Having read Michael's post on Toradora 20 and his vivid description of astonishment at the changes Taiga underwent after Christmas got me thinking about the changes Taiga underwent too (After reading the post before that he must have haeted Taiga quite a bit). I watched that episode again, and sure enough, Taiga wasn't the same anymore, but what happened to Minorin was actually even more surprising. I decided I had to say something about this, but after trying to say a few words in his comment box, I decided I was writing quite a bit and decided that this means it should be a blog post instead.

While its true that Taiga underwent a great change in attitude, her personality has not changed. She is still the same girl who curses people and calls them names out of habit. What struck me was that Michael made very little mention about Minori's sudden flustering and hesitation upon contact with Ryuuji, and preferring to dwell more on Taiga who really didn't play much of a role that episode, other than declare that she is potentially going to play an even smaller role in the future several times. All she did was repeatedly say she won't hang around Ryuuji any more and told Ami not to either, and told Ryuuji off for following her. All for Minorin. The entire episode was focused on Minori, and only Minori.

The first part where some real development was going on was just before class in the corridor where Ryuuji met Minorin for the first time during the day. Though I must say that the part where Ryuuji found it difficult to say a simple "Good Morning" to Taiga was quite a pathetic attempt to steer the story right. It only seemed like JC Staff doing what they do best: doing hard resets on relationships like they did with Zero no Tsukaima. He acted just as he was in the beginning of the series, which came across as a weird way to tell a story. What would've been more interesting would be if Ryuuji actually greeted Minorin without a smile, and left the corridor leaving a sense of angst and awkward emotion, which would be the most likely outcome of the situation Ryuuji is in right now. Minorin too, was given a push on the Reset button. All of a sudden she is hyper-genki and happy-faced again. If she were real I would label her as very inconsiderate towards Ryuuji, and I would not have changed my mind had I not seen what happened in the middle of the episode at the crossing.

Another important scene was the scene at the crossing. This scene is arguably the climax of the episode, and the basically the whole point of it. Michael did a good job of explaining what happened. And I would be surprised if anyone did not realize the significance of this scene. I must say that when I looked at what was happening to Minorin as Taiga applied her chained cupid attacks on the both of them, I felt a nostalgic tinge that I remember to have felt once during secondary school, when I had a crush on another girl for the first time. The feeling I remember wriggled its way up my spine when she grabbed my hand and forced me to go to the soccer field during P.E. (yes sometimes we did have a choice). It was that crazy racy feeling that you feel when you know something is too good to be true. Since seeing Minorin flustered from grabbing Ryuuji's hand was emotionally intense enough to give me these long lost feelings again, I must say that was a stroke of genius by the scriptwriter.

Minori and Ryuuji's time in the kitchen did not have any substance in my opinion, since it was just normal talk about Taiga and life in general, and Minori hiding behind her cover of smiling and laughing again. This felt lame, and felt very lame to me. I had this horrible feeling all of a sudden that the scriptwriter threw away a really good chance to continue developing the story. Its sad he didn't push much of it through and wasted a few minutes of the episode doing nothing that counts towards anything.

Oh my I'm forgetting why I really wanted to write this post. Anyway, one might argue that Minori did not have much screen time during the episode, but the whole point of the episode was as clear as the sky could ever be. This episode was laying the groundwork for more development with Minori to come. Even so, I must applaud Taiga for the efforts she has put in to tying Minori with Ryuuji. Such selflessness is indeed hard to find, especially when you are also emotionally involved, and I think that's what struck Michael the hardest, and made him and other "dissenters" percieve the episode as Taiga turning over a new leaf.

written by astrobunny \\