Manga Review: Fruits Basket

The reverse harem anime that pretty much all female anime fans have seen. In fact, even a lot of male anime fans have seen this anime, and for the majority, almost ALL anime fans have heard of it. But when someone in the anime community says Fruits Basket, they generally are referring to the anime. This, as you can see, is the manga review of it's popular anime adaptation.

And so, Fruits Basket, the shoujo manga that made me cry and appreciate, pretty much, everything that life had to offer, good or bad.

This is going to be long. 0w0

So for those who don't know, Fruits Basket is the story of Tohru Honda, a girl that, due to circumstances that are,sort of reasonable, is forced to live in a tent in the woods. While living there, she happens upon a Japanese style mansion near where she is staying. There she encounters the Sohmas. One of whom she is familiar with. Yuki Sohma is the popular, mysterious prince of her school. At the end of the day, they found out that she was living in a tent or their land. Due to a landslide that completley destroyed her tent, they offer to let her stay at there home in exchange for her services in cooking and cleaning the house. On accident, she discovers the Sohma family's secret. 12 members of their family are cursed by the spirits of the animals of the 12 zodiac. When hugged by the opposite sex or when their body is put under a lot of strain or stress, they transform into the animals that inhabit them. Um...what?

The manga is about Tohru's life living with some of Sohmas and keeping their secret. 'Them' being Yuki, Kyo, and Shigure Sohma.

Second longest paragraph
is praising this character.

Tohru Honda is a fantastic, well rounded character. At first, she's your classic perfect, naive, innocent heroine that is there to solve everyone's problems. But as the manga moves on, you find out that she's flawed just like everyone else. She openly admits to being a nosy busybody, but she's also considerate and she has things weighing on her heart just as much as basically all the characters in the manga. The fact that she stands strong through it all is what makes her so admirable. You really find out what makes her a great person and an amazing role model. She believes that everyone should have a shoulder to lean on, and though none of the character's problems are solves magically at once when she walks in a gives a speech, it's the progress that they make within themselves and actually realizing the problem within themselves that makes it wonderful to watch them progress.

This shoujo delves a lot deeper than what you'd think. It's probably the best shoujo I've ever read. Although there are slight cases where the characters are forced, or the relationships are forced,  such as Yuki's....well, "mother complex" (you'll get it if you've read it) is a very good example. As well as Rin and Haru's relationship....and Rin herself...

Other than that, most of this manga is about the characters, as large a cast they are, for the most part, all of them are respected, given the featured they are needed. (disregarding the limited few) One of the best character being Tohru. Another being Kyo. These were the most focused upon characters.
Although, going back to it's flaws, again with it's strained relationships, the fact that the auther felt the need to pair off almost all of the characters at the end was completely unnecessary and utterly strained and obvious. Compared to the hardships that the other characters had to go through to gain the relationships they had at the end of the manga, it was very obviously rushed, and again, unnecessary. That is in my opinion.

But then again, another good point is that the manga features themes that a lot of people can relate with. These themes not being limited to, not letting go of past but moving forward, opening up or learning to trust someone, the feeling of being bound and freedom, the inner turmoils of every person, and the fact that everybody out there has their own memories that they hold onto that defines them forever, those memories being both positive and negative.

Although those were long and kind of stupid sounding, Fruist Basket leans on them and more. The greatest asset of this manga (I have said already) is its characters. Though it's start is sweet and light hearted it slowly grows into something far more dramatic, emotional, and home hitting. Although the art isn't the most appealing thing to look at at first, it gets a lot better later on. The anime only covers a small part of the manga and I suggest reading the manga to anyone who loves drama, reverse harems, and has experienced the sort of emotional problems I've listed above.

Basically I recommend this to everyone. Not to mention the ending being the most memorable, saddest scene in manga/anime for me ever. Although you'll probably cry....more than once.... ending and all, the manga is completed and consists of 136 chapters. Written and drawn by Natsuki Tayaka. I consider this manga to be one of the best, if not the best in my book, shoujo that I've ever read. If nothing else to get you to read it, I'll mention the fact that it's a classic.

Also my ship sailed like it was ontop of a tsunami. If my OTP was the Titanic, the iceberg just sunk. OH YEAH!