Toradora! 04
とらドラ！Episode 04

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Ryuuji comes to Taiga’s place to warm up some breakfast for her and get her up. He looks at her large living room that’s mostly empty and spots a box with a photo album in it. Looking through it, he sees a large amount of blurry photos of Yuusaka. Naturally, Taiga appears behind Ryuuji and she’s not happy that her stash was uncovered. She doesn’t want to hear anything Ryuuji has to say on the matter since for some reason she can’t explain, all the pictures she takes of Yuusaku are blurry. He offers to take pictures for her and this changes her attitude right away to a friendly one.

At school, Taiga and Ryuuji are at their shoe lockers talking when Yuusaku comes up, getting Taiga flustered. During the morning assembly, the Student Council President calls everyone to attention to address an issue with Vice President Yuusaku at her side. Because the President forgets to put everyone at ease, Taiga goes off on her, causing Yuusaku to have to restrain Taiga. This event has Taiga experiencing a wide-range of emotions from depression at having caused a scene for Yuusaku to deal with, happiness at having been held by Yuusaku, anger at the Student Council President, and more.

At lunch, Yuusaku decides to join Taiga and Ryuuji and when seen by Minori, she joins too. Now both Ryuuji and Taiga are stunned by this turn of events, but Ryuuji is more with it than Taiga as he realizes that if he opens his bento, Yuusaku and Minori will see that it is the same as Taiga’s. So when Taiga’s bento is commented on, Ryuuji mentions that he took a cue from Minori and took a job of making lunches for others, thus explaining why his lunch is the same as Taiga’s. Hearing this, Yuusaku and Minori put in orders for a bento and then take off for their coed softball club practice.

Ryuuji and Taiga go to the practice as well since Taiga wants lots of pictures of Yuusaku. However, she doesn’t have patience to wait for Ryuuji to figure out her camera, so she starts taking pictures. Because she can’t stop moving, her shots are all blurry. Afterward, Ryuuji and Taiga are at a Starbucks knockoff shop where Taiga has printed out all the pictures and is quite pleased. That evening, Taiga decides to help Ryuuji make the bentos since one is for Yuusaku. She makes some onigiri, which tickles Ryuuji’s mother. Taiga is still drooling over her photos of Yuusaku, so Ryuuji offers to laminate a few for her.

The next day, Ryuuji is wishing he had a picture of Minori when Minori brings in some photos of her making pudding in a bucket. She’s very happy with what she did and to Ryuuji’s amazement, one of the pictures Minori gave him shows her eating pudding out of a bucket. Ryuuji then goes and finds Taiga still trying to figure out which photos she wants laminated and in frustration, gives them all to Ryuuji and tells him to pick. So he’s looking through the pictures of Yuusaku when Yuusaku comes up and sees the pictures of himself. He reveals that he has a picture of Taiga and after showing it to Yuuji, he states that he’d confessed to Taiga sometime back but she turned him down.

This revelation has Ryuuji call Taiga up to the school’s roof where she admits that Yuusaku did indeed confess to her on that very roof. At the time, she had no feelings for Yuusaku and because his confession surprised her, she turned him down on the spot. However, after she turned him down, she began to see him in a new light and fell for him. However, the damage had been done and she wishes she could have an image of Yuusaku’s face when he confessed to her. She then realizes what she’s said and gets angry with Ryuuji for making her say embarrassing things. She tries to attack, but misses.

Thoughts/Review:

The series took a somewhat unexpected turn for me with the revelation that Yuusaku had previously confessed his love for Taiga and she’d turned him down, after which she then developed feelings for him. The previous episode had indicated that Yuusaku had at least taken an interest in Taiga with him knowing she couldn’t ride a bicycle but I honestly didn’t think that meant he’d been in love with her. So that begs the question of why he decided to only be friends with Taiga after her confession? Well, the easiest answer is that Yuusaku has someone he likes more. I’m going to guess that the female Student Council President is the one Yuusaku now likes. Just a guess though.

I have to say that I am enjoying this anime more than at first, but it still hasn’t hit that “must own” level that Kannagi did. However, higher levels of enjoyment mean a better viewing experience, and that ain’t a bad thing. Plus, being late into this title means I can watch several episodes at once without having to wait. ^_^

Onto the next episode.