It is a delicious poster! And I see what you did here (detail, zoomed 3x):
Lots of other fun detail, for example Minorin carries a British infantry rifle (not even a Japanese one (memories of my first anime blog post)). I wonder what the little mechs are.
The colors are a bit strange, and not just on the emblem. Sumire's eyes disagree with the model, although she's in the foreground. But it's unimportant.
Secondly, on the subject of Rocket-related anime, I do wonder if Author has seen Gainaxs Wings of Honneamise, a movie about a small countries much derided space force against the backdrop of a neighbouring country threatening to invade. Beautiful movie, though perhaps a little overwrought with religious banter for most, not to mention the leisurely pacing. I do love it, though.
It was on my list forever, but no, I haven't.
Thirdly, could Taiga really pilot a Gundam, or any other giant robot for that matter? It strikes me that such a shortarse would have trouble reaching the controls, no matter how far it’s possible to move the seat forward.
It's an issue, yes, especially if you recall that even Soyuz TMA ("A" means "Anthropometric") has — updated from TM! — minimum crew height of 150 cm and minimum mass of 50 kg (sorry, Yukari Morita!). But then Doug Bader piloted a Spitfire with a wooden leg. Surely some accomodation may be found. It's anime!
UPDATE: DiGiKerot e-mails regarding the British L85 above: "you didn't say *which* island nation you were talking about". Zing!
Meanwhile, one thought that occurred to me regarding the Taiga question. By the time Ami and Sumire are established enough to pack serious punch in the society, the second generation should be capable enough to pilot mechs. If Taiga's kids are medium sized, they'll be fine. Taiga herself? Well...
STEVEN TAKES a wider view on the topic of Taiga's size, and observes that "courage comes in small packages". I'm not taking anything away from Taiga's courage. As ep.16 demonstrates she does not only beat up boys who are defenseless against a doll-like girl. But I think the deciding test is if we talk a Real Robot or Super Robot style of anime. Toradora itself has nothing supernatural, and in keeping with that GodS would — at most — feature a gundam. As DiGiKerot himself explained his mecha design, "if they are still working on space travel, their robots would be kind of ghetto anyway." When mechs and spaceships are built on assembly line "like tanks and jeeps", there's no way for Taiga to receive a custom design, in particular in training.