Underwhelming conclusion to a fairly enjoyable shoujo series.
Story:
The story picks up from where season 2 left off, and continues through the series' conclusion/epilogue. There is less of the side character development present in previous seasons and instead a greater focus on the main plot, which is a change I liked. The story is pretty easy to follow, though a bit predictable. This isn't a problem on its own, but I don't think a good job was done in justifying how forgiving most of the characters were towards the end; just seemed like Tohru had an insane amount of influence on others. The pacing was pretty good; I thought a few side characters got a questionable amount of screen time towards the end, but it's fine considering they're trying to touch base with the whole cast before concluding the series.
As far as other aspects of the story go, I found the romance side of Fruits Basket hard to get into. Outside of Tohru and ___'s relationship, I thought relationships were underdeveloped, and/or problematic. This made the ship-fulfillment scenes at the end feel underwhelming and uninteresting. Similar to previous seasons, I thought the drama was a bit repetitive as well. A lot of scenes play out where: character 1 will trauma dump onto character 2, character 2 responds with some kind of reassurance or justification for their actions, "same dramatic bgm starts playing", end scene. I thought it was funny in a cheesy way though, so it wasn't altogether a bad thing.
Art:
The art and animation is still solid, not too much has changed from previous seasons. We do see at least a couple updated character designs by the end, which was kinda cool.
Sound:
The new op was good, don't remember listening to the ed though. Not too stood out bgm-wise except for that one song they would play during the majority of dramatic scenes. As mentioned before though, I found it funny in a way.
Voice acting hasn't changed much; it's still solid like in previous seasons.
Character:
In general, I think most of the characters were fine. They're fairly unique and distinct from each other, and it made their interactions during the more slice-of-life scenes fairly enjoyable. However,there were two issues I had: The amount of characters (too many), and perhaps Tohru herself. Both issues became more apparent in the final season. I figured the excessive time spent developing side characters in season 2 would be justified in the final season, but instead the plot seemed to narrow its focus about 4-5. This helped make the plot more clear and easy to follow, but it made previous time spent on development seem wasted. By the time other characters came back into scene, the plot had basically concluded, and I hardly cared enough about them anymore to enjoy their moments in the epilogue.
With Tohru, my issue is with her role in the story. The mother-like figure she acts as was fine, and kinda endearing early in the series. It worked well during less dramatic parts. However, in the final season, it felt like for most problems that arose plotwise she was the catchall for solutions. If x character is/or becomes an issue, have Tohru interact with them and her gentle, reassuring, deity-like aura will rub off on them. As a result, the rest of the cast takes on some of her extremely forgiving personality which leads to what I thought was a cheesy ending.
Enjoyment:
With all that said I did actually find Fruits Basket, and its final season, decently enjoyable overall. The relationship I enjoyed watching develop the most (Tohru and ___) having significant screen-time helped coverup some of the issues I had elsewhere. In a way, the predictable and repetitive way drama played out was enjoyable as well. I've been indifferent to shoujos as a whole, so I'd imagine bigger fans of the genre would get more enjoyment than I did.
