Ok first the animation. It was fine but sometimes inconsistent. As others I'm sure have pointed out the Taiga/Sumire fight was a golden moment that left them with a bad impression in this category. I didnt particularly like that scene's animation either but it wasnt as bad as my personal favorite...Minorin and Ryuuji chasing down Taiga in episode 24. In fact I'm surprised that more people didnt complain about that scene because (with the exception of JC Staff's handling of Taiga's mother) that was the low point of that episode for me.
As for the story itself. I found it was rather basic and simple and nothing special but it made for an interesting watch thanks primarily to a very solid presentation of the second half and the cast of characters as well as its talented VAs that voiced them. The first half of the series was a roller coaster for me. Some episodes were good; some were even really enjoyable. But there were also episodes I didnt really care for either. Some even left me thinking that the plot hadnt moved forward at all which really concerned me given how little time JC Staff had to work with to cram the novels' full story into these 25 episodes. It didnt help that Taiga was quite an annoyance at this point in the series.
I also felt there coulda been some more development on Ryuuji's part to build on as far as his attachment to Taiga leading up to the Cultural Festival arc (where I truly started to see it pretty clearly) cause good lord there was plenty of said development with regards to Taiga's attachment to Ryuuji thanks to some of the TaigaXRyuuji hints. Some of Ryuuji's monologues would have fixed this issue for me... *glares at JC Staff*
Speaking of the Cultural festival arc, that was about the point where the series was really starting to take off for me. After that, the pacing for this pairing had progressed at a naturally fine rate all the way to the end, I saw nothing wrong or out of place with it. In fact the entire second half was nothing short of excellence until the issue of pacing inevitably came back to haunt JC Staff in the final few episodes.
Ami's shift in development in episode 23 with regards to Minorin still leaves me scratching my head (yes a re-watch might just be in order for me to clear that up lol). And then there's the handling of Taiga's mother. This especially was a glaring flaw in the adaptation since it is essentially why Ryuuji and Taiga decided to go through with the plan to elope and get married. Cutting out the build up of that tension between Taiga and her mother effectively made the situation look less urgent and ultimately came out rushed. Had they done it properly I'm sure alot less people would be complaining about episode 24. Oh well...nothing can be done about it. The low time budget is the enemy here once again.
On the plus side the ending couldnt have possibly been executed better. They wrapped up the series at a good pace in the final episode, brought closure to all the main characters. We even got a happy ending to boot.
Overall this series as a whole gets an
8/10. Most of the problems with this series unfortunately were due to the inevitable compression for the adaptation thanks to the
awesome 
idea of trying to fit 10 volumes of light novels into 25 episodes. Otherwise the first half of the series felt noticeably weaker as a whole compared to the second half both in terms of enjoyment and emotional involvement towards the characters themselves. Admittedly the comedy aspect of this show diminishes substancially as the plot progresses so if your the kind of person that likes to have a consistent amount of comedy for these kinds of shows your probably not gonna enjoy the later half of Toradora anywhere near as much as I did.
Would I recommend it to anyone? No unless its someone who is really into romance dramas. Would I watch it again? At some point I probably would just to see if I actually missed anything really important that I didnt notice before
