Toradora ep. 23

The series have outdone itself yet again, with new and interesting dynamics popping up!

This episode touches more about the problem that every student on the brink of education cliff agonises over: the future. Specifically, Ryuuji's future. HIs grades are pretty good, better than average anyway. But he comes from a poor family, with only a mom to support his family. Its difficult for his mum to earn enough to support his studies for college, so its perfectly understandable that Ryuuji does not really want to continue college. But of course, his mum wishes for him to go to college, and so does his teacher. So what about his future? For a dream to come true, one must have a dream first. It can be any dream, trivial or grand. A goal makes people motivated, and filled with desire to move forward. Moving forward blindly is never a good thing.

Well, in the midst of the consideration of his future, news come to him that his mom fell ill, the strain of overworking after all. Ryuuji becomes uncertain about himself, but Taiga comes to the rescue and reassures him with extremely kind gestures. Certainly Taiga has come a long way caring for other people, compared to the first episode where she harboured some inexplicable grudge against the entire world. And then, both Ryuuji and Taiga volunteers and the cake shop where his mum was working at, to substitute her. Did I mention its Valentines' Day? Yea, so business for the cake shop is sure to go up.

So there they were, advertising for the shop, trying to sell chocolates. Unfortunately, the inherited pissed off face of Ryuuji is not very good for the line of advertisements. Thankfully Ami comes along. That girl is forever an enigma, her purposes, future, and feelings were never really made clear. That much is certain though; she is mature, with an acute sense for social dynamics of people around her. Anyway, Taiga begs her to hold on to the a box chocolates and pretends she likes it. Ami-chan is a famous model anyway, people recognise her easily, so the Taiga's intention is obvious. Ami was about to turn Taiga down, but then huge number of people started appearing around(from nowhere apparently), so Ami went into mask mode, and went along with Taiga's wishes.

The chocolates were a huge success thereafter, and both Ryuuji and Taiga goes home. Whereupon, Taiga started making chocolates late in the night. On the next day, she gathers the usual gang, and starts to hand out the chocolatesto everyone, saying thank you for all the help she recieved 2 episodes ago, when she fell down the mountain and everyone went to look for her. For some reason, she started blabbering in front of Kitamura again, going on about how grateful she is that Kitamura went to carry her(it was Ryuuji, but Taiga doesn't know or does not want to know). And blabbering that she might have said some embarrassing stuff. Basically the embarrassing stuff was the confession of an unconscious Taiga to Ryuuji who was carrying her at that time. Ryuuji unintentionally heard her mumble that she couldnt stop falling in love with Ryuuji. When the incident was over, Ryuuji pretended that he never heard it, and told Kitamura to tell Taiga that it was Kitamura who picked her up and no one heard anything embarrassing.

Unfortunately, Minorin was present, and she was not in on the plan on covering up. She was aware of the confession made, and immediately confronts Taiga with the painful truth. Taiga who had all the while been pretending she did not say anything, went crazy, upon hearing that Ryuuji heard everything, and everyone knew about that. She ran from the everybody, leaving a stunned Ryuuji pondering about what is about to change next, a glad bystander Kitamura, a self-righteous and hurt Minorin, as well as an immutable Ami.

Yes, thats the question, what is going to change next. The dynamics have changed completely. Now that Ryuuji knows that Taiga likes him, but he is infatutuated with Minori, what is he going to do next? The ultimate weapon indeed, Truth is. For people who have been wrapped in lies for so long, Truth comes lancing through the web with a painful sear straight for the heart and shatters the mask. For people who have been running away for so long, lacking the courage to live, Truth forces them to stand up and face the painful light. For people who have been taking the easy way out for so long, Truth forces people to stand at the cross roads of choice, choices where there are always costs and gains, costs no matter how painful, have to be endured, for there is no choice that comes without cost. People are stupid, and given the proper motivation, almost anyone can be made to believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe its true, or because they are afraid that it might be true. People's heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, most of it false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid, they can rarely tell the difference between a truth and a lie, and yet are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.

Few can say they have lived true to themselves.