Fruits Basket (anime, DVD 1)

[rachelmanija]

Of all the perky teenage girls in manga and anime, who maintain a near-pathological optimism in the face of anything from romantic rejection to the end of the world, go to absurd lengths to avoid upsetting others, and who are so damn nice that starts seeming like a super power, Tohru Honda may take the cake. After her mother dies, she moves in with her grandfather and some unpleasant auxiliary relatives. But when they need to remodel the house and ask her if she can stay with friends for a while, she decides it would be easier on everyone if she just moved into a tent in the forest and didn't tell anyone. Of course.

However, the usual sort of complications which attend living alone in a tent in the woods intervene, and Tohru ends up moving in with the Sohma family. She knows one of them, Yuki Sohma, from school, but not well: she's just an average girl with two close female friends, and Yuki Sohma is so kind, handsome, and popular that he has his own fan club at school. (I'm told that this actually happens in Japan.) The other members of the Sohma family are Shigure, a friendly but distinctly passive-aggressive novelist, and another boy Yuki's age, Kyo, who studies martial arts with the hope of someday being able to beat up Yuki, who in addition to all his other stellar qualities knows kung fu.

But secrets lurk beneath the happy sweet surface of the Sohma family. They are under a curse in which they turn into their animal from the Chinese zodiac when they're hugged by a member of the opposite sex. Because of this, the entire family, whose other members start to make appearances after the first few episodes, is actually troubled and dysfunctional and sad. But nice. Very nice. Almost as nice as Tohru.

This is a very funny show which uses some similar fourth-wall breaking techniques and imaginative uses of the medium as were seen in KARE KANO, though the tone and pace of FRUITS BASKET is nowhere near as hyperactive. An episode which introduces the first female member of the Sohma family was too farcical for my taste, but otherwise the mix of humor and human feeling was just right.

FRUITS BASKET mixes up-front declarations of love and loneliness with more subtle emotional undercurrents to create an atmosphere which is easier to experience than describe. Nothing awful has happened so far, unless you count the off-screen death of Tohru's mother, and the characters are very kind to each other, and yet there's something about them that seems terribly sad, in that paste-a-bright-smile-over-your-broken-heart way so characteristic of many of my favorite anime characters.

I'm not sure if the Tohru-Yuki-Kyo thing will develop into a real love triangle, or if it will stick with Tohru+Yuki4Ever, but there's more real romantic tension at the moment than in most shojo anime I've seen, where it's perfectly clear who the heroine really loves. I hope it goes with the triangle, as Yuki and Kyo are equally likable and attractive and troubled, but in completely different ways, and Tohru is drawn to both of them, but in completely different ways, albeit in both cases with an element of "I can heal your secret inner pain."

Oh, and I think I'm in love with Kyo. That, or I _am_ Kyo.

Comments

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Kyo! Yay! They make a plushie of him in cat form, you know. He looks incredibly annoyed at having to be a chibi cat permanently. We have it across from the Yuki-rat plushie and the Shigure-human plushie. (No, the marketing has no rhyme nor reason.)

I think you'll like the ways in which the show develops, although if you find Kagura annoying there're a couple of other characters who'll drive you batty. Overall, Fruits Basket is on my 'great classics of anime' list already, despite being a pretty new show; it got very popular very fast.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

I only saw a couple episodes of this, but was charmed. Of course, I've been known to describe the girl as terminally genki...

[typhoid-mary.livejournal.com]

It's odd, because I watched it once and was certain that the writers were terminally Yuki+Tooru. I watched it again and became equally certain that they were obviously laying the groundwork for Kyou+Tooru. On the same theme of skill, 12 books into the manga Shigure is very clearly characterized and I /still/ can't tell what he wants or to what extend he'll be involved in the ending. This is the point at which I decided that the author is one of the smartest writers I've read, and that I can trust her to satisfy me no matter how it ends. YMMV, of course, but FruitsBasket is one of my all time favorite manga, and once I find more in with every re-read.
-Mari

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

This sounds really good.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

Anime is one of my guilty pleasures <g>. I particularly liked that the DVDs were 6/6/7/7 episodes, rather than the 3 or 4 more common in this market. The end works for the anime; people who loved the manga didn't love the ending, but. Well. Different medium.

Also: re: Wolf's Rain -- loved parts of it; hated the 15-18 clip episodes (which could be skipped entirely) and felt that it fell down at the ending, which was All About Heartbreak.

One of the anime series that I really enjoyed (I watch a lot of these with my son, so that limits things somewhat) was "Scrapped Princess" which has somehow failed to be licensed :/. 26 episodes, and the ending didn't tank.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Actually, Scrapped Princess was licensed the last week of July.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That works for me -- I'll watch for it as it comes out. I'm not a huge anime fan because I have two small children, a part-time job, and all these deadlines cluttering up my life, but anime is one of the things I "do" with my son. I think he learned to read from two things: Computer games (Diablo & the Incredible Machine), and watching subtitles.

We both liked that one. He tends to like the anime that has the manga-humour in it (even if it wasn't based on manga), but also the shonen fights (so we both watched the GetBackers with some glee, and of course, own all of the Kenshins. Which were very expensive in Canada. Complain complain).

For myself, I loved Kodocha. Fruits Basket is comfort food.

Scrapped Princess, to answer someone else's question: Young girl with her older brother and sister is travelling from place to place in an effort not to be detected before she turns 16, because there's a prophecy that concerns her, and her place int he destruction of the world. She's ... a bit of a ditz. And a bit spoiled. And I liked her anyway. Loved the older brother and sister (who aren't, technically, but she grew up with them).

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

What is Scrapped Princess about? I've never heard of it.

And where are you getting your anime from?

[majinkarp.livejournal.com]

I love Fruits Basket! It's satisfying, heartwarming fluff, but with healthy doses of angst. Later on the series gets much darker, and a real "villain" emerges.

Tohru is ever-so-perfect, but it's impossible to hate her. She's just so well-meaning and honest. I'd prefer not to see her end up with either Yuki or Kyo--I think that would upset their dynamic. I like the romantic tension the way it is, nice and subtle. I'm not very far into the manga, but I feel like it won't be resolved with her choosing one or the other.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

... arg. I promised myself I would maintain dignity and would not talk about comfort things on-line. Just a quick comment. I understand that he's a villain in the traditional sense of the word -- but his position, as guessed early on, is ordained. He's the God. There are a couple of versions of the zodiac story floating around in the "real world", and the one that Touru is told at the beginning is not the only one; a darker version has a very sick God gathering the animals around him and sending them in search of whatever medicine it was that was required to heal him. They all agreed to go on this search, and the mouse/rat was the smartest of them all, and found what was needed. But .. the cat killed the mouse before the mouse could bring much needed medicine to the ailing God. God was angry, and cursed the cat.

I think that there's a riff of that going on in the background of this darkening worldview, but I think that Akito is -just as caught- by the role he was born in, and he's evil because of it.

Okay, honest, no more anime/manga neepery. I'm going to write right now. Everyone believes me, right?