Toradora! 22
とらドラ！Episode 22

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

The ski trip is over and Taiga is out, recovering at her mother’s place. Ryuuji is feeling down about this and when Yuusaku talks with him, Ryuuji tells Yuusaku to not let Taiga know that Ryuuji rescued her. He’d rather her believe that Yuusaku rescued her considering her words on the mountain when she thought she was talking with Yuusaku. He agrees. After school, Haruta and Noto take Ryuuji to a ramen place for a meal and they discuss post-high school plans. Once inside, they are stunned to see Minori, who’s working a new part time job. She warns them not to order “ikemen” (“ikemen” means “cool men” but can also be a pun for “cool noodles” as in ramen) or she’ll poke them in the eye. They order it and get poked.

After they’ve had their ramen, Haruta comments on Minori’s rejection of Ryuuji and Maya not speaking to Noto. Ryuuji then heads home, noting Taiga’s darkened apartment as he passes. At dinner with his mother, she airily speaks of Ryuuji not worrying about college money. Her feeling is that because Ryuuji is different from her (in that he’s highly intelligent), a college education will cause his talents to take off. She doesn’t want Ryuuji taking a job either to pay for school since she wants him to focus on college once he gets there. As Ryuuji cleans up, he thinks back to how his mother has always been this way in her way of thinking.

At school the next day, Ryuuji learns from Minori that Taiga gets along well with her mother, so the situation Taiga had with her father won’t be there. Ryuuji also learns that Minori has been made captain of the coed softball team. Ami comes up and Minori acts very friendly to her. Ami is irritated and walks on, remarking on how nice it must be for the father now that the child is away. She does not go to class but instead heads up to where the vending machines are to sit in her usual spot. Minori follows her, giving her a warning that the spot Ami is sitting in is actually haunted by the ghost of a brokenhearted woman. Ami freaks out about this and hurries out of the spot. Minori tells Ami that its OK because nothing bad has happened yet. Minori tells an allegory about her own experience with ghost (her summer talk with Ryuuji), but this annoys Ami, who knows well what Ami is driving at. Minori tells the departing Ami that she will won’t hesitate to go for what she wants, but Ami doesn’t want to hear it.

Yuri-sensei has a talk with Ryuuji about his career assessment. She’s concerned since Ryuuji is a gifted student and she doesn’t want him to waste his gifts. Ryuuji comes home to find it empty, his mother having taken a second job. Ryuuji now understands more of what his mother was saying earlier regarding his schooling and not to worry about it. Ryuuji takes the hair clip he had purchased for Minori and places it in a box of his writings and songs he made for Minori. He remembers when Minori first looked at his stuff and realizes that having feelings for someone is not embarrassing.

There’s a knock at the door and Taiga is there, having forgotten her keys. Ryuuji demands to know where she’s been and learns that Taiga just felt like skipping class and spending time with her mother. Taiga only intends to use Ryuuji’s balcony to gain access to hers but Ryuuji wants her to stay and manages to get her to do so for a bit thanks to his ugly parrot pet. Taiga moves on and sees Ryuuji’s open box. She’s not thrilled that Ryuuji did not make any progress with Minori but she’s relieved when she hears Ryuuji tell her that Yuusaku rescued her as she’d said some stupid things. Ryuuji tells her that he heard that she didn’t say anything when rescued so it must have been a dream. That makes Taiga feel better and she makes it to her apartment.

Thoughts/Review:

Hmmmm…once again, this series continues to interest me because I’m never quite sure where it is going. After the events of last episode, I thought for sure we’d have Ryuuji and Taiga become a couple. BUZZZ! Not so fast, middle-aged dude! Instead, Taiga still wants to push Ryuuji with Minori and pretend that what she said didn’t in fact happen. I believe she’s not faking and that she honestly believe Ryuuji’s lie about Yuusaku rescuing her. So with that in mind, now what will happen when she returns to school? Ami and Minori are much more involved here than before due to the fight.

Minori clearly wanted to put up a false front and pretend nothing happened. This is seen in how she treated Ryuuji in the Ramen shop as well as her trying to pretend the fight never happened when she saw Ami at school. Ami clearly has been stewing over it. She’s not interested in putting up a false front about this with Minori. While Minori wanted to couch her words in the search for ghosts, Ami just cut to the chase. This is new ground for Ami in many ways because I don’t think she’s ever loved a boy before and hiding behind a facade isn’t going to help her. I do score one for Minori by making Ami freak out about the possible ghost in Ami’s favorite sitting spot. That was a funny moment.

This episode took the clearest look at how Ryuuji never really goes after what he wants. I thought about this when Minori loudly told Ami that she would press forward. Ryuuji sacrificed being a normal kid because his mother is a bimbo and thus he’s basically taken care of her (though she has brought home the money to support them). Ryuuji is even now willing to sacrifice himself for his mother. I can’t help but think that Ryuuji knows that his mother can’t have too many more years as a hostess because age will eventually win no matter how hard you try to hide it. His mother knows that an education will gain Ryuuji a better life than what she could provide.

Then there’s Ryuuji’s personal life. He never really went for Minori because of fear or whatever. Everytime he has been given an opportunity, he backs down. Even at Christmas when he was finally going to give her a gift, he backs down and just lets Minori have her preemptive say. Now with Taiga, Ryuuji again is backing down in favor of allowing Taiga to believe a lie. He’s willing to keep what he has for fear of losing it all should he proceed, I guess. Doesn’t seem like much of a life, but I do understand him on some level. I even understand his thickness on some level as well.

There were elevated humor moments here. Minori scored the most laughs with her shocking Ryuuji, Haruta, and Noto at the ramen place, then with her Three Stooges eye-pokes. She also scored humor points when she freaked Ami out (as mentioned earlier). Those were nice touches, considering how serious the anime has been of late.

One side note — does Noto like Maya? The anime has not given that indication, but it is possible that the light novels may have. It just seemed odd that Haruta in a conversation with Noto would say “Maya-sama” when asking if Maya was speaking to Noto. That implies that Noto has feelings for Maya, combined with his own sense of depression that Maya won’t speak to him. Interesting.

The previews show Ami and Ryuuji having a talk. I suppose that the anime may try to resolve these romantic threads before ending. Whether resolved or not, I would like to see Ami clearly express herself to Ryuuji though.

Well, see you next episode.