Omg, I don't know how I missed this (this ask is from March LOL)

Let me start with Toradora!

Favorite Character: Taiga! I love her! I know she's very controversial but I think if you get her you get her and if you don't you don't. She's so interesting and complex and has great character development. However I think I love all 5 members of the main quintet equally so this was tough to pick lol

Favorite Arc/Episode/Scene: there are sooo many scenes that I love but the scene where Taiga goes to beat up Sumire and then Sumire proceeds to confess to Kitamura not knowing he's listening... peak cinema.

I also think the school festival arc is really fun and a great moment for Taiga and Ryuuji's development.

Character I Think is Underrated: Considering literally everyone hates Taiga I was inclined to say her, but I do think people tend to overlook/underestimate Kitamura so I am going to pick him :)

Character I Think is Overrated: I love every single character in Toradora and I think they all deserve hype so I honestly don't think anyone is overrated. I also don't interact with the fandom (if it even exists) often enough to know which character gets too much hype

Favorite Ship/Pairing: Basic af but I adore Taiga/Ryuuji so much. I think the way you get to see their relationship develop and their feelings for each other develop is so precious.

Although if I'm going non-canon, Minori and Ami have potential if you ask me!

Something I Love About the Show/Movie: I've said this a million times before but Toradora has one of the most realistic representations of teenage love I've ever seen. I think it just nails the different ways love can manifest when you're a young person, and handles it with a lot more respect than some other pieces of media do.

Thank you for sending this ask! Sorry it's so late!! I will do the others in a separate post!

Character Analysis: Yuusaku Kitamura from Toradora

**spoilers ahead**

(I’ve been making character analysis posts about all 5 Toradora protagonists; here’s Taiga’s and Ami’s)

To start off my post about Kitamura, I want to talk about one of my favorite episodes in the entire show, One Step Forward, where Taiga confronts Kano Sumire. While this might seem like a Taiga-centered scene, that’s almost completely wrong; Taiga does pretty much nothing of note/out of character in this episode. The entire focus is on Kano and her feelings (after she and Taiga beat each other up, of course), and Kitamura hearing her message to him at the end, which makes me cry every time.

Something I mentioned in my WIL Toradora post is that this show does a great job portraying the difference between actual love and infatuation. While it is obvious that Taiga’s crush on Kitamura is more her putting him on a pedestal than her actually knowing him, it’s also true that Kitamura’s prior crush on Taiga was a similar situation. When he talks to Ryuji about how he used to like Taiga, Kitamura says things like “I heard of this beautiful girl in another class” “I liked her attitude” “I really wanted to get a girlfriend”. None of which indicate he actually knew Taiga at all. It’s why he was easily able to ‘get over’ her after she rejected him; because he barely knew her in the first place.

But Kitamura actually got to spend time with and get to know Kano through seeing her every day after school, which is a much more realistic and believable way of falling in love with someone. And this is clearly his first real experience with these deeper feelings, based on how poorly he handled the idea of her moving to America.

This whole show features characters going through self-reflection and becoming truer versions of themselves as the story goes on, and Kitamura is no exception. As the class rep, school VP, and overall nice guy, Kitamura is constantly putting up a wall between him and his classmates in the form of fancy titles and responsibility. He finally shows his true colors in One Step Forward and the episodes leading up to it, and as a result he becomes more comfortable with himself and his own feelings. And funnily enough, this is about when Taiga starts to feel more comfortable around Kitamura because she starts to lose feelings for him.

Kitamura is a very underrated character, both within Toradora and in anime in general, so I hope this post makes you appreciate him a little bit more. Thanks for reading!

-threecheersforinking