analysis-and-insight-obsessed

[analysis-and-insight-obsessed]

I saw this post circling around about what the next hype would be in Fruits Basket asfter the soup and true form arc and I think it’ll be a mix. Everyone’s got something that they’re hyped about seeing in the series as it unfolds right? So I thought why not make a list of what I’m hyped for! So here it is:

The chapter when they’re eating the noodles and Sigure being wise is something I’m looking forward to! It’s so sweet and he gives off great advice. PLUS THE LITTLE THING WITH KYO AND TOHRU BEFORE IT IS CUTE AND I WANT TO SEE IT!

RIN. JUST…EVERYTHING WITH RIN.

Obviously the student council, Machi and Kakeru in general. And maybe Kimi. They’re such an iconic, odd bunch of people that help Yuki grow as a person. 

THE BEACH ARC!! THE SUMMER ARC!!! EVERYTHING FROM BOOK 10 AND 11!!!!! THE DRAMA, THE TENSION, THE ROMANCE…EVERY LITTLE THING!

Mayu and Hatori meeting again! 

YUKI’S CARRER/FUTURE MEETING WITH HIS MUM AND AYAME. I loved how Aya just struts in and saves the day! 

Speaking of Ayame and Yuki, I can’t wait to watch their bond grow more close! I just loved those moments. 

The Feild Trip arc

SORTA CINDERELLA PLAY

You know in book 17 where Kyo spots Tohru’s muffler thing on the road and picks it up and cleans it for her and she does that little swooshy thing?! I want to see that.

Yuki falling in love! AND FINALLY FINDING HIS PEOPLE.

Kyo and Tohru falling in love!

The drama between Shigure, Akito and the birb man Kureno. I’ve been dying to see that stuff animated for years and we’re finally getting it!

Momiji and Hiro going through their growth spurts! They were so nice in the manga so that’s exciting! We’re finally seeing Momiji grow!

Momiji in general towards the end. The boy needs more love.

KYO AND YUKI’S FIGHT IN THE HOSPITAL ARC AND THEY SLOWLY BECOME LIKE BROTHERS. That is something that’ll be so heartwarming to finally see animated.

HANA CALLING AKITO ‘A-CHAN’ AND GETTING THE JOB AS THE DOJO’S MANAGER WHICH SCARES KYO.

And finally, the ending. I want to see them all happy and free, being able to love and hate who they choose. I want to see the little message that you don’t have to forgive anyone and you won’t be a bad person to be animated. I want to see Yuki’s smiling, sassy personality come out. I want to see Akito finally be able to live the way SHE wants to. And…I WANT TO SEE TOHRU AND KYO GROWING OLD AND WALKING DOWN THE STREET, HOLDING HANDS AND JUST LIVING THE LIFE THEY DESERVE WITH THEIR KIDS AND GRANDAUGHTER! I want to see the family finally look and act like a family. 

And that’s all I can think of for now at the top of my head. Overall I just can’t wait to see this whole story animated. Though I’ll be sad when it ends but let’s not think about that.

[analysis-and-insight-obsessed]

I have wanted to do a post about matching characters/couples with Taylor Swift songs for ages. Now I’m finally getting around to it since her new album Lover was just released! Something I love to do is to associate characters with songs and often times, I can match them up to a song almost perfectly. So after having this album on repeat for the last few days, I’ve taken in the meanings to these songs and have applied them to Furuba characters that I think fit them. I think I’ll do this with Taylor’s other albums too and to other songs in general. It’s pretty fun!

I’m doing a video on YouTube covering this post so this is acting as my script. :))))

WARNING: Major Fruits Basket spoilers under the cut.

Keep reading

[analysis-and-insight-obsessed]

kyoru and yuchi are the only reasonable ships for any of the characters involved, no i dont take criticism. tohru tends to put everyone on a pedestal, shes always supporting people and pointing out the good in them, and while that helps yuki get back on his feet (bc shes pointing out the things he likes about himself as good, rather than things he cant control), its not really what he needs or likes to grow fully, because people have been praising him his whole life. he can never be truly comfortable with her, bc she reminds him of the sohmas deep down (even though her praise means something and is good, theres still a subtle similarity in treatment. plus he views her as naive sometimes, which means he cant always believe her when she says good things about him). compare that with kyo, who desperately needs someone to praise him, tell him he has value, as well as someone he can actively help and protect–that same naivety, to kyo, is a sign that hes needed, not that he should distrust her judgement. kyo takes people at their word because everyone is always blunt about hating him, unlike yuki’s experience, where everyone says they love him, but still treat him poorly. plus, kyo has an innate understanding of what parental love can and should feel like from kazuma and kyoko (no matter how much he complains about his real parents never loving him) that yuki simply doesnt have, because yuki’s first parental figure was tohru herself. kyo can even directly relate to tohrus pain of losing her mother, because he lost her too, just the same as uotani, hanajima, and grandpa honda, the only other characters who seem genuinely worried about tohru’s ability to cope with her mother’s death. tohru needed someone who could actually understand what her mother meant to her, and that someone could only ever be kyo.

compare that with machi: completely blunt 100% of the time, and doesnt hold back when saying yuki isnt a prince. shes one of the only people ever to be unimpressed by him initially, which is why hes able to trust her completely, and to believe her when she does finally praise him (plus his experience with tohru’s true kindness, but that just set him up for his relationship with machi). in addition, she has issues of her own that he is able to relate to and understand, and subsequently help with; he never understood tohru’s struggles because he didnt know the pain of losing someone who was close to him and supported him, because she was the first person to do that for him. machi, however, with her controlling family, feeling forced into a perfect box and coming up bland? he understands that perfectly. just for giggles, we can compare how kyo could never have ended up with machi, either; kyo has spent his whole life living with people who directly tell him what they think of him, machi wouldntve had the same jarring effect on him. hed never have figured out what was so bad about machis family because it was such a subtle thing; hed say something like, “whats the big deal? you had a family, didnt you? youre going through life perfectly, you have everything you could ask for, people respect you, theres nothing wrong with your life. get your shit together and get lost,” and that wouldve crushed machi. shed retreat further into her hole, spiral down, and kyo wouldve been none the wiser. not that shed be able to help him at all; shed never understand his loud, abrasive character anymore than she does kakeru; shed be intimidated, rather than helpful. awkward is the key word for that relationship, the only thing theyd really like about each other is roasting yuki. in other words, yuki and kyo are completely different characters with completely different needs and capabilities as romantic characters, and thus it is absolutely no surprise that they ended up with two equally different characters with different needs and capabilities for relationships (tohru and machi). yukiru is a disrespect to both yuki and tohru’s character arcs, and if anyone thinks machi is just rude tohru ill eat my hat

[analysis-and-insight-obsessed]

My personal opinion on the episode switch ups

Small spoilers below

I personally don’t mind the out of order episodes right now. The true form arc is the best season ending material the series has this early on, otherwise with how they’re splitting the seasons the true form arc would awkwardly fall towards the end but not THE end. With the emotional charge that whole arc has it’s not a bad idea to keep it for the end. It is weird to have so many character introductions in a row but I’ll wait to see how the second and third season go to see if it helped with the pay off. After the series has aired I’m gonna rewatch it in manga order and see if that changes the flow at all. Don’t think it will but I’m excited anyway haha

[analysis-and-insight-obsessed]

Fruits Bakset: Motoko Minagawa Appreciation Post

One thing I always noticed when it came to Fruits Basket, both manga wise and with the Anime is that people don't really care about the episodes that center around the prince yuki fan club. I'll be honest, I was one of those people when I was younger.

Though the three girls in Yuki's class were pretty much useless, I don't think the same thing can be said about Motoko.

Sure, she is pushy and jealous just like the other girls, but unlike them, she actually has a purpose in the story.

You see, Motoko is used to show us how Yuki appears to everyone from the outside of his inner circle/family.

The fake politeness yuki uses to make people like him, Motoko fell into that and believed that it was who Yuki really was. She was in love with that idea of him.

Unlike the other prince yuki fans however, Motoko noticed when Yuki started to change. When he smiled around tohru or about tohru, Motoko noticed that the smiles he gave before weren't real. She saw that Yuki is more than just a sweet princely figure.

Once she sees these changes she embraces them, though she hates that tohru is the cause of them. She is just happy that Yuki is becoming truly happy.

It all comes to a front when it's time for her to graduate. She confesses her feelings to yuki, but instead of expecting love in return, she thanks him for giving her so much joy in her school life.

She just wants happiness for Yuki. She sees the way not only Tohru, but Kakeru and the other members of the student council are making Yuki happy.

Yuki used to think that people couldn't like him. He thought that his 'fake kindness' wasn't enough to make friends.

Motoko's confession made him happy and I think it was something he really needed to hear. Yuki, who used to wonder if anyone would miss him if he suddenly vanished, was given conformation by someone who has nothing to do with the zodiac or his inside life. He touched someone who was outside that wall. He did that.

I think Motoko had just as much to do with Yuki learning to love himself as anyone else.

[analysis-and-insight-obsessed]

let me start this by saying i do not condone pedophilia, and i fully understand that both ships discussed here are problematic in that regard, especially the one i will portray in a more positive light. this post is about me trying to figure out why these ships, so similar on the surface, felt so different to me as a twelve year old, when i hadnt fully grasped how strange the power dynamics and age differences were. this is an analysis of the writing of these ships, not the ships themselves, based on how i felt when i read about them as a kid.

without further ado, my thoughts on kyoko/katsuya and kureno/uo.

the story of tohru’s parents is one of the most unforgettable romances in the entirety of fruits basket. i can guarantee that the majority of furuba readers, especially those who, like myself, first read the story at a young age, have, at some point or another, shipped kyoko/katsuya. we emphasized with kyoko, the emotional, brave, broken young woman who just wanted someone to love her, and we, alongside her, fell in love with the sweet, teasing, handsome man that is katsuya, who came to her rescue and saved her life. we couldnt help but love him, any more than she could, and (of course) we knew from the beginning that they would create tohru together, at this point our beloved main character. we laughed when they teased each other, cried when they saved each other, mourned when katsuya died and left kyoko all alone. we couldnt help but love them, and their story, even though we all eventually grew up and realized that she was only fifteen, that he was her teacher, isnt that a creepy dynamic? it should be, but many of us still think to ourselves, “katsuya is too much of a derp to be a creep like that,” because we see him through kyoko, and she loves him. we know that their relationship is problematic, but deep down we also know that we love the characters and their relationship anyway, because kyoko’s sheer force of personality spoke to us, and every scene with katsuya was about her falling in love with him. takaya took us on a ride with kyoko, and thus we were never able to truly hate katsuya. the only other character’s perspective we see of katsuya is poor, sweet tohru, admitting that she made her father a villain because she wanted her mother to love her more–but at this point, we already know kyoko’s grief, and subsequent realization that she needs to be a mother; we know that tohru feels ashamed of herself for thinking such things about her father; we can’t even blame kyoko for poor parenting because she was only a kid herself, just trying to get by. takaya’s writing is beautiful with this pairing, even with the precious few chapters that feature them, which is why its such bullshit that kureno and uo, as a pairing, leave such a bittersweet taste in our mouths.

personally, i think takaya put kureno with uo for three reasons: she wanted to tie up loose characters into relationships, she wanted kureno to have at least one defining character trait, and she wanted kyoko and katsuya to have their happy ending in someone else. uo has been compared to kyoko from the very beginning (childhood delinquent girl with long hair, had an aggressive past with a poor home life, but was saved by someone they cant help but love (katsuya and tohru), and grew up to be a warm, relaxed, loving person with lots of emotions and a good sense of humor). kureno has many parallels with katsuya (generally polite, grew up in a restricting household, wants to be set free and achieves that through an emotional, direct girl, plus kureno has been compared to tohru (superficially, the same way she was compared to katsuya) and he looks almost exactly the fucking same as katsuya). superficially, they should be perfect together. right? wrong. uo and kureno have so, so much more going on that its ridiculous. they are fundamentally different people from kyoko and katsuya, with different circumstances, and forcing them together will always feel awkward and jarring, unless things about their story drastically change in the reboot.

lets look at uo first. there are several key differences between her and kyoko; first, how they entered the gang life and why they committed to it. kyoko grew up in a heavily abusive home, and thus wanted to rebel against everything. her drive was to piss people off, to hurt people, to punish society for letting her family treat her the way she was. she stuck with it because the gangs, at least, accepted her superficially, and the adrenaline rushes of being bad kept her going, and being bad meant she could hate herself and everyone else equally. uo didnt grow up in an abusive home, just a distant one (much like young tohru, actually! uo’s dad is sort of like a representation of what kyoko couldve become if she hadnt remembered to be a mom). her dad, depressed that his wife left them, turned to alcohol and mindless television to cope, and poor uotani is left feeling lost, feeling like everything’s her fault, and desperately trying to find some way to get the other’s attention, especially that of her dad and her missing mother. she joins the gang because she hopes being bad will help people notice her, pay attention to her, instead of just ignoring her and leaving her to her own thoughts. eventually, its tohru who saves her from herself, with kind words and affection, and then uo is finally able to support herself and even reconnect with her father. she makes a family for herself, and she spends her days happily with her friends and her new family. kyoko, conversely, is saved by katsuya, but then never becomes independent of him until he dies. she stays in this safe space with her knight in shining armor because she’s not healed yet, just rescued. she’s still scared of the real world, and its not until his death that she’s able to make a life for herself, and grow as a person. kyoko as an adult would have the strength to punch a guy like katsuya in the face, no matter how much he reminded her of her late husband. and uo has all of this growth before she even meets kureno. by the time she meets him, she doesnt need saving. the only thing she sees in him is a hot guy who kind of reminds her of tohru, which is why its absolutely ridiculous that she spends the better part of the last half of the story desperately trying to reach him. its a disrespect to her independent character. with kureno and uo, its kureno who needs saving, and its just not in uo’s character to chase after someone so much to save him. they would make so much more sense if it was kureno desperately trying to reach her, but uo being the one to pursue him? unreasonable.

now, kureno. his differences from katsuya are pretty much parallels of uo’s differences from kyoko. while uo is better developed and equipped to deal with emotions as an independent person, kureno is much less developed than katsuya at the times of their introductions, and in fact he is emotionally stunted in comparison. when we first meet katsuya, he is finally becoming free of his family’s responsibilities, yet rapidly becoming someone other’s can depend on anyway, and for the first time. he’s growing up and repairing his relationship with his father, and he is emotionally ready to have someone like kyoko in his life. he pursues her because her freedom makes him happy, and he wants to make her happy. he’s an independent person first, and then a romantic partner. when kyoko decides she’s ready to love him, he’s there waiting with open arms. this is the complete opposite of kureno! kureno is the emotionally stunted one in his relationship; he has not yet figured out how to let go of his family and akito, and he doesn’t know what it means to be free. it makes sense to me that he falls in love with uo immediately, but as uo inexplicably pursues him time and again he rebuffs her. he’s not ready for a relationship the same way she is; she doesn’t have a real need for the relationship that his character arc does.

as i write this, it occurs to me that perhaps this all was intentional! takaya reused the characters and the relationship, but she twisted it so that the emotional girl is the one to save the sheltered boy for once, instead of the other way around; its all very empowering! but the way she wrote it–due to time constraints or just a lack of vision–was incredibly lackluster compared to the other relationships she writes. if she wanted us to believe in uo and kureno, she shouldve spent more time creating parallels between kyoko and kureno, rather than defaulting to the gender dynamics and parallels. we would have loved kureno if she took the time to show that he needed saving just as much as kyoko did. she shouldve spent time creating parallels between uo and katsuya, rather than cracking a joke about how kureno reminds uo of tohru in an attempt to connect him with katsuya. let uo’s motivation be that she wants this poor, sad boy to be free, not that she fell randomly in love and spent the rest of her high school life searching for him. let her take after her emotional role models, kyoko and tohru, and help him grow for himself, in the way katsuya didnt let kyoko grow. for the love of god, dont make her commit herself to him in a brash decision in a hospital room; let him spend some time alone, growing up, before he comes back to her.

there is a way to write uo and kureno beautifully, but unfortunately takaya fell short here. here’s hoping the reboot will do better :)

[analysis-and-insight-obsessed]

Now that I think about it...

Megumi said that he puts curses on people and can also perform counter curses.

It's a stretch but I wonder if he would be able to break the sohma curse? If not, I wonder if he would be able to sense the curse in the sohma's.

The only time he interects with a sohma is when he passes Hiro in volume 15 and Hiro even says he didn't sense Megumi there at all.

I can't help but wonder if Megumi could sense the curse in them but chose to stay out of it. He's only here to see his sisters amazing performance after all.

[analysis-and-insight-obsessed]

Yes, Toph, Katara and Aang do deserve praise but are we just going to skip over the fact that Sokka can use a boomerang and fight like his clan AND he he can use a fan and fight like the kyoshi warriors AND he is a swordsmaster AND he always comes up with the strategic plans AND he once had a bomb ass hawk wich he used for sending messages. Fuck his girlfriend died and turned into the moon and he somehow was still able to make others laugh and to keep being focused on his mission with very little time to grief. He's very strong mentally, emotionally and physically and deserves more praise and love.

[analysis-and-insight-obsessed]

Some hair symbolism

Hair in symbolizing losing control

Hair symbolizing coming out of hiding/facing your destiny

Hair symbolizing (trying to) leave your old life behind

[analysis-and-insight-obsessed]

I notice how a lot of people are talking about how the fan girls are freaking out for no reason because tohru obviously is looking at kyo.

Here's the thing though. Even though she's talking about her, motoko isn't looking at Tohru. She doesn't see tohru looking at Kyo. She see's Yuki looking at tohru and smiling at her in a way he never does with anyone else.

That rare smile is the reason Tohru is enemy # 1.

[analysis-and-insight-obsessed]

damn machi and hanajima must have gotten along so well what with their mutual nature of finding yuki not impressive at all

[analysis-and-insight-obsessed]

so there are 4 episodes left and I‘m curious

what are your episode predictions from now on ?

[analysis-and-insight-obsessed]

How majority of the fandom sees Azula: Irredeemable monster who has slaughtered civilians, burned villages and people alike, power obsessed, incapable of love, remorse and empathy. Became insane by the end of the series because she’s always been crazy as a kid and was born evil.

What Azula actually is: 14 y/o who was good at war and was following orders and killed the Avatar before he was about to start a rampage and murder his enemies. Conquered Ba Sing Se without spilling any blood and genuinely helped Zuko return to the Fire Nation with no strings attached. Demonstrated her desire to be loved and actually displayed her love for her father (even canonically Azula actually did love Zuko), empathized with Zuko during The Beach and felt remorse for the way she treated her friends during Sozin’s Comet. Suffered a mental breakdown due to overwhelming pressure from holding the throne without any proper guidance at a very young age when everyone she cared about was abandoning and betraying her.

[analysis-and-insight-obsessed]

Hey everyone remember that time when Aang was on trial for the “murder” of this one town’s founder supposedly committed by Kyoshi and then after an episode’s worth of wacky detective hijinks trying to prove her innocence Kyoshi appears through Aang and just goes “what the fuck is up I killed that warmongering prick and I am not sorry in the slightest” because I do and god what a woman.

[analysis-and-insight-obsessed]

Hana’s Shoujo Manga Collection

I was able to translate most of the titles here. There’s only two that I was only able to really make out part of their titles (if anyone can read them/make out the kanji better/etc. - feel free to let me know! :D)

Top Row: (Left to Right)

The Summer, The Sky, and Our Future - Vol. 1 

Sketch - Vol. 1 

Love Manual (other possible translations of the title - Renai Manual / The Manual for Falling in Love) - Vol. 2 ~ 5 

Treasured Lady - Vol. 1 ~ 8

Still Too Early for Goodbye - Vol. 1 ~ 5

Bottom Row: (Left to Right)

Still Too Early for Goodbye - Vol. 6 - 11

* This is one of the titles I can’t make out 100%. It definitely seems to have 月夜の (moonlit night), で (de) is definitely there in the title too, and I think the verb at the end of the title is 踊りましょう (let’s/shall we dance), but I can’t really make out the kanji between の and で. Hana has volumes 1 - 4 for this series.

** And this is the second one of the titles that I can’t make out 100%. What I can make out are あめ細工の (sugar sculptures) and 屋さん (this is usually used for shop’s and stuff, the kanji that comes before this, I think I can make it out…but whenever I try to find/search for it, I can’t come up with anything). It seems this title is about some shop’s sugar sculptures. Hana has volumes 1 - 7.

Summer’s Sigh - Vol. 1 - 3 - This is Shigure’s novel series, but his pen name for the series is きりたに(Kiritani) のあ (Noa).

A bigger, close up of this image can be found here.

[analysis-and-insight-obsessed]

Seeing Hana’s room and home saddens me a bit because it shows how it was plausible to live with Hana. I know that Tohru can’t stand asking things of people and that’s essential to her character. And I know that the whole plot wouldn’t have happened. But this episode and episode 17 reinforced how Tohru could have chosen waaay better living conditions than a tent.

At least it turned out well in the end.

[analysis-and-insight-obsessed]

prince zuko got you all out here thinking every dark haired antagonist boy is gonna do right in the end when zuzu was the exception not the rule