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This is the one about the dysfunctional cursed family and the genki girl who s/a/v/e/s helps them. Which tells you something about what kind of story this is. If this was an American cartoon, by the end of the first five episodes we would know exactly how the curse was placed in the first place (Help, I'm channelling Bernadette Peters!), how it can be broken, and exactly what it does. The series would be about Tohru's attempts to break the curse, and by the end of the series, she would have broken it.
None of this happens. Nor is it suggested that it will. Nor did it bother me that it didn't. This is a fairy tale as it might have been told by Anne Tyler, in which the curse is a lens by means of which we can focus on the small tender moments which might otherwise pass by unnoticed. There are certainly big dramatic scenes, including a doozy of a three-part conclusion, but the show is really about the little acts of kindness and the quirky bits in the corners, the complex and unspoken loves and fears and false fronts which make up our emotional landscapes.
In one episode a handful of the characters go for a weekend at someone's lakeside cabin. Hatori, a young man aged by sorrow and responsibility, falls asleep on the sofa with a magazine abandoned on his chest. The others, when they notice, are surprised and touched that he would trust them enough to sleep in front of them, and Tohru runs to get him a blanket. It's a brief moment, but it captures a feeling I've often experienced but only once before seen described in fiction, the tenderness one feels toward the vulnerability of a sleeper as seen by the waking. (Dorothy Sayers has a lovely scene of Harriet Vane watching Lord Peter sleep by the river in Gaudy Night.)
The ending brings together all the elements developed throughout the series, of the way the curse keeps revealing more and more layers of horror and emotional devastation, all the myriad and complex relationships between Tohru and the Sohma family and Tohru's friends and the memories of dead relatives, and the theme of the show, which is love versus fear. It's very moving, and open-ended in a way which is far more satisfying than closure.
None of this happens. Nor is it suggested that it will. Nor did it bother me that it didn't. This is a fairy tale as it might have been told by Anne Tyler, in which the curse is a lens by means of which we can focus on the small tender moments which might otherwise pass by unnoticed. There are certainly big dramatic scenes, including a doozy of a three-part conclusion, but the show is really about the little acts of kindness and the quirky bits in the corners, the complex and unspoken loves and fears and false fronts which make up our emotional landscapes.
In one episode a handful of the characters go for a weekend at someone's lakeside cabin. Hatori, a young man aged by sorrow and responsibility, falls asleep on the sofa with a magazine abandoned on his chest. The others, when they notice, are surprised and touched that he would trust them enough to sleep in front of them, and Tohru runs to get him a blanket. It's a brief moment, but it captures a feeling I've often experienced but only once before seen described in fiction, the tenderness one feels toward the vulnerability of a sleeper as seen by the waking. (Dorothy Sayers has a lovely scene of Harriet Vane watching Lord Peter sleep by the river in Gaudy Night.)
The ending brings together all the elements developed throughout the series, of the way the curse keeps revealing more and more layers of horror and emotional devastation, all the myriad and complex relationships between Tohru and the Sohma family and Tohru's friends and the memories of dead relatives, and the theme of the show, which is love versus fear. It's very moving, and open-ended in a way which is far more satisfying than closure.
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This sounds really neat; I like that kind of story.
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Would the Furuba characters still be as interesting if the curse was lifted? It's doubtful. And after that, what reason would there be for the story to continue? Despite the curse, Tohru can still heal them in other ways.
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It's a brief moment, but it captures a feeling I've often experienced but only once before seen described in fiction, the tenderness one feels toward the vulnerability of a sleeper as seen by the waking.
I just remembered - there's a scene like this in one of the later Vorkosigan books by Lois McMaster Bujold. I don't remember which book offhand, though I remember the scene.
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Tangents
As for genki Tohru, I cannot help but think of a discussion (on soc.feminism maybe?) about Shel Silverstein's _The Giving Tree_. Have you read it?
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Re: Tangents
I detest The Giving Tree, which gives me the creeps no matter how you interpret it, but I'd say the difference is that while Tohru does give and give, she gets a lot back in return. Love is returned for love, and she gets a new family and home. As opposed to ending up as a stump.
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Re: Tangents
I watched it and adored it. I think mechanistic questions are left unanswered, but the emotional questions are resolved, and if I watched anime for the mechanics, I'd -- well. Not going there <g>.
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One of my best friends, who has chronic fatigue syndrome, fell madly in love with Akito, because she says that in his position she would have behaved precisely the same way; that one thing she loves about the series is the way it shows clearly how people feel and (want to) behave after a lifetime of invalidism. It does not help at all that everyone knows the invalid does not deserve the suffering. One of the things that unnerves me about my own health at the moment is that Akito's position is appearing saner and saner to me the longer I have to stay in bed. The mangaka of Fruits Basket is actually chronically ill, with rheumatoid arthritis among other things.
And so I wonder deeply how the manga is going to end, and how it is going to manage to deal with the great questions and problems the curse raises within the format of the ending of a narrative. The anime manages, but the manga has progressed a fair way beyond the end of the anime, and differs in some major particulars. I look forward, even though it's the kind of series I also wish in some ways would never end.
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So I went out and bought the first two volumes of the manga yesterday. And volume one killed me dead with the cute. DEAD. Of cute. I can't believe this. I am supposed to be cynical and pessimistic and then there's this ashy grey rat and he's so *sad* and I am DEAD OF CUTE. And then there's ordinary childhood cruelty which is close enough to some of my own bad memories to make me want to cry. And then there's volume two, and I resurrect myself just in time to be killed dead with pain.
And yet it's not gratuitous or implausible or even so far profoundly *unhappy*.
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That was my childhood right there. I was the onigiri.
I just started reading the manga. (I tried the first volume earlier, but was in the wrong mood and put it aside.) Sooo sweet. Plus, fascinating character stuff which was left out of the anime for lack of space.
(Since half the male characters are running around in drag and declaring their undying love for each other after a certain point, I'm assuming it was not for reasons of censorship that the anime left out cartain aspects of Hatsuharu's feelings about Yuki.)
But the anime has Tomokazu Seki as Kyo, plus hilarious interviews as extras on each disc, conducted by the girl who plays Tohru and looks about sixteen, with the actors playing Yuki (a middle-aged woman), Shigure, and Kyo. Yes, fifteen minutes of my favorite seiyuu being adorable. So you should see it. Plus the direction is really clever. (On the negative side, there are many cameos by members of the Sohma family who tend to shriek at a high pitch.)