The anime centers upon the social-emotional development of teenagers enveloped in a love triangle… which itself develops into a love polygon-of-many-sides. It focuses on loniness, abandonment, and the love of being loved with the main character saying “having someone saying you're okay and being needed by that person...It was nice to have someone like that." Sometimes people are in love, sometimes people love the thought of being loved, and sometimes people experience both at the same time.
The anime also delves into dreams vs. reality - that sometimes we overly idolize and fall for someone that isn’t honestly a best match while at the same time failing to spot true love in front of our faces. The plot shows what it means to let go of expectations and desires to come to terms with what is best, natural, and true. Sometimes we learn this the hard way as another main character said “if you trip while running down a hallway, you'll get a nosebleed. If you trip in life, you cry."
Toradora was such an introduction to tropes, archetypes, love-triangles, and school romance for so many nascent anime fans that it became influential for getting people into anime.
