Toradora! - Episode 4 Discussion / Poll

[Vexx]

The more I look at the 4 episodes to date -- the more out of place episode 3 looks. Looking up the directors for each episode to see if my suspicions hold ...

[Haesslich]

Originally Posted by Vexx

The more I look at the 4 episodes to date -- the more out of place episode 3 looks. Looking up the directors for each episode to see if my suspicions hold ...

Here's a hint: Episode 3's filler spun off from the scene just before Taiga and Ryuuji meet Ami, and is mostly anime-original. That may explain why it feels out of place.

[Vexx]

Cor' bloody hell, the end credits are kanji thick even for an ED. All I've been able to snare in the way of directing so far is Tatsuyuki Nagai as one of the directors (?).
If ep 3 is mostly anime-only then that illuminates the weird turn towards extreme physical violence which made poor sense after episode 2 (and then it vanished again in ep 4). Verbal combat between Ryuuji and Taiga just makes more sense to me in the context of the anime's first two eps.

But I also got the feeling that whomever got assigned ep 3 may have been a director with lesser skill as well. Meh, got too much else to translate -- maybe someone will dive into the end credits and figure out who is directing which episode (if it even provides that detail).

[Spring_sakura111]

Ooh..Now that I've read all your insights about Episode 04 compared to episode 03, no wonder I felt nothing when I watched Episode 03.

[Haesslich]

If you've seen me ranting and raving around the Intarwebs at various blogs about Episode 3... now you know why. And for some reason, people ENJOYED watching Taiga try to kill Ryuuji, even though it felt out of place after the verbal sparring and the introspective tone of the first two episodes.

Eh, I guess a lot of people don't have a sense of taste, or wits enough to recognize "One Of These Things Is Not Like the Other". Nice to see that people who haven't met the source material could see the flaw in that ep, though - which is why I'm concerned for the show if that writer/director takes up more episodes later on. They could turn a decent show into the next Cabbage Love, if they're not careful.

[Clarste]

Originally Posted by Haesslich

They could've put it into Episode 3 too... but here? It just felt a bit out of place, even if it explains WHY Taiga likes Kitamura at all. Cause, y'know, he's not exactly the most attractive or visibly 'nice guy' out there since we're following Ryuuji all the time. At least with this explanation put back in, we've been given some context to why things worked out the way they did.

And of course, to show that tsundere responses don't necessarily get the guys. Sometimes... they just don't work, as appears to be the case with Kitamura and Taiga. Now she's dere-dere for him, but he's not apparently interested.

I don't know about physical attractiveness, but he's apparently smart, athletic, confident, ambitious (student council), has a good sense of humor, etc etc. It's not too surprising he'd be popular, just from listing his attributes.

[Haesslich]

Originally Posted by Clarste

I don't know about physical attractiveness, but he's apparently smart, athletic, confident, ambitious (student council), has a good sense of humor, etc etc. It's not too surprising he'd be popular, just from listing his attributes.

And since when did we see that, or hear anyone talk about 'smart, athletic, confident, ambitious, good sense of humor' in the first few episodes? Nowhere. We know him only as Ryuuji's friend, and barely see him except as 'oh, Taiga wrote a note to him'. That's all from the novels, really... which if you're a new viewer unfamiliar with the original material, you wouldn't know.

Without any of that data available to put things in context, what would Taiga have seen in him to make her confess by episode two? That's the thing that bothered me about how they dropped important things out of the adaptation... but at least that got put back in here, since it IS important, and having her notice those qualities (thus introducing the audience to them) is important. Especially with a whole bunch of bloggers who don't know the novels thinking Kitamura's either bland, or an insensitive asshole for turning Taiga down with the 'let's be friends' line.. all based on the anime presentation.

[Vexx]

No one had to explicitly list those components.
Kitamura is active in school politics, plays on the baseball team (quite well), is popular, and exhibits a sense of humor that is almost twisted - all shown in the first 4 eps. You can develop the list from that without someone actually having to say it.

Now as for being Ryuuji's buddy.... they really haven't shown them hanging out together at all other than Ryuuji assuming that eating lunch together was a fun idea and the way they easily chatter about personal subjects.

It was a year between Kitamura's confession and Taiga's confession (anime only data), but I'll certainly agree putting off the explanation til ep 4 was kind of odd. Again, I'll blame the insertion of ep 3 before rather than after ep 4 (and the ep 3 contents).

The ep 3 contents seemed to have derailed quite a number of developing motifs (including exposition of Kitamura's character) .... ep 3 should have been deferred til after the contents of ep 4 (and rewritten a bit as well but that's another topic).

There's nothing particularly wrong with using red herrings or in misleading viewers to make the truth more surprising.... but there needs to be actual foreshadowing *somewhere* so that more discerning viewers can say "ah ha, I knew it". People took Kitamura's shutdown of Taiga's confession in several ways - for me, my immediate reaction was that he was rather directly telling her that she was being more her True Self when she spoke of Ryuuji and that he preferred seeing her this way ----- i.e. "you silly girl, its my friend Ryuuji you should be chasing".

I was running ep 4 this morning at breakfast --- it occurred to me that Taiga is already subconsciously falling for Ryuuji. She associates him with food and good feelings in her dreams Food is an ancient bonding technique

[Haesslich]

Originally Posted by Vexx

No one had to explicitly list those components.
Kitamura is active in school politics, plays on the baseball team (quite well), is popular, and exhibits a sense of humor that is almost twisted - all shown in the first 4 eps. You can develop the list from that without someone actually having to say it.

Now as for being Ryuuji's buddy.... they really haven't shown them hanging out together at all other than Ryuuji assuming that eating lunch together was a fun idea and the way they easily chatter about personal subjects.

It was a year between Kitamura's confession and Taiga's confession (anime only data), but I'll certainly agree putting off the explanation til ep 4 was kind of odd. Again, I'll blame the insertion of ep 3 before rather than after ep 4 (and the ep 3 contents).

The ep 3 contents seemed to have derailed quite a number of developing motifs (including exposition of Kitamura's character) .... ep 3 should have been deferred til after the contents of ep 4 (and rewritten a bit as well but that's another topic).

There's nothing particularly wrong with using red herrings or in misleading viewers to make the truth more surprising.... but there needs to be actual foreshadowing *somewhere* so that more discerning viewers can say "ah ha, I knew it". People took Kitamura's shutdown of Taiga's confession in several ways - for me, my immediate reaction was that he was rather directly telling her that she was being more her True Self when she spoke of Ryuuji and that he preferred seeing her this way ----- i.e. "you silly girl, its my friend Ryuuji you should be chasing".

I was running ep 4 this morning at breakfast --- it occurred to me that Taiga is already subconsciously falling for Ryuuji. She associates him with food and good feelings in her dreams Food is an ancient bonding technique

Really, what did we see of Kitamura, really? We only knew he was with the Student Council because Taiga had to chase him to present cookies - and which led to the Stairwell Incident. The pacing's been pretty fast so far (all of Volume 1 of novel and manga in the first two eps, then the filler in 3)... and as you pointed out, it 'derailed' things due to the way it really didn't follow up (or present) any of the elements from the first two eps.. but which reappeared suddenly in Episode 4. Hell, the existence of filler by episode 3 seems like a huge mistake given that you usually use filler because you're running out of material to animate/adapt, or because you've got 52 episodes and need to stretch out the budget.

But the twisted sense of humor? Nothing showed it in Eps 1-2. Ditto the baseball thing. All of those showed up later (episode 3 for the baseball filler, and I'm not sure you'd consider that weird SD grin to be an example of twisted humor given that he was congratulating Taiga and Ryuuji on their hookup), or are barely inferred. They could've dropped the hint about Kitamura's confession last year earlier (episode 2 would've been great, for example)... and then everything else would've made more sense, or at least those elements would've come together a lot more naturally than the 'Ms. Exposition' version that we got here. About the only really solid thing was that Ryuuji said that he and Kitamura hung out, and that Kitamura was his best riend at school - again thanks to the introspective train-of-thought narration from the first two eps.

Still, they could've put in the part about the confession in Kitamura's rejection speech, and that would've flowed well with that scene in particular - especially when he was pointing out she acted 'funny' around Ryuuji more than anyone else. Or even in her thoughts when he was rejecting her, so we'd have that internal narration of denial over the (gentle) refusal explaining why she was chasing so hard after Kitamura at all. Especially for a girl whose reputation around the school bests Ryuuji's as far as 'if you cross her path, you will DIE' goes.

[Terzo]

So I thought I noticed something but maybe I'm imagining things....

When Taiga was looking through the photos at Ryuji's house she paused at one, and proceeded to get angry at Ryuji. They showed the picture for a second and I thought it looked like Ryuji. It made sense to me, since that would explain her getting flustered about him, but no one else has mentioned it.

Am I misreading this?

[Vexx]

Interesting.... will check after dinner.

[teachopvutru]

Originally Posted by Terzo

So I thought I noticed something but maybe I'm imagining things....

When Taiga was looking through the photos at Ryuji's house she paused at one, and proceeded to get angry at Ryuji. They showed the picture for a second and I thought it looked like Ryuji. It made sense to me, since that would explain her getting flustered about him, but no one else has mentioned it.

Am I misreading this?

Isn't that Kitamura in there? The person in the photograph has green hair, and it looks like he's wearing glasses.

Here:

Unless the picture behind it has any relevance, though I can't make out what it is, and I doubt that:


Or maybe she just got angry/sad because the overload of Kitamura reminds her of the Kitamura that day, and Ryuuji was the closest person she could take it out on.

[CrowKenobi]

Originally Posted by Terzo

When Taiga was looking through the photos at Ryuji's house she paused at one, and proceeded to get angry at Ryuji. They showed the picture for a second and I thought it looked like Ryuji. It made sense to me, since that would explain her getting flustered about him, but no one else has mentioned it.

Am I misreading this?

It wasn't the picture itself, but Taiga's inability to choose which pictures of Kitamura she wanted to have Ryuji laminate (per his offer).

[Vexx]

aye, yeah as others have noted, it is Kitamura's image. Her pause was that she'd been through the entire stack and not picked one, so she got flustered at her indecisiveness and defensive when Ryuuji asked what was wrong.

That would have been interesting though - if Ryuuji's image had been taken "by accident" but it is way too early for anything like that.

I will say that scene with Taiga looking at her photo collection as Ryuuji sits a cup of tea down is one of the cutest damn things... like a small squirrel beaming at her acorn horde. (ep4,15:25).

[stormy001_M1A2]

Taiga was looking for the picture of Kitamura that wore same expression when he confessed to her on the roof 1 year ago. That's why she is frustrated when very picture that she wanted Ryuji to laminate did not exist despite dozens if not hundreds of photo snapped of him by her. Basically she is trying to recapture the "Kodak moment" that made her swoon, a pretty much reason why she have this obsession over him.

[Terzo]

I see, so I am misreading it.

And here I was thinking I was so clever

[typhonsentra]

Heads-up: Episode 5 in a few hours.

[grey_moon]

Absolutely loving this show!

One thing I am really looking forward to is if Taiga does develop feelings for Ryuji. If that happens since Kitamura has exposed his feelings for Taija to Ryuji, it makes for a whole barrel of exciting things that could happen.

I want to eat that pudding too

[destiny4everlove]

Episode 4

-Wow!!! So Ryuuji has a key to Taiga’s apartment!

-When Taiga said “wait a moment!” I thought that she was going to say something like “No, thank you!” afterwards , but she goes and says “How many can you take?” I didn’t see that coming at all!! That was so cute and funny.

-LOL!! "Ohha!!!" Taga is so adorable when Kitamura is near her.

-Taiga sure is the jealous type, isn’t she?

-LOL! Even teachers are afraid of Taiga.

-So the best way to make Taiga calm down is to put some food in her mouth.

-Ryuuji loves to clean, doesn’t he? He is so cute!!! LOL! “The Takasu Mould Buster”

-Taiga taking pictures of Kitamura playing baseball was so cute!!

-ROFL!!! Taiga’s technique for peeling potatoes was priceless!!

-When did Taiga take a picture of Ryuuji? Because there was one pic of him among the pics of Kitamura that Taiga had in her hands while they were drinking tea, or at least I think I saw one.

-Monori is so cute!!! And the pic of Minori and her bucket of pudding was so adorable!!

-What?!!! Kitamura also has a pic of Taiga?!! He confessed to her and she rejected him?!!! This was a big surprise indeed!!! I liked it!! In fact, I actually like the Kitamura x Taiga pairing.

-LOL!! Inko-chan speaking is hilarious!!!

[Terzo]

-When did Taiga take a picture of Ryuuji? Because there was one pic of him among the pics of Kitamura that Taiga had in her hands while they were drinking tea, or at least I think I saw one.

It's actually a picture of Kitamura. I thought the same thing initially, but others have pointed out (just a few posts up actually) that it's not Ryuji.