At first broadcast season's end, Toradora, not to put too fine a point at it, is a consistently excellent show — at what it does. However, as it focuses like a laser on teenage love, its scope stays narrow, and thus it does not deliver what I would like.

If we look at, for example, original Nodame, for all the inevitable romcom it also was a compelling story of struggle and accomplishment: S-Oke, Mrs. Lutz's school, R-stars, the competitions, and even Saiko's mastery of moe rage. It may be my demographic. Maybe teenage love issue looms large for teens. But as far as I'm concerned, it's not very interesting by itself, and so the Toradora's excellency is wasted on me.

I think I see a trend. I dismissed Marimite pretty much for the same reason: its characters live in a made-up world of irrelevant emo. In other instance, when Nick twittered "Toradora 16: yeah, the characters are loud, but I'm finding it a more interesting romance Anime than ef", I immediately registered a disagreement of taste: what made ef interesting for me is Chihiro's struggle to complete the novel (as mentioned previously).

I really need another Rocket Girls.

P.S. The above bodes ill for Kimikiss.

UPDATE: Mike of Animediet probably meant to link to this entry, not the end-post, when he placed Toradora below H&C. I should note that although he refers to the above, I do not mean to agree with him on the place of Toradora in the pantheon: he is seeking "poignance and power", not struggle and accomplishment.