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so, since Max rose this from the grave and since I've never seen Fruits Basket in Japanese, I watched a few minutes of an ep that had Yuki in Japanese, just to see what the fuss is about. I was not expecting that. kinda of a similar shock to randomly switching the audio one day many years ago when watching DBZ and I hear Goku really feminine and Freeza really masculine.

Definitely prefer Eric Vale over Aya Hisakawa.

MaxSouth wrote:

Quote:

For comparison, many viewers do not spend time on details and, as result, the forest they see has little binding to reality, but rather represents an impression from certain angle that may miss signifiant parts simply by the very nature of surrender to a certain canvas of perception.

By forcing yourself into looking at every thing big or little, you are overcoming natural predispositions for or against a subject, and you are able to see more "objective" picture ("objective" is, of course, in inverted commas as ultimately there is nothing that is truly objective; however, relatively, the method I use allows to gain more objectivity).

I'm not sure just what you obtain by this method, but if you enjoy the process by all means continue. Personally, I view Fruits Basket as entertainment as I do with all anime. Your approach would suck all the enjoyment out of it, even if your assessments were correct. Often, knowing how the magician does his tricks does not enhance the show.

I do suggest that before you attempt to critique the story and character development of any show that you actually complete the show. Putting all that information up front instead of slowly revealing it during the show is usually considered bad writing.

Last edited by MaxSouth on Thu Mar 05, 2015 3:38 pm; edited 1 time in total

@CrowLia: you are arguing mostly against yourself since I never critiqued the voices you have mentioned as distracting and ruining believability of the characters. In this case, I wrote about rat character, and this is totally different case than children you have mentioned being voiced by women.

Alan45 wrote:

I do suggest that before you attempt to critique the story and character development of any show that you actually complete the show. Putting all that information up front instead of slowly revealing it during the show is usually considered bad writing.

The issue with waiting for the show to be watched completely is that by that time you can not remember all things you notice any more. But when you add to a list while you are still watching, you can not forget anything.

Besides, I do not practice "bad writing" in the sense you mean it, as there are no final/big scale conclusions on the anime overall, no verdict/summary section, no grade. I still wrote very little about the setting, the story or the storytelling (all three are different things), because there is not enough data for that.

And yes, I take pleasure in dissecting anime in details; in some cases my analysis piles up to fifty points, grouped by categories. Of course, it is still by far not an ultimate research that some Liberal Arts classes in universities force students do, but I consider my method to be the most bound to reality way regular person can usually go; this method allows to pin-point as many meaningful issues/qualities as possible.

Finally, not a lot of people "review" anime the way I do (for now I did not stumble upon similar things, though they probably exist), so there can be some worth in it. It would be easy just to throw few paragraphs on how and what I liked and disliked, but others do it all the time and I do not see myself doing anything decent (let alone better) in plain comment or even essay genre.

My argument is about your statement that:

Quote:

current state of affairs is much better than in the past, where even quite adult characters were voiced by actors of non-matching gender much more often.

Which is false because a)It still happens plenty and b) it doesn't "destroy believability of the characters" (YOUR WORDS), and there's nothing wrong with it, hence why even if there was a decrease in such roles, it wouldn't automatically mean things are "better"

CrowLia wrote:

My argument is about your statement that:

Quote:

current state of affairs is much better than in the past, where even quite adult characters were voiced by actors of non-matching gender much more often.

Which is false because a)It still happens plenty and b) it doesn't "destroy believability of the characters" (YOUR WORDS), and there's nothing wrong with it, hence why even if there was a decrease in such roles, it wouldn't automatically mean things are "better"

The statement "... quite adult characters were voiced by actors of non-matching gender much more often" is true because besides the ambiguous Armin even you could not easily find "quite adult" characters. It is incomparable to what was happening fifteen-twenty-five years ago, where gender mismatching was much more prominent.

And, of course, it does destroy believability of the characters, because you hear distinctly female voice and it does not match the gender of the character.

The reasonable explanation of this could be that the character:
1) is a female transvestite;
2) is a transexual in the stage of change;
3) has some genetic/medical condition;
4) is a castrate.

However, none of those reasons have anything to do with the story, so this mismatch is absolutely jarring and makes no sense. (In fact, if the story included any of the aforementioned reasons for female voice, it could bring interesting drama into the story. But now, mismatching voices are brought without reason. Thankfully, it is almost entirely thing of the past.)

@MaxSouth
I was not intending to suggest you were guilty of bad writing. Rather I was pointing out that not all plot elements are revealed at the beginning of a show. If something doesn't make sense or isn't supported immediately it may be in later portions of the show. While I see nothing wrong with making notes as you go along, I was suggesting you not share what you consider plot holes until you watch the entire show. In the case of Fruits Basket, the answer to some of the things you have found to be lacking or negative take place in the latter portion of the show. It would be impossible to counter your comments without massive spoilers. This makes it very difficult to discuss the show with you. I assume the point of your post is to promote discussion and not be simply seen as revealed truth.

Concerning Yuki's voice. As I remember he is in the first year of high school. A simple explanation is that he is a late bloomer or young for his grade and his voice has simply not changed yet. He is suppose to appear somewhat feminine, again an element from later in the show.

Adding to Story/setting section of the review by category:

...

4) head of the cursed family turns out to another sociopath, but he looks quite young. Usually in such closed hierarchic families the eldest member is the head, unless there is some "blue blood" dynasty, of which this anime does not tell yet;

5) various members of the cursed family shown to be afraid of disclosing their magical transformations because people supposedly would start hate them. In cases of close relationship it is unlikely, the more so the family can always erase the memory, if something goes wrong. So a lot of the drama about this is fake;

6) sea-horse guy's story makes no sense. First of all, it is unclear how he would even consummate his love with the woman he loves as he turns into hippocampus. Second of all, he had to know that his family's head is crazy maniac, and he had to be more careful when he came to ask for approval of their wedding. Third of all, if his woman is that weak that she has started "eating herself inside out" because of the incident, he could have just erased that part of her memory. But no, authors decided to go all the soap opera way with being ridiculously over-dramatic and made him erase all of women's memories of their love -- so he would be pitiful character over whom all of shoyo auditory would be shedding seas of tears;

...

MaxSouth--

Just out of curiosity, just how did you come across Fruits Basket in the first place? While I wouldn't call it obscure, it certainly hasn't been discussed frequently, either. I'm just wondering, that's all.

The subject of female VAs doing male characters is an interesting subject. It has particular relevance for me from last year, because the producers of The World Is Still Beautiful specifically made the decision to have an older male VA do Livius' voice. It was one of the reasons I could never fully buy into the show. Livius looked like a young kid but sounded like a 20 something year old man. It was so jarring.

As for Fruits Basket, I generally enjoyed the show, but I agree that Kyo (cat boy) was a very annoying character for most of the series. I understand why they wanted to make him angry, but there were many times where his rage was just so over the top that it was hard to take him seriously as a character.

I really would have loved to see a lot more side stories involving the other members of the Sohma family, but unfortunately the show wasn't able to spend much time on telling their individual stories. It really could have been a great show, but it was just "good."

@nbahn:

When I only started getting into anime back in 2007, I have frequently seen "Fruit Basket" mentioned on discussions as a thing to watch. At the same time I have read that this anime was controversial for many, that it is not universally praised -- some like it very much, and others do not like it. So I took notice of this anime, but put this anime near the end of queue of anime to watch. Now, eight years and over five hundred anime titles watched later, the time to watch this anime has finally came.

For now, seeing it to eighth episode, I liked the show. But hippocampus story has lost me, it is not a genuine drama. When I see such artificial advancements in story with clear goal to stretch and strain every idea to come up with fake drama, it totally destroys the immersive quality of storytelling for me (though most viewers may happily not notice and hence continue to be pleased with it). I am watching eighth episode with facepalm gesture attached to my forehead.

I hope things will return to better in the following episodes, because despite all the critiques, I mainly like the characters.

Though some of the characters are psychopaths, and I hate the typical idea that viewers are supposed to be empathetic towards them just because they had hard times in the past. There are countless of real like examples of people being perfectly decent after the most horrible things happening to them, so there is absolutely no correlation between person being good/horrible and his/her past. So I am not buying "there is good reason for that" as an answer why viewers should care for nasty characters. They are nasty because they are nasty, not because they had hardships in life.

Complete dissection of the project (thirty five points):

Music/sound:

There is no grand, epic music score. Also, this modest soundtrack was executed through use of synthesisers, what cheapens the sound. However, at least one of the accompanying songs is really good.

Subtitles:

It is annoying that the translation is very loose, to say the least. I know Japanese just a little bit, but it is enough to hear the unnecessary changes of the phrasing and meaning comparing to the original. This is so probably because the subtitles come after English translation for dubbing, where producers have to ask translators to re-phrase speech to accommodate for drawn mouth movements of characters.

Visuals:

1) as many old anime, overall quality is cheap -- bland, little details;
2) eyes have to be situated in the middle of heads, not way above it;
3) the distance between eyes has to equal to eye's width, not bigger;
4) the eyes are too close to "edge" of the face in frontal look;
5) noses in profile view are protruding too much;
6) the chins are too sharp/triangle;
7) chins of characters do not move when they talk;
8) most of those issues are legacy of poor anime/manga style of 1990s;
9) notice that the list is not about anime just being unrealistic -- it is always unrealistic anyway -- but about things that differ from usual proportionally topological character design of most other anime.

Characters:

1) Characters overall are written very well;

2) few characters are smokers, which is disgusting. Smoking kills even more people than alcohol, so it is highly immoral to make so much propaganda for it as Japanese anime does;

3) the main character is not a much of a character (some even argue she has no spine), but is likeable. She also has serious psycho-pathological issues, dragging photo frame of her mother to bathing places, which is very dangerous signal for her age;

4) I am not buying supposedly "male" rat character because it is voiced by distinctly female voice. If it was transgender character, I would applaud it, but as it is, it is totally fake. Thankfully, this really bad habit of using gender-inappropriate voices is mostly thing of the past, and almost non-existent any more in anime from the last ten years or so. Now authors of anime mostly understand that characters have to be believable, otherwise it destroys viewer's submersion into the story;

5) catman borderlines on being annoying with his psychopathic attacks of rage, though yet manages to stay within likeable category;

6) naturally, there are almost no anime without violent female characters like swinewoman (boarwoman) in this one;

7) small blond child rabbit turns out to have serious medical/genetic condition that slows down his growth and maturing, but concrete issue is not explained. Such conditions are not joke, so I am not fond of randomly throwing such characters at the set just for the sake of amusement and surprise without respect to seriousness of it;

8) small tiger child characters speaks in unrealistic manner. Phrases like "At this rate I was only to ruin myslf ..." were never uttered by a child;

9) ram/Aries boy who critiques everything he sees, including anime, in part reminds me of myself;

Story/setting:

1) the show sometimes randomly becomes self-aware that it is an anime for a comedic effect. Since it is not systematic and not a built-in feature of storytelling, it looks questionable;

2) having main character parents tragically lost, and her herself bullied for no reason is too cliche and not a sign of high class story. It is a cheap way to build sympathy for the character, no work of intricate storytelling is needed for that;

3) the cursed family apparently has practice of incest going strongly. I am not judging negatively at all until propagation happens (it would be criminally damaging to the child). But I am not sure how the family supposed to have consummated non-incest heterosexual relations since it would be physically impossible with small animals. It would be possible in case of big Zodiac animals, but the quantity of people would be able to continue anyway is questionable as zoophilia is quite rare phenomenon;

4) this project could be quite educational for children since it explains some truths about psychology of people in simple and clear terms through the story. As result, children may start to understand each other better, what can lead to less number of conflicts and less judgementality among them;

5) head of the cursed family turns out to another sociopath, but he looks quite young. Usually in such closed hierarchic families the eldest member is the head, unless there is some "blue blood" dynasty, of which this anime does not tell yet;

6) various members of the cursed family shown to be afraid of disclosing their magical transformations because people supposedly would start hate them. In cases of close relationship it is unlikely, the more so the family can always erase the memory, if something goes wrong. So a lot of the drama about this is fake;

7) sea-horse guy's story makes no sense. First of all, it is unclear how he would even consummate his love with the woman he loves as he turns into hippocampus. Second of all, he had to know that his family's head is crazy maniac, and he had to be more careful when he came to ask for approval of their wedding. Third of all, if his woman is that weak that she has started "eating herself inside out" because of the incident, he could have just erased that part of her memory. But no, authors decided to go all the soap opera way with being ridiculously over-dramatic and made him erase all of women's memories of their love -- so he would be pitiful character over whom all of shojo auditory would be shedding seas of tears. This drama is not genuine;

8) rabbit boy's story repeats sea-horse's nonsense. First of all, it is unclear why a mother would be so negatively shocked that her baby can magically turn into a rabbit, let alone the degree of that -- to a point where she breaks down. It is not believable at all. Second of all, if that was her issue, there is no reason to erase all of her memories of the rabbit child; erasing memory of the fact that he is magical and then carefully avoiding full hugs would be much better way to go (and erase memory of hugs accidents if they are occur). But, of course, authors went again to the absurd fake drama with that, leaving the rabbit boy without mother. Another trick to make the audience cry;

9) the show correctly points to the fact that the common phrase "Until you will start liking yourself, no one will like you" of popular psychology makes no sense, and explains, why;

10) at certain point main heroine is shown to collapse just from flu, which is very unlikely event;

11) cat curse story does not make sense since just because it has a form that is spoiler[uglier] than usual it is not believable that people would all of sudden be so negative, with all of the rejection and bullying -- to the point that karate sensei's grandfather was kept in spoiler[a cage or something]. There is no rationale behind it even slightest. No danger, no uncontrollable evil spirit or anything to warrant such attitude. So here we have mostly fake drama again;

12) reaction of main heroine to another cat form reveal is not believable either. There is nothing much to fuss about;

13) if you do not look at how much or little sense in what is happening, the way the ending directed is definitely professional, with masterful writing;

14) Complaints about the "indecisive" ending absurd since anime covers only part of the manga. If someone not satisfied, it is only natural, but the right way to deal with it is not to complain, but to read the manga. This ending is better than your typical "conclusive" and "decisive" "we have to conclude early because the manga still continues" BS ending;

15) The only real complain about the ending is that even though the manga was said to be very popular, anime production committee could not finish the project with follow up TV series or at least OVAs. It always bemuses me that many irrelevant anime can get continuations, but not some of the more popular ones.

Resume:

Despite shallowness and stretches of reasons for much of the drama that goes on in the project, it is still "Very good" overall.

I would just like to say that I love the music (at the end of episode #25) for the graveyard scene.

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