Saturday, July 27, 2002

Fruits Basket (Furuba)



Genre: Shoujo / Comedy
General Audience
Natsuki Takaya (creator). TV Tokyo. Starchild/King Records




SHOPPING:
Furuba Artbooks and Manga
Furuba DVDs
Toys and Accessories
Music CDs
Posters Etc.
Everything Furuba
Firesenshi's Description:
Tohru lives in a tent and has a part-time job, which she takes after school, since her mother died. When the Soumas discovered her in this situation, they asked her to live with them in their house. Tohru agreed and lives there to take care of the Souma's chores.

All seemed to be well in the Souma household until one chaotic day, Tohru accidentally slipped and wrapped her arms around the Soumas, particularly Yuki, Kyou and Shigure. She then learned of the Souma's secret -- they turn into animals of the Juunishi (Chinese zodiac) when hugged by the opposite sex.

Will life ever be normal in the Souma household?

(26 episodes)

(As of May 5, 2002, DVD Vol. 9 -- 26th episode is released in Japan)

I wanna be Tohru! ^.^. >>> by firesenshi
If guys want to be Keitarou, living with a group of gorgeous girls in Love Hina, my cousins and I, who watched this, want to be Tohru Honda. Tohru Honda is actually the girl we usually hate -- she's too sweet, she keeps smiling all the time, naive and too goody-goody. But we can't seem to hate her! Even the anime addresses this and like them, we can't seem to understand how Tohru can smile all the time despite all the bad luck.

Oh, well... she's very lucky. Living in the Souma house with 3 bishounen, with occasional visits from other members of the same good-looking family, we'd all want her life! He he!

I first came upon Fruits Basket thinking that it'd be like Ranma 1/2 where people turned into animals and came upon the usual mishap comedies along the way. Fruits Basket, in the meantime, bears a distinctive kind of charm. For one, it's obviously shoujo where its story focuses on relationships. It's very shoujo in that it has the cliche elements of having too many bishounen in one house and the main character herself in some sort of pseudo-love triangle-which-we-don't-know-if-it's-true-yet type of storyline. Ahh... but before you blow this off as 'typical, typical, typical'... look again.

The comedy is totally tongue-in-cheeky and the creator seems to address every single thing we wonder about the characters. Very little slapstick humor. It's all in the dialogue with the scenes rendered for good comic timing. And speaking of the characters, you'll be sure to be engrossed in the variety of this one. The Juunishi of course, has 12 characters, which means that the cursed people in the Souma family are also 12 and you will all get to meet them 10 of them here. Each one has their own personality and background that you will won't stop watching this without having a favorite. If you laughed so hard at Ayame Souma's story, you will cry for what happened to Hatori Souma. There are times, though, that the serious scenes focused too much on relationships that the dialogues became too sappy, I want to sleep through those. As if I can sleep though... 5 minutes later, another character will blurt out something hilarious out of the blue and there goes boredom!

Oh... did I tell you that the Soumas are naked when they transform back to human form? He he. But it does make sense, right? That's all part of the fun! At least the scenes are not made to be purely ecchi unlike in Love Hina. (But of course, that would be an unfair comparison since Love Hina is not shoujo anime.)

After the ending, you will want more of Furuba! That's because the anime is only until volume 6 of the Fruits Basket manga. A lot of Furuba fans have been asking for a second season, an OAV or at least a movie but there still aren't news of that as of now.


Individual Rating: Art/Animation 8; Story 8; Characters 9; Sounds 6

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