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There were many many things I highly disliked about this anime. But then there were also many things I enjoyed about the anime with encouraged me to give it a high rating anyway. Skip to the bottom for a TL;DR. Warning: I will try to avoid spoilers but there may be some very minor/vague ones throughout.

First off, I'm not really a fan of long shows unless I start partway in an watch as they air, and this show I didn't find until after it was over. The pacing was so poor in some parts that I actually started falling asleep during some episodes, which I ... never do while watching anime no matter how tired I am. I still don't know what happened to two or three characters because I slept through their episodes and didn't want to rewatch them. But on the other hand, the long story was good because it gave the show more of a chance to flesh out Rokuro and Benio's relationship. But that long time to flesh hit out also meant that their relationship developed very slowly. Every time something is about to happen to advance their relationship, something comes up last second and the actual event that was about to happen is delayed like 5 episodes because they're too busy getting their asses kicked.

Speaking of getting their asses kicked, another thing that really bothered me was how throughout the whole show their goal was to get stronger but they seemed to get weaker. They started out powerful enough to be able to kill kegare in one hit, but then to create obstacles for them, super powerful enemies started getting thrown in and by halfway through the show, legitimately every fight scene would consist of them continually getting beaten up (or attacking the enemy but doing no damage) until they ran away to form a new strategy, or pulled a random, absurd, never before mentioned ability out of nowhere and won through some deus ex machina bs. Pulling random abilities out of no where kind of reminds me of SAO.

Speaking of things reminding SAO, this show is full of every shounen/fantasy/romance anime cliche you can think of. There is an entire arc that near perfectly mirrors SAO's Yui arc. At least this one actually made me care for the little girl instead of finding her annoying.

There is actually a lot more I hate about the show which I can continue to rant about, but as you can see from the rating I gave it, my goal with this review is to convince you to watch the show, not drive you away, so now I will turn to the things about the show that I enjoyed.

First and foremost, as a closeted hopeless romantic, the thing that won me over the most about this show was the romance. After calling this show a romance twice you must be thinking rn like, "hey, LAPX, MAL doesn't label this show as a romance, tf are you talking about?" Yes, the show isn't really a romance anime, calling this a romance would be like calling Romeo & Juliet a romance (a lot of people don't realize R&J is a tragedy, not a romance). I just like to think of it as a romance because love and emotions do play a very important role in the story, especially towards the end. It's kind of similar to SAO's romance, only the show isn't 75+% trash (I know I did give that impression though in the first half of the review lol). The relationships between the characters and their feelings for each other actually seemed believable (or as believable as you can get in a show about two middle school kids being forced to live together for over 2 years) and they changed as the show went on (even the relationships between background characters)

Second thing I liked was the ending. The story for the ending may have been a little meh (especially with the deus ex machina crap I mentioned earlier) but it was executed well. There was a good balance between seriousness and comedy and it was easy to jump between the moods as needed (as opposed to all the other fight scenes which were either all serious, all comedy, or an awkward combo) and I really felt invested in the climax, despite it being very cliche and sort of meh story wise. But then again, it some of the comedic moments could've been just an awkwardly written scene that I mistook as a joke, but I'm gonna stick with it being on purpose, because I was laughing my head off while still being worried if the heroes would win or not.

The show has many, many things wrong with it, and the quality was like a roller coaster, but there were also many good parts that were good enough to stick with it and still recommend the show to others.

TL;DR
The show has many cliche tropes and falls flat in many vital areas, but it picked up well enough in other places were as long as you're NOT the kind of viewer who drops out as soon as things get dull, you will enjoy it

Going into this I though it was a total joke. Even while watching it I thought it was a joke thinking "why the hell am I still watching this?" Well, it kind of is a joke, in the sense that it isn't meant to be taken seriously, with the over the top absurd comedy and the out of place plot twists, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. The fact that I was expecting it to be a joke actually improved my enjoyment of the show because I was expecting stuff even stupider than the silly plot twists and overly dramatic jokes. And this unexpectedly ... hilarious show was tied together very well with lessons taught about giving a receiving love, which as a hopeless romantic, resonated with me (obviously not as deeply as with more serious anime, but enough to still catch me off guard given the silliness of the show). This is a surprisingly good show that I was not expecting to be good and it makes me happy.

This anime started very well, but towards the end of the show they started jamming in plot twists that didn't fit well with the rest of the show and the dialogue transitioned from legitimately deep and meaningful to stuff you would see on a 6th grader's #deep instagram post. I did not like the ending at all.

Aside from the story, the art was actually surprisingly good for a show that was almost completely CGI, this is an example of good CGI use. Unfortunately, the art wasn't good enough to make up for all the trash thrown in my face.

This show had so much potential ... but it was all unfortunately put to waste. Makes you wonder what they were thinking when writing it.

This anime was amazing! I enjoy romance as a sub-plot, but I don't typically like stories focused centrally on romance. That opinion might be changing though as this and Kimi no na wa are two of my favorite anime. I also really enjoyed the American movie La La Land, but I digress. Toradora was a great anime with great characters and good pacing.

Side note: For some reason Toradora is labeled as a slice of life anime, BUT IT IS NOT! A slice of life anime would mean that each episode is a slice out of the characters' lives, as in there's a new conflict every ... episode. One episode might be about clothes shopping while the next might be about going to an amusement park. If something major happens it might last another episode or two but usually events are contained into an episode each. That's what a slice of life is. Toradora is not a slice of life. Toradora has clear story arcs, they may only last a few episodes each, but they are each important to character development and the overall story of the show.

Anyway, onto the main review (as Toradora is an 8 year old show, I bet most people have already stated these opinions or opinions similar to them, but whatever)

Story (10/10)
Toradora had an amazing story that I enjoyed deeply. I mainly started it because one of my friends would never shut up about it and I had nothing better to watch. The first episode I felt was ok but nothing really outstanding. I decided to stick with it though because it did show some potential and by episode 3 I was completely hooked. One of my favorite parts of the story was how it climaxes. It starts off as a simple "Hey, we have crushes on each other's friends, lets help each other out" but then by them end it's an insane "holy f*** how did this happen!?"

Art (10/10)
For an 8 year old anime I feel the animation style aged very well. It is very nice and sort of pleasing to look at.

Sound (8/10)
Again for an 8 year old anime I feel it aged very well (why am I treating 2008 like it was such a long time ago with such inferior technology? lol). TBH I don't really have much to say about the art or sound and I'm only writing about it because it was in the "rate the anime" part up above. But they were both good though. Moving on...

Character (9/10)
The characters were amazing. They felt believable, had good character development, and reacted to situations exactly as you would expect a teenager to do (like if I was in Ryuji's shoes I'd probably do the same things). I love how deep the characters are and the layers of masks they wear to hide their true feelings, it really made me think about what was truly happening in some of the later episodes. This probably would fit better in "story" but I'm putting it here: I love how every character and relationship is important. Most romance stories try to make it seem like anything that doesn't directly affect the romance is unimportant. If it doesn't cause a fight, kiss, drama, or anything between the main characters, then it's unimportant. This anime isn't like that though, it shows how the romance can affect friends and family and vise-versa, it even shows some relationships and story aspects that are nearly unrelated to the romance.

Enjoyment (10/10)
The jokes were pretty funny and like I said in the beginning of this review, I might be starting to like romance stories, because I enjoyed this one a lot. I hate to admit it, but I actually cried at the end. Well that's a lie, I really don't cry unless I'm extremely upset about something but I did feel like I could've cried and I definitely teared up a tiny bit when listening to the OST "Lost My Pieces" later. Unless you're like I am and you rarely cry, you'll definitely be crying during the last few episodes if you actually care about the characters and the story.

Overall (10/10)
Toradora was an amazing anime and I would definitely recommend it to anyone whether you enjoy romance or not. I really wish that the show was longer or that there was a season two or something but with what happened at the very end, the chances of the season 2 are nearly impossible, so the most we could ever hope for are the special episodes.