Toradora! 15th anniversary drawing is ugly — blurry and Ryuji is in the background

Honestly, I try not to criticize artists. Especially when they belong in the anime or manga field, as most of the work I see is beautiful.

But today we finally got a Toradora! 15th anniversary drawing to help celebrate that amazing anime’s birthday.

Something I had been expecting and looking forward to seeing. And, yikes, is it ugly.

Sure, the Toradora! 15th anniversary drawing has most of the popular anime’s characters featured on it.

The problem is they are all crammed in together and the drawing itself is hazy and blurry, and isn’t in the same clean and off-the-screen-popping art style the anime series I loved so much always featured.

(See Taiga and Ryuji above as oppose to the Toradora! 15th anniversary drawing art style to see what I mean).

What makes the drawing even worse is Ryuji, one of the show’s two main characters and, along with Taiga its most popular, has been drawn way in the background with his face almost completely obscured in the blur.

The same goes for Minori and Ami.

Only Taiga is front and center, and her face looks weird.

 

The just released Toradora! 15th anniversary drawing — Yikes!

And that leaves me to ask, does Toradora! light novel illustrator Yasu hate Ryuji, Minori and Ami so much he wanted to squirrel them away from view?

Is that what this is all about as, yuk, this thing is horrible.

Check out the new Torardora! 15th anniversary drawing above, and see what you think.

You can also buy a limited edition print of the drawing if you are in Japan, or use a good proxy service.

Me? I’ll pass.

Meanwhile, there is a new Toradora! project coming out hopefully sometime this year. Fingers crossed it looks better than the drawing, eh?

About Michelle Topham

I'm a Brit-American journalist, former radio DJ at 97X WOXY, and Founder/CEO of Leo Sigh. I'm also obsessed with music, anime, manga, and K-dramas. Help!