#I loved fruits basket but am wondering if the 2019 version is worth it? If you see these tags pls tell me what you thought of it

[rosielav]

Just this weekend I watched the following:

She loves to cook, she loves to eat

Sign of affection

Apothecary Diaries

Quintessential Quintuplets

....... So if anyone could recommend some good shoujo apparently I'm in the mood for it 😅

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Fruits Basket 2019 Episode 16: “She Said Don’t Step On Them!”

I feel like I’ve been waiting ages for this episode specifically, and let’s just say it surpassed my expectations!

There’s something surreal and thrilling about finally getting an episode that’s like 99% stuff that wasn’t covered in the 2001 anime at all.

I think this might already be an improvement over this arc from the manga, and it was already one of my favourite bits to begin with, so that probably says a lot about how much I liked it.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut. [Potential spoiler warning for the whole manga]

I guess this is what I do every week, but I want to immediately talk about how this compares to the manga and exactly what material it adapts, since this is the first episode thus far where it’s been unclear in advance exactly how they’d go about it. Every episode thus far has more or less covered one- or two-chapter long self-contained story beats [aside from some rearranging early on], but this is the start of a two-episode arc adapting a three-chapter arc of the manga, so I’ve been wondering how they’d do it.

So basically this episode adapted chapter 39 and the first half of chapter 40. Which is a bit of a jump forward from the last episode covering chapters 25 and 26, but honestly I think it works fine to move Uo’s whole backstory arc up this early. Especially since we know that they’re also going to be adapting Hana’s backstory chapter later in this season, even though it happened even later in the manga, it’s clear that they’re trying to shuffle things about a bit so that the first season of the reboot covers all of the major character introduction/backstory arcs from the first half of the series, which I think is a good choice. This way the second season will be all about introducing entirely new characters and developing old ones.

I was wondering if they might attach chapter 50 to the next episode so that it can keep up a two chapters per episode pace, but I probably should have expected they’d just cover one and a half chapters per episode instead. It should work out for the best, but I guess this means that we won’t be seeing Kureno until season 2. I wonder if they’ll also leave Rin’s introduction to that point too. She gets introduced a little bit earlier than Kureno in the manga, but they’re gonna be shuffling things about later in season 1 anyway so she might also just appear near the start of season 2.

Anyway, that aside, this was a really good and faithful adaptation of the first half of this whole backstory arc. And since it covered less than two chapters, it gave them room to really flesh things out and to add a few things here and there, including an entire post-credits scene. Which was a real surprise, since I don’t think there’s been a single post-credits scene in the whole show before this point. But I’m not complaining or anything, since it was incredible. You’d think it would have been way too jarring after how sad of a note the episode ended on, but I think it did a nice job of just sneaking in some last minute comedy. It was also an entirely anime-original scene, which was nice. It’s pretty similar to a few background moments we get with the delinquent girls, but I’m pretty sure it’s technically still a new scene. I have a feeling that they wanted to give themselves an excuse to throw in some character animation that’s a lot more cartoonish and loose than what this series usually has, and I respect that, lol. It fit these characters really well, and it made the scene really stand out.

It’s also worth noting that back in the New Years episode they also added a scene that gave us a glimpse of Uo’s household, and how her father is a recovering alcoholic. Which at least puts a more positive and hopeful spin on this whole episode.

I’ve always really loved this whole arc from the manga, since it’s one of the best examples of the series’ willingness to take the time to really flesh out it’s supporting cast and to build up this interconnected web of relationships, and thankfully the anime’s really doing it justice so far. We still have another episode to go before this whole part’s finished, but I think it’s safe to say that the next episode should be just as good as this one.

The whole deal with Kyoko having been a delinquent in the past, and even Uo having been one too, have sorta just been running jokes up to this point, but this is where the story really makes it clear that on top of being a running joke, it’s also a topic that it’s willing to seriously dive into and explore the implications of. We haven’t gotten to the part where we really get to know about Kyoko’s own delinquent days [that’ll happen WAY later], but we do get a really interesting glimpse at her post-delinquency life in this episode, and most of all this is where we get all the details about Uo’s time in her gang.

The manga was already pretty explicit and heavy about it, especially for the time it was made, but pretty much everything about the animation and music and voice acting really elevated it even higher, and made the reality of it all even more hard-hitting. The specific type of gang Uo was in probably comes across as a bit more ‘dated’ in the modern day than it’s meant to, but I don’t think it’s super jarring or anything.

I have a feeling that most people getting into this series don’t exactly expect it to end up having a whole arc about how young people can fall through the cracks in society and end up involved in criminal activity before they know it, but that’s just what this series is like, lol.

I think one thing that really gives this whole part a distinctly ‘realistic’ tone is the fact that in several different ways it’s all about looking back on dark elements of your past when you’ve been able to grow past them and become a better and more happy person. Uo is literally narrating this story to everyone as a flashback just to highlight how different she is now and how much happier and more well-adjusted she is with Tohru and Hana in her life, and how she’s channeled her rebellious punk energy into being part of her self-confidence and independence, rather than it all being about her being a vulnerable live wire who just wanted to lash out at everything.

And on the other hand, we find out that the thing that really shook Uo as a child and made her think about her own life and whether or not she was truly happy was seeing how Kyoko had moved on from her own delinquency days and forged her own life and her own family. Like she said, she just learned to relax, and to let it all go, and Uo just didn’t really know how to process that at the time.

It just gives it a more mature and introspective sort of feeling, rather than having it be about characters who are still in the midst of it all. We do get the three delinquent girls who are tailing Uo in this episode. Though they’re mostly just funny background characters, which in it’s own way also spells out how the series isn’t trying to, like, glorify and glamorize the image of deliquency.

But I do still like, on the other hand, how Uo still has largely the same punk aesthetic and attitude going on. It’s just channeled in a more positive way, and she does it just because she genuinely enjoys it, and not out of a need to fit in with a gang. It’s just neat that the story still lets her embrace certain aspects of how she used to be, rather than having her completely abandon all of it and just be conventionally ‘normal’ afterward.

Also, before I forget, they also added a small detail of having Uo’s senpai from the gang watching her leaving Tohru’s house, and I think there were one or two other moments elsewhere that emphasized the way that she was keeping an eye on Uo. It’s not like there wasn’t any of that in the manga, but it was a lot more minor and easy to miss, and it was a bit more out of the blue when we found out later in this arc that she went to Kyoko for help.

And even if it wasn’t exactly a new scene, I really like how moody and atmospheric the scenes at the start and end of the episode with Uo in her apartment were. It’s not the sorta tone this series usually has, but it worked really well. The bit at the very end with Uo’s thoughts and the sound of her father’s TV blending together into overwhelming white noise was a really fantastic touch that helped get across how bad Uo was feeling.

With how this episode managed to be even more intense than the manga version was, I can’t wait to see how the next one goes, since it’ll be the big emotional climax of this arc. And now that we’ve seen how well they’re adapting Uo’s backstory, I can’t wait to see how their adaptation of Hana’s backstory chapter later in the season will be.

Also, on top of all the incredibly good and dramatic Uo content, the cute and fluffy present-day scenes were even more cute and fluffy than they were in the manga. It’s kinda funny at this point how much they’re leaning into the Kyo/Tohru ship-tease, lol. I feel like Kyo’s screen-time in this episode was 90% just him blushing and making a >n< face and honestly I am living for it.

I have a feeling that a lot of anime-only people might not even realize that this is actually the first part of a two-episode arc, rather than a self-contained episode like basically all of the ones before it, since it was still so cohesive and satisfying on it���s own. So I wonder how surprised they might be when they find out that the next episode is a direct continuation of this one.

Anyway this was a great episode and I’m even more excited than ever to see the anime get even deeper into ‘new’ material.

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Fruits Basket 2019 Episode 11: “This Is A Wonderful Inn”

Funnily enough, an episode involving the characters literally soaking in a warm bath is exactly what I needed to watch after yesterday’s episode of Sarazanmai, lmao.

But this episode isn’t JUST pure fluff or anything. There’s a bit more going on with it.

Thoughts under the cut. [And spoiler warning for the whole manga]

Even though this episode ends at the same spot that episode 12 of the 2001 anime did, it ended up being a fair bit different in practice, as a natural consequence of how the last episode differed from it’s equivalent episode from the 2001 anime.

This episode adapted chapters 17 and 18 of the manga, whereas episode 12 of the 2001 anime just covered chapter 18, since it covered [parts of] chapters 15-17 in the episode before it. So instead of the hot springs trip being padded out into an entire episode, it only takes up the back half of this episode, and instead of being in the Valentine’s Day episode, Momiji’s story about the Foolish Traveler is in this episode. Which might be a bit odd to some people who just watched the 2001 anime, but this is a lot more faithful to the manga, and in terms of pacing I think it works a lot better.

For one thing, Valentine’s Day and White Day are a month apart, so the 2001 anime had to basically have a month-long time-skip in the middle of an episode since they crammed those two parts together, whereas in the reboot they’re separate episodes, so the jump forward in time is a lot more natural. And I feel like Momiji’s story has a bit more weight when it doesn’t get brought up in the exact same episode as Tohru buying everyone chocolate.

But even more than that, when I watched the 2001 anime for the first time a while back to prepare for the reboot, I thought that the hot springs episode was one of the slowest and most dull episodes of them all. It’s not a very eventful chapter to begin with, and padding it out into an entire episode was just . . . not great, especially since it involved them giving Ritsu’s mum like a thousand times more screen-time which pushed her way over the line into being obnoxious. Even in the reboot her whole brand of comedy still bugs me a bit, but at least there’s only, like, two scenes of it this time around.

And on the note of Ritsu’s mum, this episode reminded me that it’s kinda weird, in hindsight, how the English translation of the manga just has her straight up go ‘I hope you can meet my son one day, he’s a nice boy :)’, or something like that, considering that one way or another Ritsu’s gender is meant to be ambiguous. They even had Momiji refer to Ritsu with he/him pronouns in the scene afterward. I actually looked through both my English edition and my Japanese edition to make sure, and yeah the English version just adds in gendered pronouns and stuff that aren’t really meant to be there, and it leads to this really awkward situation later on where Tohru’s genuinely surprised to find out that Ritsu is a boy later on, which doesn’t make sense if you’re reading that translation, lol.

But anyway Ritsu as a character is a whooooole can of worms that I’ll get into when he comes up later on. If I remember right, I think the hint we got at the outline of season 1 from that one video Funimation posted implies that Ritsu’s intro will be in episode 17, so I guess that’ll be when that happens.

Anyway, even before the hot springs stuff, the first half of this episode is all about the Foolish Traveler story and how it relates to Tohru “self-sacrifice is my middle name :)” Honda.

It’s really funny watching so many new viewers be really thrown off by how dark the whole story is, and how it just ends with the traveler being a disembodied head with empty eye sockets. Though I think it feels especially creepy in this version of the story since it has such a unique and vivid animation style that really makes it feel like a dark fairy tale, which I loved.

Momiji pretty much spells it all out for the audience, but the whole point of the story, as it exists within the manga as a whole, is that while Tohru’s habit for self-sacrifice and selflessness is genuinely a character flaw that hurts her at times, it’s not something that should be exploited and belittled. It’s all about respecting how other people choose to express their kindness, and about pointing out how the people who choose to treat her badly are the ones who are in the wrong, not her.

I think the reboot in particular has been pretty good at portraying Tohru’s maturity and depth, but I hope this episode in particular makes it clear to new viewers that she’s not some cliche Mary Sue who’s super perfect and has nothing wrong with her. If anything, I’d say that part of the story as it goes on, even if it’s a small part, is about interrogating the way that we think about conventionally kind and feminine heroines in these sorts of stories. There’s a whole list of characters who have their opinion toward Tohru evolve as they get to know her and understand how she really is as a person, and the story also slowly peels back the layers on all of her repressed trauma and complexes that lead to her being this way in the first place.

It’s been really interesting how this reboot has inspired a lot of discussion from people who’ve been fans of the series for a decade or more, and how their feelings toward the series as a whole and Tohru as a character have evolved over the years. I’ve seen a lot of people talk about how they disliked Tohru when they were younger, because they thought she was stupid and annoying and overly perfect, but as they got older and looked back on the series with a more mature perspective, they realized how much of a genuinely good person she is. It’s kinda funny that stuff like this shows how different types of kindness can be misunderstood and disrespected by people [especially when it intersects with stuff like misogyny], considering that one of the first scenes that really shows Tohru’s true colours is when she talks about how her mother always told her that everyone has their own different type of kindness that they grow inside their hearts, and that those differences can lead to misunderstandings and conflict.

There also seem to be a lot of people who didn’t understand the point behind Momiji’s story when they were kids, and that’s basically the same thing. When you’re a kid, it’s easy to look at a person whose kindness is exploited by people with bad intentions, and to go ‘well they’re just an idiot who deserves what they get’. But that’s not really how it works.

It’s worth noting that in an interview you can find in the last volume of Yen Press’ collector’s edition of the manga, Takaya pointed out that after hearing Momiji’s story, Kyo decided to stop calling Tohru an idiot. It’s a really subtle detail that I know I definitely didn’t notice the first time around, but it makes sense, and it’s really cute. He’s such an incredibly Good Boy [tm] who’s trying his best to slowly improve himself and be kinder in his own ways.

Also the scene with them on the balcony with the sheets flying in the air and the neat direction trick where the shot of Tohru gets covered up by one of the sheets blowing in the wind and then when it moves away it shows Kyo was CINEMATIC POETRY and I am not emotionally prepared for when a very similarly framed scene is gonna happen way way later in the reboot.

The inn sequence was really fun and cute, but I’m really glad it was just half the episode rather than the entire thing. It’s not really enough material to carry an entire episode on it’s own.

It’s fun to watch new viewers get into legit shipping wars with the whole Tohru/Kyo/Yuki love triangle, lol. These early episodes are really leaning into the Tohru/Yuki ship-tease. I guess it goes to show how much they’re getting invested in the reboot, at least. I wonder how many new Tohru/Yuki shippers are gonna get disappointed over how their whole deal develops, especially after this episode.

I have a loooot of thoughts about the whole Tohru/Yuki situation in general, and it’s a bit too early to really bother getting into it, but I at least wanna say that it’s kinda funny seeing some Tohru/Yuki shippers who’ve read the manga be like ‘I’ll never be able to accept the idea that he just saw her as a mother figure! He was definitely crushing on her!’, since my opinion on the matter is somehow both more or less the same and also the exact opposite of that. Let’s just say that I have a lot of thoughts about Yuki’s performative attraction toward Tohru.

Anyway, I think that’s about all there is to say. Though I still think I ended up saying a lot more than I expected to. This wasn’t exactly the most eventful episode ever, but it was really fun and relaxing. It was a pretty necessary breather episode to have between episode 10, which was a fair bit heavier on the dark and worrying foreshadowing than most new fans probably expected, and the upcoming episode 12, which is probably gonna REALLY catch people off guard with how dark it’ll be, considering how well the reboot’s handled it’s more dramatic moments.