One of my smaller goals while we’re all at home has been to watch new anime. I love a good magical girl anime, a lot of the older titles, and some of the classic shonen, but there is still a lot I’ve never tried. This is why I was excited to check out the 2019 adaptation of the shojo classic Fruits Basket.
Fruits Basket, by Natsuki Takaya, is about Tohru Honda, a teenage girl who is orphaned after the sudden death of her mother. She ends up meeting and befriending Yuki, Kyo, and Shigure Sohma, members of the rich Sohma family. She learns that the family’s members are possessed by the animals of the Chinese zodiac and turn into their animal form when they are stressed, weakened, or embraced by members of the opposite sex who are not zodiac spirits themselves.
What, on the surface, sounds like a quirky semi-harem anime ends up being a really amazing story about a really abusive and toxic family that finds some peace through the compassion of someone who really attempts to connect with them.
The Fruits Basket manga series is one of the top manga series in both Japan and the United States. It was a legitimate bestseller, managing to hit #15 on the USA Today Bestselling Books Top 150 back in 2007—the first time a manga had ever ranked that high. It was very popular and had a previous anime adaptation that aired back in 2001. So, how did I miss it, even though it was probably right in front of my face?
Well, for me personally, I made a lot of assumptions about it based on the love triangle premise I’d heard from others. I thought it was like the series Love Hina, a harem anime but in reverse, around a plain, annoying female character. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
Firstly, the series is not a harem/reverse-harem series—at least, not really. Usually, a harem anime is about a character who is pursued by three or more love interests or sexual partners. While a lot of people in Fruits Basket do love Tohru, that love is overwhelmingly more platonic/familial than romantic/sexual. In the canon, Tohru only has two real love interests, Yuki and Kyo.
Secondly, while Tohru’s altruism can sometimes verge on so sweet it might give you a cavity, she is a truly kind and caring person. She is dealing with the very recent death of her mother and carries a lot of unresolved issues due to that. A lot of her maternal qualities are based on having to fill voids. Her father passed away when she was young, so she had to carry the weight of being the child of a single mother.
Tohru’s mother, Kyoko, instilled in her daughter a lot of emotional wisdom, due to her own background of having an unloving family. Tohru’s emotional intelligence and the ability to have empathy for others is what makes people want to be around her—and it also helps that the Sohma family is really, really screwed up.
Fruits Basket really excels at taking a concept like “turning into animals because of a zodiac curse” and using it to tell a worthwhile story of terrible parents traumatizing their children for generations. The Sohma family keeps their condition a secret, only allowing certain people into their fold, and as a result, they have one member who erases the memories of people who might have accidentally seen something. This can often mean friends and romantic partners, but in some dark cases, parents.
In episode 14, “That’s a Secret,” we learn one of the zodiac, Momiji, was erased from his own mother’s memories. He explains to Tohru that parents usually have one of two reactions to a zodiac child: horror or overprotection. His mother reacted with horror. Momiji is the spirit of the Rabbit, and if you look at a baby rabbit, you can imagine how terrifying it might be to know that every time you touch your own son, he can turn into an animal—an animal that can easily be harmed by you or others.
Momiji’s mother had a severe mental breakdown because of it, and all memories of her son were erased. It’s painfully sad, and that’s when you realize just how not cute this concept can be.
Yuki and Kyo, our two love interests, also have a lot of baggage due to their zodiac signs: the Rat and the Cat.
For Yuki, as the Rat, he has an exalted position. 5he Rat is the first of the zodiac signs, but that meant his mother essentially handed him over to the head of the Sohma family, Akito Sohma. He was tormented by Akito and isolated from everyone else to the point where he developed deep insecurities, thinking no one liked him. That absence of affection is why he comes to care so much for Tohru and why he has a non-romantic rivalry with Kyo.
In the Chinese Zodiac, according to certain stories, the Jade Emperor (God, in the series) said that the years on the calendar would be named for each animal in the order they arrived in a race, which involved crossing a river. The Rat and the Cat don’t swim well, so they ask the Ox for a ride on his back so they can all go together. During the swim across, the Rat pushes the Cat over, drowning him, and then jumps off the Ox and runs to the Jade Emperor to get first place. That’s why there’s no Cat in the zodiac.
Fruits Basket makes the position of the Cat a cursed one. Every generation’s Cat is mistreated and considered an outcast. For that reason, Kyo hates Yuki and attempts to defeat him so that he can really be included. Kyo has spent his entire life being told that he was unlovable because of his curse and because of his position in the family, which is why the fact that Tohru cares for him and doesn’t compare him to others is so important.
While there are plenty of lighthearted moments and goofiness, the show is emotionally complex. The sweetness isn’t artificial; Tohru is a healing balm on a lot of the characters’ lives, and vice versa, because they genuinely care for each other. When you have someone in your life who sees you as human and worth caring for, that can be a radical thing.
Even when it comes to the love triangle, I already went in knowing the endgame, and I didn’t care because I genuinely enjoyed the characters, and I’m looking forward to catching up with season two. If you are looking to check it out because you need some sweetness in your life, I’d highly recommend the ongoing 2019 version on Crunchyroll. There are some very of-its-era issues, but overall, I really found myself emotionally moved by it. Definitely worth your time.
(image: Funimation)
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