Toradora! 20 With her struggling off-camera for most of the past few episodes, I’d almost forgotten how much I like Minori. Sure, she’s not the strongest or most straight-forward person (is anyone in this show?) but her quirky, boyish weirdness is totally endearing. The conversation between Minori and Ryuuji walking to school holding Taiga’s bag between them (OMG SYMBOLISM) was my favourite part of the episode. I only got the gist of the stuff about her little brother going to Koshien when I watched the raw, so waiting for subs was worth the wait to fully understand her “Mr. Lady” anecdote. It was rad to see that eccentric individualism again (she wants to cut her bangs so short that berries grow on them? WTF) as well as some of the largely unspoken ambition that defines her identity (manifested in the slight jealousy of her brother). I heart Minorin again! The chemistry between her and Ryuuji is great to watch too. However, maybe it’s my bias as an official-couple shipper but Ryuuji’s reasons for wanting to find out how Minori truly feels about him seemed to be all messed up and backward this episode. His crush on her is still huge, but the thought of Taiga surviving on cup ramen for his sake, Taiga learning to separate her trash and Taiga believing in him as a match for Minori came up again and again as the reasons he had to “gambaru!”, rather than the expected motivation of actually wanting to be with the girl he’s had a crush on all this time. I found this as stupid as Ami did.
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