The fact that J.C. Staff was producing this worried me. The fast pace of episodes 1 and 2 was somewhat unnerving, and the way they cut out parts of the scenes which explained why things showed up the way they did (the reasons everyone saw Taiga and Ryuuji as a couple, the confession’s order and a few lines being dropped here and there)… I don’t have much confidence that they won’t suddenly make them a loving couple by the end. Or just another expy of Louise and her ‘dog’, in order to pander to Kuguyuu’s fans.

I’m not angry that it’s not a one-on-one adaptation, although I prefer those, so much that they appear to be setting it up so that this is a ‘typical tsundere scenario’. ToraDora the light novels and the manga aren’t like that, and yet J.C. Staff seems determined to make this square peg fit into the round hole by shaving off the corners which make it different. I’m repeating what OTHER people have said, people who’ve never read the novels or manga. This is how it looks to them, and that’s why I’m worried that J.C. Staff will make this like Shana or Zero no Tsukaima. They’ve added more violence to pander to the Kuguyuu fans who loved her Shana or Louise roles, and they’ve made episode 3 a filler already.

If you want to see what I mean, I suggest reading other blogs talking about the series so far… and you’ll notice ALL of them have the view that this is a typical tsundere show, albeit one where Kugimiya Rie is using a lower voice than her usual.

As for Kitamura’s crush, obviously if you think I was talking about Kawashima Ami then you know nothing about the later novels and how Kitamura’s crush of someone else makes the current confession scene logical without altering anything later, except that I’m now almost certain that my interpretaction of what you are thinking is correct – mainly you’re just angry the anime is not a one-to-one adaptation instead of looking at how the overall plot can/will progress (which you can’t anyway, since you obviously are not clued in enough about the later novels as shown by you raising Ami as Kitamura’s love interest), so I’m not going to talk about that anymore.

I raged so hard when I saw this episode and the fact that the next episode is a god damn filler does NOT help. I had high hopes when I heard they were adapting Tora Dora into an anime and this episode has pretty much crushed them all.

Like I said in earlier posts, he’s moved on from Taiga – as Volume 5 of the novels suggests more openly. And if you’re talking about Kawashima, he says he grew up with her and doesn’t see her THAT way either… but hates her hypocrisy, which she engages in around him now as well as around adults and everyone else. But, the fact remains – a year ago he did ask her, got rejected… and since then he’s moved on from Taiga, which makes her own cause (trying to win him over now that he’s moved on, a year after she blew HIM off) a lost one. Of course, that doesn’t stop her from trying…

obviously spoiler on the novel…..

The reason that Kitamura reject Taiga is not because Taiga rejected him last year nor was it because he thinks that Taiga and Ryuji is a pair (he made it quite clear that he understood what’s coming from Taiga, and he said he accepted her feelings too! That is not a misunderstanding), it’s because he actually has a crush on *somebody else* now (which the manga won’t even begin to be able to touch as that is dealt with in volume 5 of the novel which AFAIK is not fan-translated yet, so stop using only the first volume of either the novel or the manga to base your reasoning). He was going to reject Taiga regardless anyway because he already has eyes on someone else (which is actually hinted in the anime OP if you look really carefully). If you don’t know this piece of information and only base it on what is out there in English only, yes, you would think dropping out the whole “one year before” information changes the context, but in fact if you know the REAL story, it changes nothing, at all. Kitamura probably rejected her in the nicest way possible and gently nugged her to someone besides her, that’s real tact instead of being a jerk.

Did you catch the Gundam 00 stream by chance, comrade?

Indeed the dere side often doesn’t come out normally enough, but male lead thickheadedness can also be a factor. If a woman is yelling at you and she ain’t an authority figure, chances are she’s an enemy that has declared hostilities, a guy can then ignore it or oblige such hostility with his own.

I don’t think Kitamura is being an asshole, Taiga made her feelings clear it will take more than the passage of time to heal that one…If he wanted to be an asshole he would not even consent to being a friend.

Besides, if a girl keeps yelling at you and blowing you off… sooner or later, you tend to lose interest in the girl, especially if you never see the ‘dere’ side, which most tsunderes in anime don’t show to the guy they like except in extremely contrived circumstances.

Still, Kitamura lost out last year… which means that his turning her down is either ’sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose’, or else just showing he’s an asshole, depending on who you talk to.

Still hoping that Taiga’s antics change otherwise success for her will remain a pipe dream. Perhaps I’ll read the scanlations instead since it seems that JC Staff might end up slaughtering the source material whole sale, rather than limit themselves to mere butchery.

And part of the issue is that Taiga was never loved – not by her folks, not by her friends. She doesn’t know how to react to it, or to softer feelings.. which is why she goes with her instinctive yelling and shouting and lashing out. Tsunderes don’t always win… which was part of the original series’ point, and which seems to have been lost on J.C. Staff. As in real life, a lot of the time the guy gets put off by the initial cold reaction unless he’s either a) a stalker, or b) obsessed… with the very rare c) he knows she didn’t mean it, except with case ‘C’, that’s usually classified as ‘the guy is a control freak’. Which, y’know, he usually is. Or deluded.

So the tsundere response, which wasn’t shown here, blew up in her face a year later. And of course, leave it to J.C. Staff to forget that important part.