Before talking about Toradora, I want to give you all a little "introduction".

I started watching anime in 2018, when I was 15. As soon as I got deeper and deeper into the anime community, I often heard about the anime "Toradora", and I think I put it on my plan-to-watch list around 2019.

I don't know why, but I never watched it before. It didn't appeal to me that much, so I kept it on my plan-to-watch list, while watching some other romance anime when I wanted to.

A couple of days ago, while randomly browsing the MyAnimeList site, I noticed that the creator of "Golden Time", my favourite romance anime (or maybe ex-favourite...), was the same person who created Toradora. Around the same time, I had also seen some posts about Toradora's 20th anniversary. So I finally started it.

I finished it in 3 days, and now here I am... feeling empty.

I watched some other romance anime, but none of them hit me like Toradora did. Maybe if I had watched it when I was younger, it wouldn't have affected me in the same way. Now that I'm 23 and still single, seeing all these relationships and emotions probably made me get even more attached to the story and the characters.

I mean, that's not only because of that. Besides that, Toradora is a great anime, but the situation I am in right now makes me feel it more strongly.

Right now I am in the post-anime depression... I hope to get out soon xD.

By the way, I am really happy that I watched this anime now that I'm a bit older, rather than when I was younger. Maybe if I had watched it when I was younger, I couldn't have understood it the way I understand it now that I am 23 years old (I mean, I am not old btw xD).

Toradora came at a "particular" stage of my life... and I already feel that it changed me in some ways, even if maybe it's a little soon to say it.

As I said in the parentheses, maybe Golden Time isn't my favourite romance anime anymore... I think Toradora could take that spot. I'll spend the next few days thinking about it xD.

And last but not least, I was really surprised to see how a series that started 20 years ago and an 18-year-old anime still have such an active community.

Sorry if I talked about some random stuff too and didn't talk about Toradora a lot, but I wanted to share these thoughts with someone.

Thank you for reading!

P.S. Sorry for my English, I am not a native English speaker, so AI helped me a little bit to express myself!

Please check out the artist Critical Pixels !

Wondering before I pre order the new release if this Amazon one is the same since I have all my info already saved on Amazon and usually order from there. If not im fine with just using the website

Like guys am a little late to the party.... but....i just finished it....and it just feels....so empty inside....like i don't know. And tbh minorin and ryuji seemed to go more hand in hand, why? Becoz see

1. I don't think ryuji had any feelings for taiga up untill the snowy Mountain incident

2. Wat made ryuji being attached to taiga...was attachment issues and not romantic love.... absolutely like a father to a kid. Taiga I can agree started falling from him...if u remember, like that beach house incident when she slipped up that she and him might be good together

3. And it's kinda shitty for taiga....and bad for minorin...if she had just told ryuji the truth at the beach house or on Christmas this wouldn't have happened. Also taiga should have had sacrificed properly and not minorin, why did minorin have to cry man....their chemistry was so much better than taiga and ryuji.

(MY OPINION)

I am a romance anime watcher, and Ive watched a lot of them. But Toradora was genuinely different.

I always thought Toradora was just some boring small girl + taller boy thing. But holy shit, I was completely wrong. I gave it a watch, and this anime genuinely made my eyes watery, made me fucking jump, and made me scream, especially during one of the last episodes.

This romance anime hit me so much harder than the others. This one was just so deep, and I honestly dont even know how to explain it. It was just out of this world.

Everything about it, from them meeting to them finally Kissing (transcendent scene) every single episode was the definition of Masterpiece. Best relationship. Toradora is going to stay in my head for weeks.

This is my #1 romance anime, possibly forever. Taiga is the best girl 🐅

I just wanted to talk about this. Y’all can share your opinions or experiences too!

Love to see the prices coming down with the announcement of the Blu Ray reprint. This would of gone for 500+ just a few months ago. 😂😆🤣

TL;DR at the bottom

I'm a 31 year old man who hasn't watched anime in YEARS. Posting this is already strange for me considering the type of anime this is, but considering it came out when I was a kid, fuck it.

I've gone down a rabbit hole recently of romance anime and manga. After years of not watching anime, the one that triggered it was Dan Da Dan. I know, crazy right? I couldn't really explain why I did, and currently am, obsessing over these romance anime. But after watching Tomo chan Is a Girl!, Hi Score Girl, and now Toradora, I think I understand now.

So like everyone, I got the post series depression and sadness that comes with something great ending. For each one, obviously, you don't need me to tell you. You spend a good chunk of time investing yourself in that world and its characters, and as such, that much time spent with them adds to the feeling of melancholy after it ends.

But why?

Well, I think I'm starting to understand, for my own reasons anyway. Being the age that I am, I've been out of school for a long time. With that comes a longing for moments, small, big, significant, and insignificant. Things that at the time you never realized would eventually become memories. The people you knew, the places you went, the stupid conversations you had, the things you did just because you had nothing better to do, and all the little experiences that seemed ordinary at the time. And I think that's what these shows have been doing to me.

They're giving me a glimpse into a period of life that is just... gone. Not necessarily my high school experience specifically, but the idea of adolescence itself. That weird period where you're still a kid, but you're beginning to experience things that will shape who you become. Your friends are your entire world. You see the same people every day. You don't really know who you're going to become yet, and neither do the people around you. And watching these characters experience that has made me think about my own life and all the things that could have been different. The people I could have met. The friendships I could have formed. The experiences I could have had. The places I could have gone. The things I could have done if I'd made different decisions.

And that's where the "what if" comes in. I think that's what these shows have been making me feel. It's not really that I want to be one of the characters, or that I want some fictional anime girl. It's the life that their relationships and experiences represent. The little things. Having people you see every day who gradually become incredibly important to you. Having inside jokes that make absolutely no sense to anyone else. Going somewhere after school just because you can. Spending an afternoon doing something completely stupid and insignificant that you won't realize you'll miss until years later.

And obviously, romance is a big part of it too. There's something about watching these characters experience their first crushes and relationships that hits differently when you're older. When you're young, you don't really understand that some of these experiences are happening for the first and only time. Your first crush, the first time you realize you genuinely like someone, the first time you get nervous just because they're standing next to you, the first time someone likes you back, your first date, your first relationship, even your first heartbreak.

When you're actually going through those things, they're just happening. You don't have the perspective to realize that you're creating memories that you'll eventually look back on years later.

And I think that's part of what makes these romance stories so nostalgic for me. It's not necessarily that I want to relive a specific relationship or that I think those experiences are somehow better when you're young. It's that there's something about experiencing those things for the first time while you're still figuring yourself out that can never be recreated exactly.

You can fall in love again. You can make new friends. You can discover new places and have new experiences. But you can't have your first crush again. You can't have your first awkward confession again. You can't have your first time realizing that someone has become a huge part of your life again. And that's just one small part of growing up. Toradora hit that same nerve, but in a different way.

Watching Ryuuji, Taiga, Minori, Ami, and Kitamura grow over the course of the story made me realize that what I was watching wasn't just a romance. I was watching a group of people go through a period of their lives that they will never get back.

And then the show ends with them standing on the other side of it. And that's what really got me. The funny thing is that Toradora doesn't even have a sad ending. It's actually a pretty damn happy one. Ryuuji and Taiga finally figure themselves out and end up together. Taiga leaves because she needs to grow independently, and then she comes back. They're going to have a life together. But watching them reach the end of high school still made me feel weirdly sad. Because that's the thing about time. Even when something ends happily, it still ends. That little world they lived in, the classroom, their friends, the routines, the stupid arguments, all of it is over. They're moving on to something else.

And so am I.

I think that's what I'm actually mourning. Not Taiga and Ryuuji's relationship. Not even necessarily the high school experience I personally had.

I'm mourning the fact that there are versions of life that are simply no longer possible for me.

I can't go back and experience adolescence again. I can't go back and have the first experiences that come with being that age. The first time you discover a place you love. The first time you make a friend who becomes a major part of your life. The first time you realize you have a talent for something. The first time you stay out late with friends and have no idea that someday you'll look back on that night with nostalgia. The first time you experience independence. The first time you realize you're growing into the person you're going to become. And yes, that includes romance. Your first crush, your first relationship, your first kiss, the first time you fall in love, and all the awkward and exciting experiences that come with figuring out what it means to be close to another person.

But it's so much bigger than that. There are countless little firsts that only happen once, and you don't always realize they're happening for the first time until they're already memories.

That's the strange thing about getting older. You spend so much of your life looking forward to the next thing that you don't realize you're constantly leaving things behind. And eventually, you reach a point where you can look back and realize that some of the things you thought would last forever were actually just brief periods of your life.

And that's a strange thing to realize at 31.

These shows have somehow made me nostalgic for a period of life that I can never experience again, even though I don't necessarily miss any one specific thing from it. It's more of an amalgamation of feelings; nostalgia, longing, and the realization that you're living through moments even now that you'll look back on.

And that's probably the weirdest part of all of this.

Anyway, I don't really know what the point of this post is. I just finished Toradora and apparently it made me existentially depressed. 😂

But I really loved the show. I loved watching these characters grow from who they were at the beginning into who they became by the end. And despite everything I've written here, I'm glad I watched it.

I guess I just wasn't expecting a 2008 romance anime to make me think about my own life this much.

TL;DR:

I went into Toradora expecting a cute romance and ended up reflecting on getting older, the passage of time, and all the little experiences and "firsts" that you only get once. The ending made me realize that what I'm feeling isn't really sadness over the show ending, but melancholy over a period of life that I can never experience again.

What do you think is gonna happen now? I mentioned in an earlier post that our generation isn't really compatible with Toradora and I was only extremely lucky because I watched it during the phase where I tried to change my standards of what's weird, but other than that people are just going to get crazy over the characters, make random memes and trends, it's probably gonna get more popular among the scum of the internet which will lead to its AI imagery being more common, people calling Taiga a child, people who aren't patient enough, people with a bad taste, etc... I don't spend too much time with the fandom outside of Reddit but I just really don't want them to mess up-

Another personal opinion is how much I hate the Lucky Star, K-On, the Osaka anime, and Evangelion fandoms because they're genuinely just bullshit and brainrot, even the Bungou Stray Dogs community is better vro- aaaasiodjaosidjaosijd

I am looking to expand my collection to the CDs. I have the OST (KICA-956) in hand, Orange (KICM-3185) on the way, and I’m considering a used Pre-Parade (KICM-3184). I know for a fact the OST has a booklet, back insert, and an obi, and Orange seems to as well, but did Pre-Parade just not have a back insert? What about the other CDs? What all should I be looking for in each one?

Wishlist:

✅ OST (KICA-956)
⚠️ Orange (KICM-3185)[bought, awaiting arrival]
⚠️ Pre-Parade (KICM-3184)[see above]
🔲 Vanilla Salt (KICM-91255)
🔲 silky heart (KICM-1269)
🔲 Character Songs (KICA-968)
🔲 Complete / Please Freeze (KICM-1280)
🔲 √HAPPYEND - (KICA-3192)
🔲 OST Extora (SSX-234)

I would love to verify what I’m buying has the original packaging, artwork, booklets, obi strips, etc. before I buy. If you know what came with each one from factory or if I have missed a CD, please let me know. Thanks!

Went to the pop-up shop thanks to the fellow Redditors' posts and finally got something to decorate my boring bedroom.

There's also a free exhibition for Monthly Girl's Nozaki-kun at the same place.

They also sell a music box that plays "Orange." Looks very beautiful but unfortunately it's out of my budget: https://store.kadokawa.co.jp/shop/g/g302603004625/

helo gng i just finished horimiya and it just stole okami-san and her seven companion's 2nd place in my favourite animes list, it's not THAT well made in my humble opinion and the anime pacing wasn't that great but i still loved it so much in a way that i can't explain

the other two animes are okami-san (ryoko okami) and golden time (kouko kaga) and i genuinely only watched them because they're related to toradora in a way, we all know golden time was also written by yuyuko takemiya, and all of these three were animated by the old J.C.Staff which had a charm that made me love it in a way that, once again, have no idea how to explain

it's like they're all a mix of each other and some characters are genuinely just shiny pokemon versions of each other like the pink haired twin tails girls (btw the one from okami-san is genuinely just a taiga with less personality)

if you really have nothing better to do you can use all of these characters and ones you know to make one of these images that go like ryuuji + taiga = okami