I meant the gay stereotypes, dude.
I mean, come on... the bald wig, the Eyepatch of Power, talking about being more like a boy as a child, her sports-crazy attitude, the endless male-character imitations--Minori is pretty damn dyke-ish for a straight chick.
Her love for Taiga wasn't that obvious at first, but it became apparent when Ami ripped her apart during the field trip.
How I came to this conclusion:
Remember that conversation and how Minori reacted to Ami's prodding. Also, factor in Minori's continued rejections of Ryuuji.
Now it's
possible that Minori
grew to love Ryuuji very close to the end--in fact, I think translation confusion may be responsible for the seeming Minori-Ass Pull "confession," when up to that point she apparently showed no interest in him whatsoever. There's so much I Want My Beloved To Be Happy going on in the show that it's pretty easy to just toss that label on Minori.
Actually, she even says so. But I think she lied when she said that, and I think she exaggerated when she shouted out that she "loved" Ryuuji. Again, I think she was saying these things to prod Taiga into taking action instead of running away from it all.
And the most telling bit of all is after Taiga and Ryuuji leave together--Minori
instantly breaks down in front of Ami, and she asks if it's because she lost Ryuuji to Taiga, or (Taiga to Ryuuji, but was interrupted before she could ask)--Minori interrupts with, "I don't even know."
But I think she
does know (she just can't come to grips with it for various reasons, described below)--it's obvious to me that Ami knows, because at that point she starts getting a little snippy again.
If you focus on Ami's behavior, you can tell when characters are lying or concealing something around her. She's ridiculously perceptive, bordering on Genre Savvy here. She'll get especially ojou-sama bitchy when she thinks someone's being untrue to themselves--which is pretty ironic considering Ami's own public mask!
Why Minori can't make peace with her sexuality; more specifically, the person she's in love with:
Minori's perceptive enough to see the budding romance between Taiga and Ryuuji long before they themselves see it. Only Ami notices it sooner--and almost every other character just operates off the rumor mill. Kitamura sort-of-accidentally stumbles to the correct conclusion
at the very beginning of the show, but at that point, there's only a nascent seed of what might
become love between our two leads.
This is a problem for Minori because
she's been in love with Taiga for a long time. Remember, they're
extremely close and have known each other for a long time. But Minori's not so stupid she doesn't know Taiga is straight--for Christ's sake, she gets stuttery and blushy every time Kitamura shows up until after the fight with Sumire in episode 16.
So Minori sort of resigns herself to suffer in silence because she wants the one person she can't have--because Taiga is not gay
and because she notices the attraction between Taiga and Ryuuji. So she does her best to help the two realize their own feelings for each other, but her methods are warped and conflicted, because she still has feelings for Taiga.
Ami
doesn't and only really goes after Ryuuji to irritate Taiga--because she can see that Taiga loves Ryuuji, but won't admit it. This pisses her off, so she goes all-out to antagonize the Palmtop Tiger.
As the group become closer friends, Ami develops something of what
might become romantic feelings for Ryuuji, but she knows he's nuts about Taiga, even if
he doesn't know it yet.
Recall Ami's mention of Ryuuji "playing house" and how he should stop it. Other people I've talked to think she was talking about Ryuuji = dad, Minori = mom, Taiga = child, but that's the
wrong answer. Ami was talking more about how Ryuuji was coddling Taiga
and his own mother. The way I read the whole situation/conversation, Ami wasn't even talking about Minori--there's actually no way she could have been. Minori spends a good two-thirds of the show
actively avoiding Ryuuji.
Ami was actually talking about Ryuuji's future--specifically the fact that he's doing too much for Taiga (thus robbing her of her own self-identity) and not allowing his mother to actually, you know, be a mom and sacrifice/provide for her son. Ryuuji, being the dullard that he is in regards to subtlety and doubletalk, did not understand this at all until toward the end.
Seriously, if Ami hadn't been having so much fun fucking with everyone's mind, this show would have ended in half the episodes and with a hell of a lot less drama.
Toradora! is a high-school romantic comedy, but it's also a really interesting look at the behavior of teenagers... and their self-awareness (or lack thereof).
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