’re going to be yanking me back and forth every other episode, I don’t think my body can take it.

    RogerOskaner
    Reply

  41. @ The What?
    Exhibitionist in the making right there!

    But the anime does make me laugh & like 98% of you I expect a Taiga x Ryuuji episode.

    And on a side note, would anyone want a bird in the house whose weird like that?!

    Grim32
    Reply

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