I didn’t see the original anime in the early 2000s, but the preview for this one really pulled me in. I guess the original anime seemed too simple, from the expressions to the basic animation to the very solid color scheme and the bad voice acting dub. I just wasn’t interested. But this new anime PV was just beautiful. I checked it out on day one of simulcast and loved it. The art was soft, more refined, and less stylized. But then... I couldn’t get enough! So I flipped over to a different streaming service and tried to watch the first anime. Bleh! I gave up and went for the manga. It explained a lot in terms of the first anime adaptation style choices. They were so similar! But as for this anime? You ever read a manga and the adaptation is superior in every possible way, from the sounds you imagined to the animation in general? (Ex. The Land of the Lustrous.) That’s this anime.
I picked up the manga because I hoped there was more to it than they story I had built up in my head based on typical anime tropes. Thankfully, Fruits Basket doesn’t fit into most. This isn’t a typical love triangle or harem. After reading the entire series, I can confidently say that it’s a drama (akin to a soap opera with the intense level of surprises we have) about personal growth, although the main character is certainly the catalyst for a lot of that personal growth. Every single character goes through some major change through the series. All of the “kids” in the series literally, physically grow, but they all grow as people too.
The anime slaps you with Tohru Honda’s extreme kindness and politeness and hurriedly tells you about each member of the zodiac in the Sohma family so that it can start getting to the meat of the series, because that’s not even close to being the family’s problem. Before watching, I thought it would be a cutesy “oh no I transformed at an inopportune time!” Anime. The “curse of the zodiac” is more about how they treat one another and view themselves than the forced change and bond that they share. If you cannot embrace a member of the opposite sex and your secrets are shared in your family alone, you form a tight knit group of weirdos with priorities in all the wrong places. The curse is, surprisingly, not as big an issue as you’d think. The series goes entire volumes with no one changing into their zodiac animal.
Tohru is definitely one of the catalysts for change, but the characters go through so many changes on their own. (Halfway through the manga, the perspective gradually moves to that of the Sohma family, leaving Tohru mostly to her own development.) They just needed someone with an outside perspective who genuinely cared. How would you change if you suddenly had someone enter your world who viewed things differently than you’d always been taught?? I really can’t wait for season 2!
