FruitsBasket

Honda Touru and some of the bishi boys of Fruits Basket

Okay, this has got to be the WORST name for a show since Fancy Lala!

Fruits Basket came very highly recommended. So, I bought all four DVD's (there are 26 episodes, these are DVD9's) and today we started watching.

The show starts out with an interesting situation. Teenager Tohru Honda is living in a tent in the woods while attending high school... huh? Yep. It seems that her mother and father are dead, and her grandfather is a bit addled, so she decides that, with nothing more to bolster her psychic resources than a photo of her mom, she is going to somehow make good. Fortunately, before we have to explore the ramifications of this weird and desperate situation, she is adopted by... I mean hired to be a live in housekeeper for a couple of strange young men (Yuki and Shigure Sohma).

In short order Tohru discovers that Yuki and Shigure are in fact the Rat and Dog of the Chinese Zodiac. In fact, when either of them is embraced (even accidentally) by a girl, they instantly transform to their animal shapes.

Yes, this is very much Ranma meets Fushigi Yuugi. However, I don't want to imply that there is more than the barest hint of sexual tension in Fruits Basket, there is not. This is a shoujo romantic comedy, loaded with bishi boys and yet quite chaste. Definitely rated 'G'. As with most anime, your enjoyment will be in direct proportion to your attention span. Fruits Basket demands careful attention from it's viewers, it's not just eye candy.

Tohru is impossibly cheerful at all times. She beams with joy at the prospect of cleaning a dirty kitchen, and she weighs in with helpful advice whenever anybody has troubles. And everybody in this show has troubles to spare!!

I find, reading what I just wrote, that it does not do justice to the show. So let me just say that it is charming, just charming. At first, things seem a bit flat, because you are kind of dropped into the middle of Tohru's life, but after a few episodes some of the characters (including Tohru) are fleshed out, and they have a nice complexity, and they play off of each other so very well. Each member of the Sohma clan turns out, of course, to exhibit the characteristics popularly ascribed to people born in their respective year, and the ramifications of these character traits are explored (and of course, explained by Tohru in a reflective moment during each show).

The excellent manga from which the show is derived is now available in english from Tokyo Pop.