Toradora! SOS 01
とらドラ！ SOS Episode 01

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Ami is complaining about having to eat Tarako spaghetti at a restaurant as part of her job and she didn’t like it. Ryuuji tells her she’s just never had good Tarako spaghetti. She wonders if there is such a thing, so off to Jonny’s they go to try this good Tarako spaghetti. They sit with Minori, who ignores Ryuuji but Ryuuji is happy his name came up in conversation. It is decided that they’ll have a Tarako spaghetti duel, which is followed by a meat spaghetti duel and some long-winded dialog bits. After all that, “SOS” is determined by the girls to mean “strawberry on shortcake.”

Thoughts/Review:

Hmmmm. Can you say “boring?” I knew you could. Can you say, “tedious?” I know you could. Can you say, “Not funny?” I knew you could.

I had hoped for something along the lines of the Shana-tan series, where Shana from Shakugan no Shana is super-deformed and placed into a parody bit about the actual series. While the five main characters from Toradora! are all super deformed, unfortunately there is an attempt to be funny which fails to be funny. Looking at the imagery, one would expect some level of humor, but I never found it. Instead, I found myself thinking, “Come on! Where are the funny jokes?” Maybe I need to be Japanese to appreciate this, I don’t know. There was just nothing funny about a spaghetti eating contest. I realize those long-winded dialog moments were supposed to be funny in a weird sort of way, but they were just tedious and no amount of chibi characters moving around in the background could save it.

The end of the episode indicates there’s more. Not sure about that, but if there is, hopefully the writers will try to be funny.