Again, as is obvious, if you've not watched Toradora why not skip this post?
Toradora 21 -rewatch-
Snow sports time. Ami, Kitamura and Midorin are good, Ryuuji and Taiga complete garbage. Taiga smacks Ryuuji into the OP. Kihara and everyone gets mad in the other line while Ryuuji finally notices that Taiga has basically moved on from Kitamura completely. Vibe completely ruined!
Minorin ambushes Ryuuji outside and looks like she's going to talk serious... and she is... about Kihara and Noto. "Know why Noto is interefering with Kihara's attempts to get with Kitamura?" she asks.
I don't know what the technique is called, but this shot has the camera zooming into Ryuuji at a different pace to it zooming into the background, creating a notable sense of disorientation.
Minorin drops truth, but Ryuuji doesn't want to hear it, telling her "You don't know everything about Taiga". Minorin disagrees, revealing her latest gift from Taiga:
At Christmas, Ryuuji intended to give this to Minorin, but by the time he got it back he wasn't sure what to do with it anymore. Taiga pushes it on Minorin telling her it's really important. Sounds to me like it represents his feelings for Minorin, but it's Taiga who's still trying to get them together - not really Ryuuji anymore.
Indeed, Ryuuji falls into despair right after this, realising that Minorin is avoiding dealing with the subject at all and retreating back to the guy's room. Kitamura and the gang prank Ryuuji via the most juvenile of fake-outs into spilling the beans - finally!
Genuinely shocked despite Ryuuji falling to pieces in front of Minorin like six or seven times.
Kitamura, the patron saint of broken hearts, drag Ryuuji to go confront the girls, but they're all out. Because of comedy they end up stuffed in a closet when Taiga wanders in.
The funniest bit of this whole sequence is that they had enough presence of mind to grab their slippers
Ryuuji ends up dragging Taiga in as well when the rest of the girls wander in just so everyone can overhear the drama as we switch into the episode's second half where
shit gets real.
I have no idea why but this shot appears to have a slightly different artstyle for Nanako than every other shot in this sequence.
They start girl talking about Taiga and Kitamura and Ryuuji, asking Minorin if Taiga's into one or the other.
Ami stares as Minorin deflects the questions...
And makes up her mind.
Mihara says that Ryuuji and Taiga getting together would solve all their problems.
Even though it's what Minorin knows to be true, she can't help but react honestly to Mihara's off-hand comment.
Ami takes the chance to strike, telling the room (but really just Minorin) about the Christmas Eve rejection. (Since Minorin didn't tell Ami, to Minori, either Taiga or Ryuuji must have told her; at the same time, though Ami doesn't know that Minori witnessed Taiga's breakdown).
The unfriendliest Minori has ever looked thus far.
Even though the Two Friends are centre shot it's apparent that this is really a conversation between Ami and Minorin, who is once again hiding her eyes.
Ami jumps back two arcs ago...
...explaining her logic...
...which is, as usual, on the ball.
"Better to drive the nail in the coffin than let him live in hope, right?" asks Ami sweetly, finally prompting Minorin to snap. But Ami gets the last word.
What an amazing look of disdain.
Kihara forces them to make up and they leave to search for Taiga, letting the confused boys finally stumble out of the closet. Taiga tells them they heard nothing and saw nothing.
The next day everything is garbage. Ryuuji stumbles across Ami playing in the snow (the 'child' thing again?).
Ami, dropping into her unguarded mode around Ryuuji, tells him that it might be her fault Minori rejected him - she said something spiteful to Minori (she's referring to asking about her guilt at the end of the President arc). She doesn't even know why she did it. She tells him that she and Minori got in a fight yesterday because Ami couldn't bear seeing Minori holding her feelings behind a mask.
"I hate you for being an idiot," she tells Ryuuji.
So was Ami just reflecting some of her own guilt into Minori as well?
This is interrupted by Taiga and Minorin literally crashing into Ami and triggering a catfight of vicious proportions. Hey, pretty weird that pretending something never happened would have a bad outcome.
Violence is all in how you treat it. The dissonance of the girl's screeching and the brutally impactful sound effects, contrasted against the tinkly music-box tunes, is so much more shocking than Taiga's slapstick violence earlier in the series.
Minorin's hairpin goes flying and Taiga runs to get it back - to literally retrieve Ryuuji's feelings for Minorin. The teachers arrive to break up the fight, only to find that Taiga is now missing.
Somehow the search teams miss the broken barricade and giant snow trail down. It might be excusable but Ryuuji finds the exact same thing in like three scenes, so it's not like the snowstorm ruined the tracks...
Kitamura, Ryuuji and Minorin head out to find Taiga in the middle of a storm, discovering her trail. Minorin starts to go out but Ryuuji grabs her and Minorin lets him go ahead instead (whelp). Time for a piano remix of Orange as Ryuuji heads into the white.
This and a shot of Taiga almost literally buried in snow don't do much for your heart.
You'd think Taiga nearly dying from frostbite and Ami goading Minorin into a physical fight would be enough drama for one episode, but Taiga's got to up the stakes as she mumbles a confession in her delirium...
---
Much of this episode's drama is driven by Ami's evolution as a character and that conflict with Minorin, who remains behind her facade even in the face of worse and worse outcomes. I'm not the biggest fan of this episode because the most dramatic part of it, Taiga's delirium confession, isn't really triggered by the meat of the episode as it is by Taiga falling off a cliff (I mean causally it is but in storytelling/emotional terms it doesn't really feel that way...). But we've finally reached the stage where Ryuuji knows that Taiga loves him! Yay! (And both Taiga and Ryuuji know that Minorin maybe likes Ryuuji but sacrified for Taiga instead. Less yay)
...oh we've got 4 more episodes to go. Well, shit. That can only mean more funtimes yet to come.
On the next episode of Toradora: university planning. Joy.
