Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Fruits Basket
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yuna49
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After watching Akito beat up a young girl, I'd say he wins my vote for worst Sohma. As someone only watching this show for the first time, I've not seen much if any explanation for why Akito behaves the way he does. I don't know if it would change my mind about him as a character, but I would like to see some explanation for his behavior soon.
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Alexis.Anagram
 Posts: 278 Location: Mishopshno |
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I feel like this is a really important moment to reference and understand; it comes at a juncture when the series is going to start shifting in terms of structure and how it tackles the difficult thematic questions and conflicts proposed by this long, introductory arc. As Jacob has been alluding to, the First Act is approaching its climax, and it's appropriate that the final Zodiac member Tohru will connect with on an intimate level in the space of this part of the story (even though Hiro's chapter was originally set after Act 1, it still effectively acts as a closing piece on the Furuba formula) is also one who directly challenges (and will continue to directly challenge) the pretexts that define Tohru and her behavior, both to us as an audience and the other Zodiac members. While there are reasons Hiro's confrontational voice makes more sense coming after the finale, I think it also works as a strong bit of set up and foreshadowing for it: Tohru is about to have her darkest encounter with the nature of the Zodiac curse thus far, and the question of whether or not she can really "save" others is central to the actions and intentions of many characters other than Hiro. So in the manga, Hiro's challenge is used both to reinforce what the audience already knows and to begin the process of deepening our understanding of what, exactly, it is that Tohru does for others, as well as why she does it. In both versions of the anime, it's used to position that point of contemplation in the minds of the audience due to its immediate relevance to the dramatic progression of the story: what will Tohru do when confronted with a situation where the memory of her mother and the boundless empathy Tohru believes she has inherited from her are not enough, a situation where she has to rely on her own strength and her own will in order to fight for her own truth? What does it mean to "save" another person, and how does that intersect with notions of both self-sacrifice and redemption? Hiro's bitter determination to project his own feelings of weakness onto Tohru strike closer to the heart than either of them probably realize in that moment, and it's why I think their dynamic is really rewarding. They are so diametrically opposed in terms of how they interact with the world and the strategies they use to cover up the wounds in their hearts, but they very much akin in the fears they harbor and their internalized images of themselves. Hiro actually does, instinctively, "see" Tohru for who she is, but he wrestles with the reconciliation between what he knows about her relationship to others, in which she inhabits the persona of an almost saintly or savior-like figure, and what he intuits as a deep wanting for personal resolve and self-love inside of her. Appropriately, it's exactly that dichotomy which is central to Tohru's journey.
Thanks, I appreciate it! I don't know that I can commit to anything in particular, but I try to share my wordy thoughts/feelings when I have the time here, haha. Jacob's reviews should really be the focus though, it's his insights (and those of other posters) which I usually springboard off of to discuss the show. Hope you continue to enjoy the discussion here. 
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*wants to yell about plot things* *has to keep mouth shut* Suffice to say, there is an explanation for every character's behavior in this show, but the mystery surrounding Akito is only going to thicken before it is resolved. It's so bound up in the mystery of the curse itself that one essentially brings the other into laser sharp focus. |
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Ashen Phoenix
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I'm immensely curious to know your take on the series as a newcomer. (No spoilers from me) Akito is yet another fascinating member of the Soma/Sohma household and I'm excited for every little step forward this anime takes in revealing peoples' stories. |
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Kuroi Ren
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Exactly. He's annoying. Also, nothing happened to him personally. Tiger got beat up, bullied and still nice (and cute) but he has to be a little rascal Except maybe Akito. He's even worse |
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yuna49
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I summarized my opinions so far here: animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=5180257#5180257 Not a big fan of Tohru either. Her constant self-effacing nature gets tiresome. I've thought about dropping this show from time to time, but then an episode or two like those about Uotani appear and keep my attention. The last couple of episodes have tried my patience though. I couldn't finish the Ritsu episode. |
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Clematis
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Yea, I read every FB review he publishes, but I also think your insight (along with posters like KitKat1721, as well) complements his very nicely and adds a lot to it - so much so, it could very well serve as a stand-alone collection of thoughts! It goes without saying that the upcoming episode reviews and reactions thereto should be most interesting to read :]. Last edited by Clematis on Thu Aug 22, 2019 3:10 am; edited 1 time in total |
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catandmouse
Posts: 213 |
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It's been a while since I read the original manga and maybe that's why I feel like sometimes these reviews go over my head, or maybe I am just not empathetic enough?
I don't remember all the little details, but I do remember the broad overall story and it is darker than one might think at the beginning and even though I enjoy reading the reviews, they are not quite connecting with me. Maybe I should go back and re-read the manga now that I am a good ten years removed from it. I might gain a new perspective on it because right now I almost feel like a newcomer in terms of the depth the reviews dig up that I don't see/feel. I am not saying I don't or didn't enjoy the series, I do/did, but I just don't feel that deep connection. |
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KitKat1721
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The "Prince Yuki Fan Club Home Visit" story in general has always felt a bit like a detour for me over the years, and while Fruits Basket is a fan of the occasional character-focus detour chapters, the Fan Club specifically and their special brand of being just the most extra often didn't feel all that necessary or even that funny. The original chapter never really made a huge impression on me, nor did the 2001 episode, outside of its pretty funky directorial flourishes (lots of first-person camera work and live action compositing). Empathizing with jealousy is fine, but its that added layer of possessiveness and the whole "If I'm not good enough for him, no one is," attitude that always tilted the club more towards "annoyingly unlikable" than "comedically in-the-wrong." There's more I want to say on Makoto's whole "we truly love him," spiel and why I do appreciate the story's complete sincerity regarding her emotions despite them being 100% incorrect, but unfortunately there's too little content at this moment to get into it.
Hana's brother Megumi is definitely an interesting character to add to the Fruba middle schoolers along with Hiro and Kisa. I think the first time I read this chapter, I found his whole speech, while very on point for a lot of the themes in Fruits Basket, a little hard to take seriously because the emotional intelligence present there just doesn't seem to fit his age.But watching this episode right after Hiro's makes for an interesting comparison. They each have very different personalities and Hiro is only just on his way to reaching a level of perspective that Megumi seems to have grasped. But both are pretty precocious for their age, and can take that attitude to extremes towards people they don't trust. They are a little more alike than at first glance. As far as Hana's inkling of jealously towards how much time her best friend is spending with the Somas'... that's something very easy to empathize with. Especially so with Fruits Basket's target demographic of young teens, who are in the middle of figuring themselves out and maintaining their own friendships. I think I always just glossed over this because it was surrounded by Prince Yuki Fan club high-jinks. Actually, the best part of this whole episode was that one shot of evil, scheming Tohru because you don't need to be a manga reader to know that face is never going to happen again. Its something to say the least. Fun Tidbits: In the dub, I died when the narrator, summarizing the goals of the Prince Yuki Fan Club said, "In other words, keep those other bitches away from him!" I love seeing that Hana collects Shigure's Summer Sigh smut novels (volumes 1-3). I truly hope that's the same series the one girl was talking about when she said she also read it. And lastly, Mogeta makes another cameo in the form of the anime's opening theme song. If you doubt the Mogeta love, just know she has her own menu item at the Animate Fruits Basket cafe. I'm not joking, I think its a parfait. |
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Alexis.Anagram
Posts: 278 Location: Mishopshno |
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I happened to watch this episode after re-reading a future chapter in the manga where (minor spoiler) spoiler[Akito greets the Zodiac members with the words, "I love you all,"] and it caused me to consider, much as Jacob does in his review, how Motoko's proclamations of love for Yuki mirror Akito's stated feelings towards him, and where they diverge. I think Jacob is right that there isn't a lot of work done here to give us reasons to empathize with Motoko or the Fan Club; as his review points out they're made fairly peripheral even in the context of their own chapter in favor of progressing our understanding of Hanajima's relationship with Tohru. What Takaya does bring into focus is the sharp edge to Motoko's deliberately static and unshakable feelings of both love and jealousy, and how they motivate her, along with an entire posse of entitled enforcers, to behave in a fashion that underscores the thin line between social expressions of love, idolization, and possessiveness, and how easy it is to cross the thresholds between these inclinations when we aren't keeping track of our own feelings and how they shape and are shaped within the contexts of our relationships. What I see in the Prince Yuki Fanclub, and Motoko's leadership of it, is the construction of a system that stratifies people (in this case, the school population) along the same lines that the Sohma household does; there are those on the "inside" (club members) and those "outside" (everyone else), with the same objectives of defining and controlling people through policies of both exclusion and indoctrination. Although the fan club is decidedly less competent (and dangerous) in this regard than the expansive, moneyed Sohma family, there's nevertheless a tragic note to this dynamic in that it details how it doesn't take a "curse" (or centuries of inherited trauma) to lead people (particularly impressionable young people at their most emotionally vulnerable stages of development) to develop a concept of others as "property" and to seek some measure of domination over others. This kind of messaging is embedded throughout the hierarchies that define much of modern human life, and there is a particular way in which this is often consumed and internalized by young women as a need to manage and control other women as a method of maintaining the proper pecking order-- this is typically coupled with a latent or explicit cultural animosity towards femininity in general leading to self-loathing and a heightened desire to excel and/or dominate among women. This can complicate the dynamics between men and women as hetero-monogamous society dictates that there should be equal fealty from both partners, yet because patriarchies enforce a power differential between the binaries, women are not as empowered to implement boundaries within the relationship and so may look at methods of controlling factors outside of it. Hence, the fanclub doesn't overtly aim to monitor the behavior of Yuki, but to police the behavior of the women around him: Yuki is still the target of their desire to exert control through the facade of offering protection to their Prince, but it's other women who are scapegoated as the threat they must defend against. Hana, Uo, and especially Tohru, then, represent the collective arch antagonist to this line of thinking: all three of them exist so far on the "outside" of this symbolic dichotomy that they are actively disrupting it; this is quite possibly the best thing for Yuki as a human being, but for the women of the club, it represents such a massive overstep that it must be attributable to a force of evil that is equal in scale (and delusion) to the resonant beauty they've attributed to Yuki as an idol. By that same token, Motoko and her peers can (sadly) only conceive of Tohru's closeness to Yuki through the same lens as their own: a possessive, selfish desire to own him. I think Jacob hits the nail on the head in asking us to consider how this must have impacted Yuki for pretty much the entirety of his high school life: while there is obviously a huge degree of difference between the kind of power Motoko and her ilk wield over Yuki versus that of Akito, they hold considerable sway over the female student body and the sentiments they espouse through the fan club run along a similarly volatile path. Whereas Akito seeks to maintain a perfected vision of Yuki as the "tamed child," Motoko et al. take the tact that he is an untouchable, unknowable "Prince" who deserves to be isolated in his ivory tower for his own good-- not a far cry at all from Akito's own intentions. Still, there's an underlying betrayal of the self that characterizes, and confounds, Motoko's hubris: due to how restrictive the school culture has become surrounding Yuki, she can't even allow herself to feel or to express her own emotions with any degree of personal ownership. She prevents herself from stating her love for Yuki in the first person (I) and reframes it as a collective mandate (we), ostensibly to create a distinction between the "selfish" love she assigns to Tohru and the fan club's morally superior dictations of self-restraint and abstinence-- however, I think it also serves as an example of how women inwardly weaponize patriarchal coding about womanhood against themselves. Women can not have life prospects of their own, that's entitlement, but they can if they're filtered through the lens of marriage and the household; women can not have sexual desires for their own sake, that would make them slutty, but they can allow themselves to be pursued sexually for the benefit of men. In Motoko's case, she doesn't realize that she's leaning into the same innate insecurities about taking accountability for her thoughts and behaviors that hound Tohru, which accents her role not only as a compliment to Akito as Akito relates to Yuki, but also in the way that Akito acts as a foil for Tohru. So, yeah, I happen to actually like Motoko a lot as a character, but then I've got a thing for mean girls in fiction. They soothe my cynical brain, haha. Give me an ice queen any day. Also, the world needs more queer Furuba friendships/loveships, so I'm giving Megumi x Momiji my blessing. Just imagine the total aesthetic powerhouse between them. |
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thebond&thecurse
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This relates to the Sohma family again. The Sohma are supposed to be a collective "we". The dictates and constraints of the spoiler["bond"] are supposed to be a collective "us", the Juunishi and spoiler[God] Akito. The spoiler["bond"] and all it entails in the family isn't supposed to be "selfish", it's supposed to be moral. It's supposed to be moral through the way it makes its members practice self-restraint, something that Kyo/the Cat is punished and monsterized spoiler[(literally)] for not displaying (or possessing). It is supposed to be moral for the ways it makes its members identify and adhere to the collective. But that is not sustainable in the longer term and in practice it becomes the opposite of what it asserts. The "we" dissolves into an "I" - just what spoiler[God] Akito wants. Control over others exercised by a single person with the facade or backing power of a collective desire. A collective desire you, too, are supposed to follow and if you don't you will be seen as a monster and brought back in line, or punished, or destroyed (just as the Fan Club sees and plans to do with Tohru). You will be seen as the selfish one. But what's supposed to be moral and unselfish becomes in actuality a very selfish thing. It is selfish for trying to control the self. |
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KitKat1721
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Oh yeah, I 100% agree on why they're important for Yuki's characterization, I guess it just works better in theory for me personally. I think if the group was just pure comic relief, the reboot wouldn't have still given them a full episode on their escapades, and they would just be relegated to background cattiness. There's definitely a two-fold effect both the Fan Club and Akito (just the trauma we've seen hinted at so far) have on Yuki, despite the difference in each side's methods and goals. I just have a harder time getting as invested when the Fan Club is so heavily involved, and its probably more pronounced watching a 22 minute episode vs. taking a few minutes to read a chapter. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18185 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I'll be curious to see what the reactions of others are to episode 22. The episode was definitely trying for a similar kind of emotional resonance to what it accomplished with Arisa's backstory a couple of episode back, but I felt it missed the mark a bit. Part of the problem for me was that Mikoto sounded too precocious to be credible in the prayer scene; it was a combination both of the performance and the wording.
I did find it interesting that Arisa's power is actually real - both this version and the first version had always been dodgy on that point - and that her family situation was atypically intact and supportive for a character in her situation. |
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yuna49
Posts: 3804 |
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Giving Hanajima real supernatural powers undermined her story for me. Sure, the whole plot concerns zodiac characters who can turn into humans, but I would have been happier if Tohru and friends were merely human. There are lots of reasons why kids get bullied, and why they feel responsible. Why not choose one of those realistic paths?
Uotani's story didn't need supernatural powers, and that made it more compelling. The bullying arc of 3-gatsu no Lion was far more powerful than Hanajima's story, at least for me. |
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Alexis.Anagram
Posts: 278 Location: Mishopshno |
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Great post; I think this touches on something more fundamental to the messaging behind the story which will become apparent as it progresses, but the notion of the curse as a bond which took the initial form of a "promise" is indicated in the opening prelude of this adaptation. The idea that it has a moral grounding and that it manifests in a system of familial values which are incredibly pervasive (some of which we've already been clued into), and that it has some as-yet unknown or unspoken of "power" behind it, represents the central struggle behind most of the protagonists' thoughts and actions. It's something which many of the Zodiac members don't even fully grasp or know how to articulate, and yet they are instructed, guided, and demanded to live by it. Not as people, but as abstracted archetypes; those closest to "God" and those furthest away. Above all, as you note, that requires a relinquishing of the Self: to want for anything, to yearn for anything, outside of the collective, the chosen few who were selected for the eternal banquet, is a heresy. And for those who have been rejected to have any thirst for life, to be allowed to live at all, is intolerable. I absolutely felt my pulse quicken when I saw the title card for next week's episode, haha.
Yeah, this is just something I wasn't as cognizant of during my younger days reading the series, so it's one of those areas where I think the story's depth of design has shown through the more I've sat with it. The way that the fan club is rendered sort of superficial and innocuous through the comedic angle taken with them is a kind of crafty bait-and-switch on Takaya's part, because there's nevertheless a strong emotional throughline to Motoko's arc, but it didn't occur to me quite how it was being premised in the larger systemic critique Furuba espouses and why it rings so honest in its culmination. At least for me. 
So episode 22 was super good. I wasn't sold on the idea of moving Hana's backstory up this early and sandwiching it between an offbeat comedy episode and the Main Plot which is about to kick into high gear, mainly because I worried that it would be swallowed in that context as "filler," but they just did such a bang up job with every aspect of the episode that there's no chance of that. It was also one of those episodes where it just felt great to see some of these moments finally put to animation and music and voice acting; as one of the chapters that has stuck with me the hardest (way more than Uo's, even though I love her) it was just super rewarding, emotionally. I think the reason Hana's story sticks with me is that it's one of the few in Fruits Basket that just lays its cards right on the table-- fittingly characteristic of the heroine herself-- and delivers its message through a character who isn't so much a cypher gradually coming unraveled as she is a stoic symbol of redemption through resilience. All of the things about Hana which are "hidden" from Tohru and Uo are offered right away to the audience as necessary insights predicating her decision to seal her own heart away; that this is done not through overt acts of rebellion or grand gestures but through quiet, small acts of self-denial accumulated over years to steel her against her suppressed spiritual and emotional nature allows us to see and understand her through that careful, retrospective gaze. That she is saddled with a guilt that is at once her own, and yet is also framed as a debt to society, revisits and interrogates the core concept of the series as an investigation of inflicted trauma: here she is graced with a genuinely loving familial support system and a brother who quite literally wishes the world for her, and we're asked to contend with the question of what it means for someone to own their pain when it threatens to reciprocate as violence out in the world. It's fitting, then, that Hana finds her answer not in the insular love of a family for which she already feels she can never be grateful enough, but in an outside love that streams in from the world unbidden and fills up that lonely pocket inside her where she had allowed all of her hopes and imaginings of the future to remain suspended. When Uo asks her to tell them what she wants, she offers Hana a release from constantly constraining herself to thoughts of what she believes she deserves. For Hana, the power in remembering her past comes not just in reminding herself of the importance of being loved by others, but of the value of knowing one's own story and actively living it with the capacity to make choices that are liberating and self-validating. As an aside, it's worth noting that Hana immediately questions Tohru's self-effacing kindness and overly polite language, and that they both share a crisis of confidence in their ability to bring goodness to the lives of others. If Hana wears black as a "badge of shame" and as a means of holding herself in penance (in fact, these kinds of symbols are littered throughout Furuba), I wonder if Tohru might not have her own method of integrating a desire to atone in the persona she projects into the world. But atone for what...? 
I think it's worth keeping in mind that, for Furuba's purposes, curses and supernatural powers are just heightened symbols intended to convey the kinds of emotional dynamics that people can't (or don't want to) explain to themselves. The feelings of being burdened with a secret that can't ever be told, or having committed an act that can't ever be forgiven, or having been rejected and abused by others for no apparent reason, is what the series is concerned with, and the supernatural elements are just tools used to drive at that while displacing the theme just enough within the narrative to open it up for exploration. It's the same way Evangelion, for instance, uses a post-apocalyptic scenario and giant robots and exploding crosses to ratchet the themes the show is interested in up to maximum overdrive in order to make them more pronounced and offer a sense of what it can be like to experience the emotional volatility that centers it conceptually. Yeah, you could just tell a story about a high school kid who is depressed and has a terrifying, shame-filled toxic relationship with his father, but sometimes there's artistic value in going the extra mile.
Speaking of depressed kids, toxic dads, and going the extra mile: whooo episode 23 I'm super not ready. |
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Oggers
 Posts: 362 Location: Ontario, Canada |
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I'm not really sure why people thought Hanajima having psychic powers was ambiguous at all. Considering how she uses her powers directly on one of the Yuki Fan Club girls and how that put her in bed for a week, I'd say it's pretty obvious that her powers are legitimate. This is a series about people who can turn into animals, after all.
That said, I'm surprised that they adapted Hanajima's backstory so much earlier than it's shown in the manga, but they did such a good job of it that I can hardly complain. Maybe they want to get Uotani and Hanajima's backstories out of the way before a certain dramatic revelation with Kyo... |
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