When it comes to Toradora!, I can't help but think of the pinnacle of the Romance/ Comedy genre. This is really my favorite genre to watch and it is because of this anime. It manages to bring together different facets of its characters without sacrificing valuable development. There are times when an anime touches on heavy subjects but shies away from them, but Toradora! manages to transform them to enhance its characters. It balances a love triangle, complex family and friend relationships, while exploring the lives of its side characters. I believe what separates a good anime from a great anime is all in the character writing. Look, we can all agree in some form that Romance anime's have certain troupes that they follow ie. the love triangle, the childhood best friend etc. While Toradora! has these elements in the plot, it is in the strong character writing that makes them unique. It builds upon Ryuji and Taiga's budding relationship while also developing Yasuko as a mother who, despite her whimsical lines and aloof mannerisms, cares a great deal about Ryuji the way a mother naturally would.
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This starts to become evident when Ryuji volunteers for the job to work with Minori (who I believe is criminally underrated as a character). Yasuko gets angry for the first time really in the whole anime when she finds out because she doesn't want Ryuji to have to sacrifice his schooling. Taking it one step further, I would almost argue that while the Ryuji-Taiga-Minori triangle is the one that takes center stage, the Ryuji-Taiga-Yasuko triangle is the one that matters the most.
Anyone who has watched a Romance anime can tell you that the allure of the love triangle is what makes it enticing, but this second triangle is what separates Toradora! from the rest. It focuses on the non-romantic aspect of the anime. While Ryuji and Taiga eventually fall in love with each other, they first become friends. (Ryuji relies on Taiga to show the rest of his class, and really the general public, that he isn't a delinquent despite his harsh looking eyes and Taiga relies on Ryuji to quite literally take care of her) As a result of their friendship (and Ryuji cooking dinner for Taiga every night), they spend a lot of time with Yasuko. It is easy to forget the pain that Yasuko is harboring inside of her that she hides with comedy. She got pregnant as a teenager by her boyfriend, yet she still gave the picture of them together to Ryuji and every time he looks at Yasuko she exclaims that he looks so much like his father and then fabricates a story about him getting stabbed or something (I don't quite remember exactly the reason she gives him) when in reality he just up and left her to raise Ryuji on her own (since she ran away from her parents because she thought they would be angry that she got pregnant). One of the most heart wrenching moments in Toradora!, for me at least, is when we get that flash back of Yasuko telling Ryuji that she will be "Super momma" to make up for him not having a dad. It all sort of culminates in the last episode when she tries to do what she did to her parents and leaves Ryuji after he decides to marry Taiga. Ryuji recognizes that he has to "save" his mom from the same mistake she made those years ago, so he forces his mom to confront her parents by calling her and making her go back to her parents house. I believe that while Ryuji and Taiga's romantic relationship takes center stage, the true underlying theme is really parental acceptance. Taiga wants her mom and dad to accept her for who she is and not what they want her to be, Ryuji wants Yasuko to let him help her with money (At the beginning of the anime, Ryuji and Taiga first really sit down and talk to each other when they both haven't filled out their life goal/plan worksheet, which we later find out was because Ryuji didn't want to leave his mom alone to cook, clean and pay all the bills) and all Yasuko really wanted was for her parents to acknowledge how hard she has worked to raise her son. Sure, it was all her own doing, there is no way to know how her parents would have reacted to her unexpected pregnancy since she ditched them, but did you see how she instantly broke down when her parents told her how proud they were of her?
Anyway, back to my original point about triangles Yasuko only managed to find parental acceptance because Ryuji meet Taiga, because they fell in love, because they ran away to Yasuko's parents house. That is why this anime is so darn awesome. There are so many facets to story and while I haven't read the manga, the anime does a great job of showing all the nuances to the Romance troupes it uses.
