neko's thinkbox

Wish I could be bothered to make a gif out of that scene.

And I thought I knew Tsundere. ROLLING TAIGA IS AWESOME!

Wow, wtf. A couple of hours later I check by and I find this post truncated from the half of the post on… So I tried to recall what I had written, but it’s not the same now. Thanks to those who tried helping, I really appreciate it. This is the first time I forget to save a backup and see what happens… Gosh -_-

Actually, I wasn’t planning on watching it. But I happened to come across a link of a live stream of the episode, and since I was bored anyway, I decided to give it a watch. And I liked it.
I’m not gonna write a summary though. Too bothersome, uninteresting and ungratifying.

There are at least two important factors that I find extremely interesting in Tora Dora: Ryuuji’s eyes and Taiga’s extreme tsundere behavior.

He’s genuinely smiling happily, really.

Because of his dangerous looking eyes, Ryuuji Takasu is believed to be a criminal by almost everyone. He’s being judged and misunderstood for his looks, and people won’t even listen to him, which gives quite an accurate image of how our ignorant society often works. (Afterthought: Trying to involve social psychology, GJ neko.) Of course, the reactions in this anime are pretty exaggerated though, which creates the most funny situations. At least he’s “respected”. And it’s not like he’s desperately lonely, either.

There are a few people who don’t feel uncomfortable around him: his best friend Kitamura Yuusaku, and his secret crush Kushieda Minori. From what I gather, at least Yuusaku understands that Ryuuji is in fact just another normal student without any criminal intents at all. In Minori’s case, I believe she doesn’t care about his dangerous eyes. She just approaches him naturally, and often causes him to throw a fit of shyness. Everything sounds normal so far.

Fist —> Ryuji’s face.

But then we have this cute but veeeeeeeery impulsive hysterical violent you call it loli girl called Taiga Aisaka. *gasps for breath* In short, she’s an tsundere of the purest breed, who doesn’t fear Ryuuji’s eyes, incidentally is Minori’s best friend and has a crush on Yuusaku.

Your guess is as good as mine: this looks like a complex quest for love between our two main characters and definitely means a lot of trouble for Ryuuji, who in the course of the events becomes the direct victim of Taiga’s tsun eccentricity. Yep, Taiga is the main ingredient that makes this series funny and awesome. (Hey, now that I think of it, doesn’t she look similar to Chiaki from Minami-ke?)

What a sight to behold. WHERE’S MY BULLET TIME!!

I found that scene in the classroom pretty puzzling at first, and made me misunderstand Taiga’s objective. It made me think she was a hysterical bitch in heat. Sending chairs flying all across the classroom, hiding in the locker, but rolling out of it like a ball… Then, charging at Ryuuji and trying to take away his bag, and leaving with a loud “BAKA”… lolwat?

It only makes sense later on, when we find out that she had placed a love letter in Ryuuji’s bag insted of Yuusaku’s bag. No wonder she tried to kill him out of embarrassment during the night… But boy, what a clumsy ditz she is. Her clumsiness is also one of her cute points, which balances nicely with her tsun part.

This parrot is hilarious. He looked and sounded as if he was taking a large dump… Po.

Submitting Ryuuji literally as her servant dog, making him prepare breakfast for her in the early morning, bossing him around, and not even offering one single word of gratitude for his work… Taiga sure raises the tsun bar for every aspiring tsundere out there.

Oh and by now you must have noticed that I haven’t said anything about the seiyuus. Indeed, I don’t give a crap about whether Kugyuu is trying not to sound like her usual loli tsundere roles, or Hocchan, or whoever else. I try not making it the main reason for watching an anime, or the main topic of discussion (although, it seems pretty popular for bloggers nowadays to compare seiyuus with their older performances in this kind of uneventful first episodes of a series). Right, in the end it’ll just be an additional excuse for my lack of references about those seiyuus.

Still, I don’t care. Thanks Taiga for the explanation.

This first episode was good enough in general. The animation was very good, and the story looked promising, so much it got me in the mood to read the Tora Dora manga. And I feel that in the manga, Taiga’s tsundereness is depicted even more violent and threatening than in the anime. She was so exaggeratedly tsun it almost annoyed me. Ryuuji really didn’t deserve such misfortune. But, and this is the magic of every tsundere character, once she shows her dere side, Taiga becomes even more CUTE, so much she makes me want to (insert random affective action) her.

She will become even more dere later on in the manga, so there is quite some cute stuff to look forward to in the anime, as it follows the manga pretty closely. The first episode covers chapters 1 and 2, and half of the third chapter. At this rate though, it will overtake the manga pretty soon since only one volume has been released yet (and I only read 12 scanlated chapters so far).

By the way, Minorin is freakin’ cute! Red-haired girls banzai!

Of course it’s not like I forgot that there was a light novel at the beginning of it all. I was actually about to read it, before I noticed that this post had been mysteriously truncated. I think I got the gist of what I had written earlier, but it still feels incomplete. And I’m still annoyed I didn’t make a backup of it.

I need a Minori to confort me now. A Kud is fine too.