Fruits Basket the anime is one of the most boring things I have ever watched. Ranks right up there with "Plan 9 From Outer Space", which had me dozing in 15 minutes. The slow, relationship-driven romantic comedy of Furuba is not meant for the screen. On the page, however, it manages to charm a reader expecting a Mary-Sue in a reverse harem. Tohru Honda should be the epitome of a "Mary Sue", a very badly written female main character, but somehow she is not.
She exhibits many Mary Sue traits including, and not limited to:
-Everyone loves her
-She lives in a house full of pretty boys
-The boys all love her
-She's super nice
-She's clumsy
-Her parents are dead
-The boys are also magic
Her redeeming qualities overcome this seemingly indefeatable list of stupid, boring, badly-written character traits. These are: that she is great at housework, but awful at schoolwork. Being awful at schoolwork is never ever ever a major plot point. (just a very tiny one) She never tries to decide which boy she loves best. She never even thinks about the boys directly. All her thoughts about feelings for the boy are indirect, only shown to the reader when another character specifically asks. While the boys are magic, Tohru is not. Most of all, while everyone likes her, they like her for perfectly believable reasons. She's not super-powered-princess-magic-rainbow-ninja shojo!heroine, she's an empathetic every(wo)man.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. We need a plot summary before I gush about Tohru. Tohru Honda is a perfectly normal high school girl. Through circumstances that involve her parents being dead and all her relatives being jerks, she starts the series living in a tent. Shigure Sohma, a thirty-something writer, and Yuki Sohma, Tohru's classmate, find her tenting on their property, and invite her to live in their house. Tohru then discovers their secret! When hugged by someone of the opposite gender, certain members of the Sohma family turn into the animals of the Chinese Zodiac, plus the cat. Said cat, Kyo Sohma, soon joins them in the house.
Yes. They turn into animals. Fruits Basket is one of those "pfffft, WHAT did you say it's about? XD" series. After a few volumes of Tohru falling into the boys every other page, things get more serious. The cast expands. Besides our core cast of Yuki, Kyo, and Shigure--the rat, cat, and dog, respectively--Kagura, Momiji, Hatori, Hatsuharu, and half a dozen others fill the menagerie. Besides the possessed Sohmas, there's all their relatives, high school classmates, adoptive parents, and significant others to keep track of. Everyone has their own distinct personality, though their designs can blur together. Art improves as the series goes on, and becomes very clear and sharp. While the series seems to have the same number of backgrounds as a below-average shojo series, one every three or four pages, this is usually because a character is having an internal monologue, or another situation where backgrounds are not needed. Takaya does a very good job with backgrounds.
Relationships are what drive this series. Each volume is a little collection of short stories about various characters. They just happen to play out chronologically in 23 volumes. Kagura and Kyo, Yuki and Akito, Kyo and his parents, Momiji and his sister, Hatori and Kaya, Hiro and Kisa, and so on, and so forth. The series has long storylines that keep everything tied together, but each volume usually has some story that could stand alone, and this keep things moving even when yes, Tohru still hasn't confessed her love, and no, they're not out of high school yet. The relationships are all different, and not as cliched as they sound. No one spends too much time angsting, even poor excluded Kyo. Everything remains pretty realistic, save one gaping hole in volume 21.
I'm happy with the pacing throughout the series, but your mileage may vary. Like I said, the little stories that get resolved every so often keep things moving, even though the main action is taking a while. Volume 23 is almost entirely unnecessary, and feels like a drawn-out epilogue just to squeeze one last volume out of the series. I have mixed feelings about that--it's unnecessary, but I'm glad Kakeru, Machi, and Ren all got their own covers. Volume 21 doesn't screw up the pacing, but it tests suspension of disbelief too much. Even more than people transforming into animals.
Overall, a surprisingly good series. Realistic, interesting relationships that keep the story fresh even when the main storyline isn't clear and drags. Tohru is a perfect main character to tie everyone together. This review is only for the manga. The anime is boring and a bad medium for this story. Stick with the manga on this one.
Rating: B+
- No plot for the early part of the series, plot drags on when it does show up, some confusing character designs, cliched dialouge, stretches suspension of disbelief, everyone cries entirely too easily.
+ Interesting relationships, short stories help with the pacing, clear background artwork, believable main character, well-measured angst. Emotion trumps believability in this one.
1 comment:
Feels pretty spot-on. Definitely exceeds the expectations for a shoujo series. I agree that Tohru is a really cool character in how she manages to be likable and fleshed out and not a Mary Sue. I agree on the anime, too. Yowch. Although this is a series where I'd love to see another attempt at animation, since there's no reason it couldn't work as an anime.
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