neko's thinkbox

After spamming my lovely Twitter account (visible in the sidebar on my right), I feel that this microblogging business is way less tiring than tl;dr blogging as I usually do. But I shall not omit this space, for I will grace it with a recap of my tweets and a subsequent comment about this anime I’ve finally found my way back to, Toradora.

Ep 7: lol@ homeroom teacher and Yasuko! “Taiga-chan no ecchi, skecchi, wantacchi!” Awesome. The pool scene was great too. What a handful!

Ep 8: Business as usual, but I’m getting tired of Taiga’s hissy fits. More like… can’t she do anything else? Plus I want more Minorin. :|

Ep 9: Oh god no, the towel, DON’T, DON’T LET GO. // Seems like things are getting complicated ever so slowly. At least I got my fix of Minorin in this ep. At least partially. lol metaphors.

Ep 10: sasuga Minorin. Makes me wonder if she really is that dense about Ryuuji(’s preference)… Meh. 6:42 AM, still going strong.

Ep 11: lmfao Inko LMFAO // That teacher is so awesome xD And that damn parrot shouting Hemo-hemorrhoid! Hilarious.

Ep 12: I lol’d at the teacher, she’s really got a couple of screws loose xD But… Minorin, why so serious… :”(

Ep 13: success! Liked it a lot. Shit, Taiga’s smile was really cute. I wonder what Minorin meant with “futsuu ni shabetteru” though

Ep 14: sweet. This anime is pleasing me more and more. Perhaps because of rising levels of romance? Or, tsun stocks sinking, dere points up?

That’s as far as I managed to catch up to so far, watched [qq] until ep 11, then fought my way through the Raws till ep 14 (downloading Coalguys release to check if I understood everything correctly though).

Right now (as I tweeted a couple of minutes ago) I am a little too tired to catch up to episode 18, I probably would miss a lot of details and misunderstand stuff, and since apparently episode 16 is so OMGWTFawesome, I want to be in the best shape to fully appreciate it.

Anyway, I’m liking this anime a lot more. From episode 7 on, it got a lot better than the rather, let’s say, plain beginnings. I’m saying that because at first, it was only playing the slapstick tsundere card, but back then it already hinted towards romance. Now in these last few episodes I watched, the romance part gradually increased, which raises quite my opinion of the story. I also welcome the increasing seriousness of the interrelationships between different characters. As Xau has pointed out, it is a “rare combination of win and plot”, and the win part consists mainly of the excellent character development of all of our main protagonists.

For instance, I understand Ami a lot better now, and I think I misjudged her initially. I thought she had some kind of hidden agenda by getting all friendly with Ryuuji, but the fact is that she herself didn’t really know what she wanted. Her provocations have toned down a lot too, probably because she doesn’t feel the need to hide her real self anymore. And within her teasings I believe she’s getting more and more serious about Ryuuji, too.

I could comment about every character, but since I’m still tired (writing this on the fly, for once) I wanted to drop a note about Minori. I still like her the best, and I grew very fond of her during the Ami beach house/horror arc. But I keep wondering, as I mentioned in a tweet, whether she actually knows Ryuuji has a weakness for her or not. In the arc I just mentioned, they had many heartful conversations that I would believe to be filled with metaphors. Ryuuji seems to have figured some out, or at least tried to bend them his way, but Minori… I wonder, did she intentionally engage in that boyfriend question with that entire “seeing ghosts” talk just because she found the comparison appropriate, or did she really want to know what Ryuuji thought of her? Initially, I thought the latter, but in the end it did not seem like she had gotten any closer to him than she was before.

I don’t know, is she really dense, or is she just faking it? After all, in episode 14, I think she does notice some kind of bond, or deeper meaning to the photograph number 85. Which makes me think, is she realizing it only now, or is it something completely different? I don’t know, I hope the next episodes will provide me answers. In the end, I wonder if her energetic, cheerful self isn’t just some kind of facade to hide any kind of deep, emotional dent. It must be, in some way or another, right? I mean, in the end of episode 13, when she says “I’m talking normally” (or whatever 普通に喋ってる translates to) after blurting out she might be interested in girls… The expression on her face went from incredibly gentle to that of surprise. I don’t know, it might just be me trying to find yet another point of interest to my favorite character, but I’d like to believe she is a weak girl inside and that she needs someone to comfort her. XD

Anyway, that’s all I have to say for now, and I went from a small comment to a full post without even noticing it. Shit, I should just stick to twitter or something. Guess I’ll take a nap now, and attempt to watch the rest of the episodes when I wake up.

She is awesome. I love her. Mai waif-*gets strangled by Hisui*