Sixty Years Since Mighty Atom: 2008
Feb. 15th, 2023 07:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerA day after Valentine’s Day, I’m getting around to the first episode of a romantic comedy that’s been well-regarded for some time (so long as it’s compared more to “recent anime” than to some of the other series I’ve sampled over the past forty-five days). Had Toradora! been made one year earlier than it actually was the alignment would have been that much more perfect, but as I hadn’t been anticipating it as I pondered various titles I’m happy with how things turned out.
Toradora! is another series I first saw on DVD, bought again when a Blu-Ray set followed, and never quite got around to watching a second time. Taking the shrinkwrap off the box did raise a melancholy thought or two about the pleasant and not exorbitantly priced sets from NIS America, a company no longer releasing anime, but I did run into two momentary audio dropouts during the first episode. (Then, when I went looking for my previous comments, I was surprised both by how brief they were and by an allusion to “replacement discs.”) I was wondering how this show would look in the transition to high definition and did wind up uncertain about a few of the shots not looking quite as fine-lined as others, but perhaps the character designs also added to an unusual feeling to things.
Able to recall Toradora! has its two main characters start off convinced they’ve fallen for third and fourth parties, I was surprised all the same when both of them got voiceovers over the opening moments alluding to romance; maybe it’s a matter of “when you know what’s coming.” The first encounters of Ryuji, who looks threatening enough to unwillingly intimdate everyone else at high school, and the compact but fiery Taiga are energetic and indeed comedic in a violent way (which had me considering how this series was adapted from novels and how talky certain other animated adaptations from that medium can seem to get for me, although it did manage to offer a conclusion rather than a mere “please start reading” last episode). By the end of that first episode, though, Ryuji is starting to get a first sense of what Taiga doesn’t show at school. It seemed like another good introduction, even if all the other “it would be nice to see the rest of this” examples I’ve run into already has somewhat diminished my motivation to add this series to that list too.
Toradora! is another series I first saw on DVD, bought again when a Blu-Ray set followed, and never quite got around to watching a second time. Taking the shrinkwrap off the box did raise a melancholy thought or two about the pleasant and not exorbitantly priced sets from NIS America, a company no longer releasing anime, but I did run into two momentary audio dropouts during the first episode. (Then, when I went looking for my previous comments, I was surprised both by how brief they were and by an allusion to “replacement discs.”) I was wondering how this show would look in the transition to high definition and did wind up uncertain about a few of the shots not looking quite as fine-lined as others, but perhaps the character designs also added to an unusual feeling to things.
Able to recall Toradora! has its two main characters start off convinced they’ve fallen for third and fourth parties, I was surprised all the same when both of them got voiceovers over the opening moments alluding to romance; maybe it’s a matter of “when you know what’s coming.” The first encounters of Ryuji, who looks threatening enough to unwillingly intimdate everyone else at high school, and the compact but fiery Taiga are energetic and indeed comedic in a violent way (which had me considering how this series was adapted from novels and how talky certain other animated adaptations from that medium can seem to get for me, although it did manage to offer a conclusion rather than a mere “please start reading” last episode). By the end of that first episode, though, Ryuji is starting to get a first sense of what Taiga doesn’t show at school. It seemed like another good introduction, even if all the other “it would be nice to see the rest of this” examples I’ve run into already has somewhat diminished my motivation to add this series to that list too.