#akito needed more screentime

[bbibbirose]

the amt of plot holes and terrible writing in fruits basket is akahjwhdjsbcj

[ace-and-the-rpg-horrors]

for real!! the side characters having importance is a big part of the appeal of PJSK for me personally. they flesh out the world so much. plus, many of them being a little older than the MCs gives us an insight to what life is like beyond school in this universe

in Arata and Souma's case, they are particularly disliked for appearing frequently- is this not realistic? if you meet someone who shares your goals, naturally, you would see them again, which is what VBS is doing. Vivid Street is about community- it would go against that if we only ever saw four characters regularly talk to each other!!

i saw someone claim that Arata and Souma's relationship isn't good, yet the same person complained about their development? not developed enough, and there's an issue, "too developed" and they still have problems??

not to mention how absurd it is to... dislike characters for being written well? with actual depth?? why on Earth would you complain about having more characters to enjoy?

Arata and Souma are also frequently compared to Iori and Mio, who some claim "just did their job and left" and didn't "steal screentime from MCs" which is just?? like, i am certain that this take is made by those who do not care about Leo/need, or they would know that Iori appears in SEVERAL events apart from her main one- off the top of my head, i remember seeing her in about five?? which is VERY similar to the number of events that involved Arata and/or Souma?

but, of course, a large amount of this fandom will not care about how much screentime is "stolen" from L/n because, disappointingly, they're underappreciated. however, Arata and Souma DARE to share the spotlight with Akito and Toya occasionally, and it is suddenly a mortal SIN to divert attention away from two beloved boys just for a small while...

defending misunderstood PJSK side characters isn't enough i need to draw them

[neonpixel-pixie]

Julius Kingsley

Code Geass: Akito The Exciled

No, I am totally not watching whole Akito the Exciled serie, which is not my cup of coffee honestly, only to simp over this more cruel overdramatic arrogant, but hot as hell asshole version of Lelouch with fancy eyepatch decorated with crystal from dad's chandelier!

[ This man needs more screentime there in my opinion, cuz he is much more interesting than more as half of characters and it's a such a sin he is there for really short time. ]

[devilrosola]

drakon

Drakon

003 | Give me a character & I will tell you

How I feel about this character:  Watching the SnB anime first...such a deep voice for a 14yo boy, but hey, dubs decided 6th grader Akito from Kodocha to sound mature because of the stuff he had gone through so I figured it was an artistic choice like that. Well, he was annoying (ig in an amusing way) at first and barely seen in Magi, so SnB manga shows how he's just a gigantic gentle sweetheart.

All the people I ship romantically with this character:  Saher, Serendine, Sinbad

My non-romantic OTP for this character:  Serendine, Sinbad, Ja'far, Hinahoho

My unpopular opinion about this character:  What's a popular opinion for me to refute?

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: More postcanon screentime of how he ruled Sindria. And maybe him and Saher starting a family?

my het ship: Saher, they're so darling.

my fem/slash ship: Sinbad, maybe Ja'far--they can share scale-care techniques

my OTP: Since it's canon, him and his wife <3 I'm not opposed to AUs with different ships tho

my OT3: Hm...how about him with Sinbad and Mystras?

my cross over ship: Haven't thought of it

my kink: He's scaly...what kind of kinks do I need to say?

a head cannon fact: Post canon when all assimilations are gone, he meets Kouen's former household including En Shou only to discover it's his long lost brother that had ran away from Parthevia after Barby fell from power and the Dragul family was disgraced. (the Kous had bestowed a new name on him--so he was completely unrecognizable at Magno) Oh and I guess he sheds regularly and the cycles hit him like pms

my gender bend: She'd be pretty

[ghostietea]

On Tohru and Akito: a long overdue analysis

As some may know, Tohru Honda and Akito Sohma from the manga Fruits Basket are pretty much my all time favorite protagonist/antagonist pair. They just work incredibly well as thematic pieces and driving forces of the story in relation to eachother. And beyond even the surface level they have a rich and layered goldmine of parallels that make them fascinating to think about. While it may make many a newbie raise an eyebrow, I think this is a fact that is to some level pretty widely acknowledged in the fandom proper. However, there is another level of their relationship that is often mostly left out of analytical conversations about them and their parallels: their eventual friendship. Something which, partly due to screentime, is often somewhat simplified down and misinterpreted. Which I think is a shame because, when you look at it, their eleventh hour friendship is deeply interwoven with their parallels and the very thematics and ending of the story. So then, what’s really going on with the girls that stand as part of the thematic core of Furuba? Beyond (most of, true analytical objectivity is impossible in interpretation) my personal sentimental feelings, let’s talk Akito and Tohru: their parallels, relationship, and role in the story overal. Read more present, this is going to be a long one but I hope you stick around 😊

One facet of Akito and Tohru’s role in relationship to eachother that I think is both interesting and imperative to understanding their purpose is their nature as eachother’s foils, especially their parallels. See, the two girls are both opposite and the same. Takaya sets them up as foils before we even properly meet Akito, as you can see in these panels: 

However, their foil relationship becomes a lot more intriguing once their similarities become more apparent later in the story. Just think about it: two girls with boy’s names whose fathers died when they were young, leaving them alone with their mothers, who both developed behavior that, according to the environment that they grew up in, would keep them from being abandoned. Akito, coming from the cultish Sohma clan where she was treated as a God to the point that she thinks she can do no wrong and has tied all of her self worth to the role, plays the part of a male ruler who must uphold tradition and keep the zodiac with her by any means. Akito is terrified of being abandoned, especially since she has no idea how to have relationships outside of the context of the bond, only exacerbated by the fact that Ren, one of the only people that openly questions her role, has constantly told her that she’s useless and will be abandoned. This is something that informs all of her (many, terrible) decisions and leads her to try desperately to keep the curse together, something which puts her in direct conflict with Tohru, who actually wants the curse broken in part so that she won’t be abandoned. Tohru may not be as obvious with her abandonment issues as miss screeches-at-people-not-to-leave-her, but they still inform a good deal of her character. Like Akito, she develops behavior around the time of her father’s passing to try to keep herself from being abandoned, mirroring her father’s proper speech because she was worried that she was losing Kyoko.  But, as she grew older in her much warmer environment, Tohru turned to kindness instead of fear to capture others, maintaining a facade of extreme positivity, politeness, and determination so as to not bother anyone. And, while she hides it, Tohru just gets worse after losing her mother. She becomes dedicated to preserving her feelings about her mother as is, refusing to move on much as Akito also refuses to move on from the curse and what her father wanted. Then comes the beach house reveal, where Tohru learns that Akito plans to take away her new family, even locking up the one most precious to her. Tohru tells herself that she’s going to break the curse for the freedom of the zodiac and cat, but she is also, in a way, doing it to keep herself from being abandoned. Later this feeling changes to become more focused on preventing the loss of Kyo himself, something which Tohru doesn’t want to admit. Tohru is a truly good and kind person and does want to help, yes, but also some part of her is doing this to keep the ones she loves by her side, understandably as she is a teen that recently lost the person she revolved her whole life around. But it comes to a point that you have to realize: Akito and Tohru are both motivated by the same thing, they just present it in wildly different ways. I don’t think that I have to explain how exactly their behavior foils eachother, the more worldly and modern Tohru acting on radical kindness and acceptance and thinking she deserves nothing while the sheltered, traditional Akito uses manipulation and fear to get what she thinks she is entitled to. It’s very apparent, but just gets even spicier in the context of how similar they are. Another parallel is in Tohru’s mom picture vs Akito’s father box, both relics of their dead and favorite parent that they are extremely protective of and treat almost like it is their deceased parent. Early in the series Tohru is seen carrying around a photo of her mom which she talks to, something which seems pretty harmless, until we consider how terrified she is every time she thinks she’s lost it, even going as far as to refer to it as if it were her mother.  Notably, it barely shows up in the second half of the series, as she reluctantly drifts away from her mom and towards Kyo. In this later part of the series, we are introduced to Akito’s box, which she (semi, it’s complicated) thinks contains her father’s soul. Akito’s box is shown in a much darker light, from how the reveal of what it us to her is framed to how cruelly she reacts when it’s being stolen. Akito’s box is to Tohru’s photo what their owners narratively are to eachother: a dark mirror.

Ok, and now for the reason that I think it was important to bring all these parallels up first: because as you cannot understand Tohru and Akito as enemies without understanding their differences, you cannot understand them as friends without knowing their similarities. While it is easy to write off Tohru reaching out to Akito as just another case of Tohru being Tohru, that does a disservice to the full picture. I’ve seen around in the fandom that a good deal of people seem to think Tohru trying to befriend her is just Tohru being overly kind and forgiving, and this is something I think ties back a bit to some early fandom misconceptions about Tohru. Bear with me for a second, this is going to be a bit of a tangent but it ties back. It’s died down some now, but in the early Furuba fandom it was very common to just think of Tohru as a pretty flat nice girl doormat character, which besides misogyny is probably partially the fault of the 01 anime, which cuts off before we get to see more of Tohru’s insecurities and tones down what we do see (also, in the case of the relationship I’m talking about, 01 ads in that God awful end confrontation that I despise for being everything that I’m about to argue the ACTUAL confrontation that I like is not). Manga Tohru is a very subtle character, she hides a lot of her feelings behind a perpetually happy front which doesn’t start to let slip until later. And, since it’s later on in the manga which went unadapted for years and is mixed in with a bunch of crazy stuff, I think Tohru’s quiet development is often somewhat overlooked. For example, early series Tohru is very well known for the speeches she gives to the zodiac when she first meets them, speeches that, importantly, always tie back to things that her mom said. Tohru’s worldview back then revolved completely around Kyoko, so it’s probably a bit of a thing that in the later story, when Tohru draws ever nearer to the realization that she must move on, she does not give her mom speeches anymore? As opposed to the early story, when it was pretty much back to back character intros, in the late story Tohru notably only gets to befriend two new Sohmas: Isuzu and Akito. Notably, she doesn’t quote her mom either time, these are both people that she can relate to on some of her more hidden issues, and she shows a more personal side of her emotions in her turning point confrontations with them than she did earlier. It is especially important to realize that, in her confrontation on the cliff, Tohru is deciding that she is willing to go against her mom. Early series Tohru was a front anyways, and is a different Tohru from the one that finally gets through to Akito. I was using it as an example, but the evolution of Tohru’s befriending confrontations will be important later. Furthermore, there is the perception of Tohru as a doormat. Listen, Tohru may be very kind and polite, but one of her defining characteristics is being very determined and strong willed when need be. This is something that is especially relevant to her interactions with Akito. From the first meeting outside the school, Tohru knows to be wary of Akito and even breaks politeness and shoves her when she senses that Akito is making Yuki uncomfortable. This sets up immediately that Tohru can and will stand up to Akito. This is driven in even farther at the beach house, when Tohru, after again physically getting between Akito and a zodiac, decides that she will directly go against all of the Sohma family’s centuries of tradition and Akito herself to break the curse.  There’s even a cute moment when, upon remembering Akito telling her not to, Tohru just decides to meddle even harder. Tohru, while polite about it, does not like Akito and puts herself in direct opposition to her. Tohru does not originally want to be Akito’s friend, or to have anything to do with her. The cliff scene is not just Tohru befriending someone because she just is over forgiving and loves everyone (an argument can be made that she still goes to easy on Akito, but it’s in line with how the narrative treats her too so that’s another conversation), there was a specific reason both that she chose to try to get through to Akito and that it actually worked. Up until their big confrontation, Tohru still thinks of Akito as a threat, and while she has gotten more information that shakes up her view of Akito, she still doesn’t understand her well enough to see her as much more than an obstacle. Then Akito barges into her yard when she’s just been rejected, crying and confessing how terrified she is of being abandoned, of things changing, and Tohru just goes still, eyes wide in shock. And she realizes: her and Akito have been afraid of the same thing the whole time.  This is when Tohru decides to try to reach out to her. Because Tohru, on a deep level, sees Akito because of their similarities.  She calls Akito out on her insecurities, and Akito reacts badly, accusing Tohru of being “dirty” and trying to condescend.  Tohru partially rebukes this, not trying to hold herself above Akito as pure and righteous, but instead confessing her own fears of abandonment and change in an attempt to empathize with Akito.

At this part of the story, Tohru is fully coming into the realization that, in order to live her life, she needs to stop clinging to this idea of an “unchanging” relationship with her mom, something that scares her quite a bit. She realizes that, while she saw the flaws in Akito’s “eternity” and tried to destroy it, she had not been as perceptive with herself, clinging to that same notion. Tohru is an incredibly repressed character, especially in regards to emotions she thinks of as “dirty,” and she is showing a remarkable amount of vulnerability in this scene. Another thing to note about Tohru is that she, in her immense repression, will often process her own issues through other people. We see this throughout the story, from her showing grief over her mom by crying for Momiji and his mom to her projecting her fear of losing Kyo onto Kureno and Arisa. So then, it’s quite something to consider that the last Sohma she befriends is the one most emblematic of the issues she keeps locked up tightest? That as she’s speaking to her she’s deciding to move forward from her own fears? In a way, could accepting Akito be a symbol of Tohru accepting what she thinks are the darker parts of herself? Akito is also coming to a realization about moving on, acknowledging that the zodiac curse is coming to an end and that everything she believes is a lie, and she is absolutely distraught about it. But Tohru, in a way that nobody else does, understands Akito, and wants Akito to be her friend. Not out of pity or reverence, but a desire for solidarity. And this is the very reason why Tohru was actually able to get through to Akito. As we see with Kureno before he gets stabbed and Momiji at the beach house and when his curse breaks, it’s not like people haven’t kindly tried to get through to her before.

Of course, the reason it worked for Tohru can also be partially chalked up to the fact that Akito herself has come a long ways in personal realizations to the point that there’s just some things she can’t deny anymore, but that’s not all. Akito tends to react very negatively to what she sees as condescension, she thinks people want to try to pick her apart and see how she ticks just so they can look down on her, so they can see her as lesser. She thinks Tohru is trying to condescend too at first, especially since she perceives Tohru as this holier than thou saint wannabe. Fascinatingly, Akito’s view of Tohru is incredibly similar to that early fandom idea of Tohru as an angelic mary sue, and she hates her for it. She thinks that Tohru is trying to be like this and is seen as such, and that she (Akito) is the only who can see that Tohru is wrong somehow.

But Tohru rejects this notion of a pure her that both the fandom and her early self tried to project, presenting herself as flawed and human and purposefully trying to not put herself on a pedestal above Akito. She makes it very clear that she’s not trying to condescend, she is the same way (well, sorta) and she gets it. Notably, after this point Akito doesn’t accuse her of looking down on her, instead freaking out temporarily because of how much Tohru called her out before venting about her fears to her. And, while, partially due to outside circumstances, it does take Akito a bit longer to accept her offer of friendship, she legitimately manages to get through to her very soon after this point. If Tohru had tried one of her early series mom speeches on Akito, or just tried to blindly accept her without understanding, it would not have worked. Akito would have just written it off or reacted badly and left it there. But because Tohru tried to befriend Akito out of understanding as an equal it actually worked. You can’t separate Akito and Tohru’s parallels and their eventual friendship because one aspect is integral to the other.

A connected aspect of their relationship that I see talked of very little but is actually a pretty strong undercurrent is that of equality and power. To explain this, we have to look at Akito for a bit. Throughout her life, pretty much everyone around Akito has either put her on a pedestal or looked down on her. This is something that not only greatly damaged the way she thinks of herself and others, but has given her an intensely hierarchical view of relationships. We even see this notion clearly take form for her in the black paint scene, where she decides that Yuki, who she’d previously seen as the same as her, has to be lesser or else she will become useless.  From the moment Akito was born she was “God,” an existence above everyone else. Even her own father only seems to give her affection for being God, and when he dies and she takes his place as the head of the family she is just elevated even farther at an extremely young age. The only people (she thinks) she’s close to are the zodiac, and the curse itself puts an inherent power dynamic into that relationship that can only be overcome with its undoing. Akito clings to her power, to her rank in the hierarchy, all the while the very thing she desperately upholds has made her the real outsider. Akito, who does everything in the name of belonging, was always alone from the start. As Tohru points out, as long as she is above the group she cannot be a part of it.

Simultaneously, and almost contradictory to the pedestalization and power dynamic aspect, Akito is extensively coddled and pitied. A lot of the older adults around her treat her almost like a crotchety, spoiled child. A child who is coddled to the point of never being given any reprimand or instruction on just how to behave like a functional human being until things have gone far too far. Then you have cases like Kureno, who seems to still see Akito like a kid, pretty much just coddles her as a job, and only stays because he pities her. This leads to a strange dual sided dynamic in multiple cases, where Akito is seen as someone’s better and has more power but is also being looked down upon in a way too. Akito has never in her life been seen and treated as an equal, so it’s pretty important when it is made clear that Tohru tries to befriend her as an equal. After all this time, Tohru, an outsider that is not under Akito’s control, who can hold her ground in a challenge against her, is finally the one to meet her on the same level. There’s this page that I adore that symbolizes this idea really nicely. It opens on a panel of Akito sitting a distance away from the zodiac who are all having fun together, a motif we’ve already seen a few times, but this time Tohru sits down right next to her.

This page comes at a critical moment, when Tohru is offering her hand in friendship to Tohru, it’s Akito realization of what Tohru is trying to do. Later on, we get Akito narrating what this page was showing, which I think I just need to put in:

We also see a bit of their conversation after they reunite in the hospital later, where Tohru again denies that she is better than Akito. Now, I think both the Tokyopop and Yen Press translations of this scene are a bit weird, the Tokyopop version uses the word “pretty” (confusing) while the Yen Press uses “kind” (don’t think that’s the best word). However one time I saw like a Malaysian english release in the half price books that used “pretty on the inside” and I like that best so I’ll just pretend that’s it.

I think this scene is interesting because it could seem like they’re just talking about morality but that’s not it. This is, once again, Tohru pretty explicitly trying to stop the creation of any sort of hierarchy between her and Akito. It’s not about right or wrong, Tohru know very well that Akito’s done things wrong and actively worked to stop her, it’s about not wanting them to be put on some sort of different rank based on morality and Tohru understanding Akito enough to empathize with the fact that (wrong or no) Akito was really hurt by Tohru and they won’t get anywhere if they don’t acknowledge that. Furthermore, I’ve already talked a bit about it already, but I think the way that Tohru asserts that she gets what Akito’s feeling and thinks she herself is “dirty” during their confrontation is relevant here too. She is, again, presenting herself as someone on the same level who understands Akito and is not being nice out of pity. This then leads to the page I talked about before which is again, Akito realizing this! This is a huge moment for her, someone who has had all of her relationships messed up by inequality and has no idea how to have a normal relationship, who is having a breakdown because she thinks that because of this it’s too late for anyone to love her, to have someone who understands her and wants to meet her on the same level. Even if she tries to deny it and shift blame, at this point Akito has realized that the zodiac bond is not what she thought and that she has been acting horribly. The groundwork is already there for Akito to have a change of heart, especially considering that a lot of her horribleness stems from legitimate extreme ignorance and her obsession with the bond so once she’s snapped out of that… The main thing that’s holding her back past that is that she’s panicking and cannot see a way forward. So then when there’s someone who actually gets where she’s coming from instead of just tolerating her and is offering her the sort of friendship that she’s never gotten to have of course she’d go for it! Tohru Honda has proven Akito wrong in ever way and, in the end, she even proves her wrong on her greatest fear: that she can only be wanted because she’s God. Because of Akito’s specific issues, nothing could have been more powerful for her than someone coming to her as an equal. Again, the piece about why Tohru could get through to her. It just wouldn’t be the same if Tohru didn’t have a reason to want Akito around or if she somehow saw Akito as below her, the very core of their relationship is the destruction of hierarchies. From the beginning Tohru has been trying to destroy the hierarchy of the zodiac, and when it comes down to it she does not take Akito’s spot at the top, but decides to stand beside her and the zodiac instead. Early in the series we see Akito trying to have some power over Tohru through fear, but when the time comes and Akito is pretty much defeated Tohru does not take power as the victor, hoping that Akito joins her instead of being somehow defeated. And at the end of it all this works, and Akito dissolves the zodiac and with it most of her power and her godhood of her own accord. 

Despite their relative lack of page time, Tohru and Akito’s relationship has always been something that I come back to. Sure, a lot of that is just sentiment as they meant a lot to me when I was younger, but I think there’s something there. They work amazingly as protagonist and antagonist, contrasting nicely and working as symbols of both sides of the thematic conflict. There’s a palpable tension to their early interactions that makes you both scared and interested to see what happens when these two inevitably have to go head to head. But then, as the story goes on, it seems more and more like they are a tragedy, so similar yet on different sides of the story, fated to have one of them stuck with an unhappy ending brought on by the other.

But, even as dark as it gets, that wouldn’t really be Fruits Basket, would it? In the end, Tohru and Akito’s similarities win out, not their differences. I think it would have been so easy to just make this a story where the sweet heroine “saves” the villain just because, but that is so blatantly not what’s going on. Tohru simply sees herself in Akito, she’s not trying to somehow fix her and nor should she have to, she just wants to be her friend. And then the two manage to overcome their driving fear of moving on, forging new bonds and inspired by their interaction with the other. It’s not like Tohru somehow fixes Akito’s problems, Akito has to do things herself and in fact independence is a big theme of her endgame arc. Tohru simply offered her friendship, and that was enough. There’s a distinction to be made between how Tohru inspires Akito and Tohru somehow “saving” her, because Akito very much has to learn to save herself in the end after a lifetime of pushing her issues onto others. And, as a side note, all this is sort of why it bugs me when people act like Tohru would be like a mom to Akito. First off, Tohru shouldn’t have to be the mom to everyone. And, kind as she is, Tohru is also not a Kureno, she sees and interacts with Akito in a completely different way and their relationships with Akito are one of the big points were Tohru and Kureno differ. Second off, Akito has spent her life coddled and clinging onto anything that she can hold onto as a resemblance of parental affection to a toxic degree. Part of her arc is that she needs to grow out of this, become more independent, and have more balanced relationships. Akito at this point does not want or need to make a mommy figure out of one of her peers, and doing so may in fact be regressive. Sure, she will definitely need a level of guidance going forward, but it would be more beneficial for her to learn from example and under more of a friendly, balanced context coming from multiple people, not one person holding her hand. For all the reasons I’ve gone over in this entire post, I think it is much more meaningful for Akito to have Tohru as what she was canonically presented as in text: someone who sees her as an equal. The whole point of their relationship is, again, the defiance of hierarchies, something which I think is often sorely overlooked even though it is very openly there in text. And that, in part, is why I think their relationship is so powerful to me. Beyond hero and villain, right or wrong, or any story roles, it’s about two girls finding solidarity and friendship on a very personal, human level. This is Akito for the first time being seen not as this distant, untouchable male deity or some pitiful being, but as a flawed, hurt human girl who is nonetheless capable of change and being loved. This is Tohru coming out of hiding, presenting her flawed, terrified human self to someone she saw as an enemy. Fruits basket is, in part, a story about friendship and defeating systems of power and abuse. Even in a messy third act that muddles its themes at times by weighing character endings too heavily on het romantic love, especially in regards to the women (Hello Rin, Machi, Uo, ect.), Tohru and Akito stand out as a friendship that is given a huge amount of narrative weight. It just feels nice that, in a story that often focused on the power of relationships between women only to ditch all that and focus primarily on their relationships with men, these two girls are one of the driving forces of the endgame. The curse didn’t get broken by romantic love, but by the friendships everyone made along the way, including Tohru and Akito. Tohru has gotten it to this point, and now Akito just needs to bring it to a close and finally end things. At the very beggining, before this all started, all the cat wanted was for the God was to move forward and live as a person among the humans, and, finally, a long time later that wish was granted. The tale of the zodiac gets its happy ending not by a villain being defeated, but by the power of friendship and solidarity between women.

[animegenork]

Fruits Baskets Final Season Episodes 2 & 3

What? No, I didn’t watch these on the Fridays of the weeks they came out. No, I wasn’t dying from school---

Anyway, back to the grind.

Episode 2

I swear the gif search function HATES me and what I’m trying to do---

Anyway.

I would like to make this very clear. Shigure is a little bit evil. A little bit. But it’s mostly from being twisted by the zodiac curse and his strange form of love. So if you wanted to punch him this episode, that’s good. He needs to be punched. A lot. Like a lot. God, he’s so evil. Moving on.

So the episode begins with young Akito asking Shigure if he loves her. This is, as we’ve seen, something that Akito fixates on, mostly due to her father accidentally warping her with the idea of being eternally loved by the zodiac members. He responds with a very earnest love confession that sort of explains why they spend so much time together, but it also confuses things a bit, at least at first. What with the zodiac spirit, it’s unclear how much of Shigure’s love is real and how much isn’t up to him. That may factor in to whatever the hell is up with him now.

Cut to Tohru working on graduation ceremony flowers and nearly asking Shigure about breaking the curse. Of course, she can’t, because it’s hard to bring up, and she’s only seen 2 sides of Shigure at most. Naturally, he already knows what she’s thinking about, because he’s Shigure. He’s just that good.

Tohru continues to struggle even at school, when she realizes that there’s so much she knows that she probably can’t talk about with Momiji or Haru or anyone else. And since the curse is this ever-present thing to them, she’s not even sure if they’ll believe her or how they’ll react. Rin is the exception to this, of course, since she was already looking for information on it.

There are some shenanigans with the Prince Yuki Fan Club, and Tohru and Kyo are left alone (probably on purpose) by Hanajima, Uotani, and company. But I’ll get back to that in a sec.

Yuki tries to help out other classes with things, but they won’t let him because... well, uh, they think he’s too busy... and he... isn’t... I’m sorry, that’s just so funny to me. So anyway, he runs into Machi, who is being all adorable and stubborn because she wanted to say hello and chased him all over the school to do so. It’s cute, because Yuki’s not used to that much effort being put in to something for his sake. I love Machi like that UwU

Back to Tohru and Kyo, they’ve been waiting for HOURS. Tohru decides to tentatively try out her Kureno talking point, but as soon as she brings up the curse maybe being broken, Kyo tells her that hypotheticals like that are pointless (this is implied paraphrase). He does this mostly because he’s in that pit of despair of “I’m never getting out of this” but also because he doesn’t want to give himself a false hope that might never come true. Tohru, however, becomes sad, because of course she wants to save him from having to be locked away like the previous Cat. So there’s a bit of moment where she’s about to cry.

And then Kyo *sniffle* gives her a flower to make her feel better. *sobs*

Technically speaking, this scene should’ve been in the last season or SOMETHING, I honestly thought they WEREN’T going to put my FAVORITE scene in the anime, and then they did. What’s cute about this scene is how torn up Kyo is from hurting Tohru’s feelings, and how almost desperate he is to make her feel better. It’s a sweet moment, if slightly awkwardly animated, but it’s a rare Tohru and Kyo moment where they don’t even say anything and you can SEE everything they want to say. Of course, they’re interrupted, because they always are (HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT LIKE NEVER HAPPENS WHENEVER YUKI AND TOHRU HAVE A MOMENT?), but hey, I got my fluff, I am fed.

There’s brief mention of Rin and how Tohru hasn’t seen her lately, and I hate it because I know where she is.

Anyway, now on to Shigure being Shigure.

He’s torturing his poor editor again, and he walks away from what appears to have been a heated conversation with... HIS PARENTS. THEY EXIST. I dunno what it is with rarely seeing zodiac parents (besides the obvious cases of Kyo and Momiji), but there you have it. We see then that there’s a big Sohma dinner outing with Akito there, so clearly Shigure planned that. His skills of perception and foresight are serious scary, and I really wonder how the hell he developed them.

There’s a flashback to before Tohru and Kureno’s revealing conversation, and we see that Shigure hates Kureno for being so close to Akito. Of course, Kureno makes it clear that Akito doesn’t love him, that she’s always wanted.... well, he doesn’t say, but I think all of us are familiar enough with how this anime works that we know who he means. But Kureno basically wants Shigure to stop being so cold to Akito, and this is because of how much he wants to keep her happy more than any personal feelings about Shigure.

This is where it gets a bit dicey. I’ve actually got a strange fondness for this scene, if only because it sort of but also not really gets to the heart of why Shigure is the way he is.

Shigure appears in Akito’s room, and she’s basically jealous that he was out with another woman. Then she brings up his sexual relationship with his editor (nonexistent), which is rather petty, but then, when was this duo not about pettiness? The implication Akito makes is that he sleeps with every woman he meets (explains a lot). She then mentions that Shigure slept with Ren, Akito’s mother (I’m not going to touch on how screwed up that is), which is why he’s living in a house away from the main estate. Shigure acts all cool and says that was a long time ago, he’s been punished, but Akito points out that he almost wanted to leave. Which... he did, but not for any lack of love on his part. And he says that. He recalls the conversation we see at the beginning, in which he tells her he cares about her more than anyone else. Understandably, she’s frustrated, and she asks why he always tests her.

It’s because she slept with Kureno. Petty, I know.

The phone conversation comes back. Everything you need to understand about Shigure is in one sentence: “I love her so much that sometimes I want to spoil her rotten, and sometimes I want to crush her into a pulp.” This is nearly verbatim of the manga translation I read a long time ago, and it’s always stuck with me. The thing is, Akito was always told she’s special and she can do with the zodiac as she pleases (which she says directly in this episode). It seems a part of Shigure didn’t like that that extended to those that weren’t him (Kureno), and his love for her warped and twisted into this kinda toxic relationship. (Kinda, she says, as if it’s not very.) This makes him want to be kind to her, but at the same time, he wants to be mean to her and show her how much pain she’s put him through, too. It’s pettiness at its extreme, but it’s somehow more believable than other forms of petty jealousy I’ve seen.

Oh yeah, and then they have sex.

Once again, there’s brief mention of Rin, perhaps she’s in the hospital, we don’t really know. But the main part of this all is Shigure remembering that before Akito was born/in his life, he had always been sort of waiting for her, which is mostly the zodiac spirit talking but is also interesting nonetheless. How much of Shigure’s love is influenced by the zodiac curse? How much of it is him? I don’t know if we ever find that out, because frankly, the curse did a lot of things to everyone involved, including him.

I still love Shigure, don’t get me wrong, but this is SUCH an interesting episode.

Episode 3

Precisely the gif I wanted. Hehehe.

IT’S A MACHI EPISODE! AND I LOVE HER, SO THAT’S ALRIGHT!

Still pissed about Kyo’s screentime being so awful lately. ads;fkjsad;fklsda

Some student council shenangians occur as always, and it’s revealed that Nao has a crush on someone, which is why he declared Yuki to be his rival on day one. Also, Kimi is a golddigger.

Some girls come in and gossip about Machi making a mess again with one of her outbursts, and they mention a rumor about her trying to kill her brother, which is why she lives alone. Kakeru looks quite displeased to hear this, and Machi walks in on the conversation and runs away, with Yuki wanting to go after her. 

Kakeru tells Yuki later that the rumor is “mostly true”--that is, that’s the story he’s been told as well. Of course, he’s wary to believe it, because while they’re not terribly close, he knows her a little better than the parents do. He then tells a story of seeing Machi making footprints in the snow, almost obsessively, and he’s not quite sure why she did it (but Kakeru has a Shigure streak, so I wonder if maybe he does know?).

So Kakeru decides to pull a sort of jerk move and visit Machi while with Yuki, and she tries to turn them away to no avail. Of course, Yuki isn’t put off by the mess, since he and Shigure used to live that way, so he’s all cheerful about it while Machi is dying in the corner. I will not talk much about the bra incident, but that was honestly the most hilarious few seconds.

Finally left alone, Machi asks why Yuki is there, assuming it’s about the rumor her classmates mentioned. She says she’s done trying to correct everybody, since no one ever seems to believe her anyway. (That is all too relatable, especially in high school.)

But Yuki doesn’t even mind. He asks something else instead: does she hate perfection? And she says yes. TEN POINTS TO GRYFFINDOR.

Wait. My bad.

Anyway, Machi has a flashback to what I believe I’ve mentioned before, which is Machi’s mom forcing her to be perfect so that she could beat Kakeru in the succession war (England?) with her family. When that was called off, her mother would say right in front of her face (jerk) that Machi was boring. Machi asked her why she would say that when she was just trying to do what she was told. Her mother has the gall to be offended by the implication that it’s her fault (IT IS, YOU IDIOT--) and then turns around and says maybe she raised Machi wrong.

Here’s a hint: that’s not what you say to your CHILD.

Poor Machi didn’t know what to do with herself. What is she supposed to do if she’s just a “mistake” her mother made?

Yuki, in his cute way of knowing precisely what she means, tells her she’s worked hard to get where she is, and that he’s glad she’s here. She’s not used to compliments like that, and it’s a very sweet moment. That’s when she admits that she was just trying to take care of her brother, but her parents wrongly and automatically assumed she was jealous and trying to kill him (which says a lot about how god awful they are). And she’s finally able to let it out and cry with Yuki, who offers to go leave footprints in the snow with her.

My heart might’ve burst during that, not gonna lie--

I think my favorite part of the episode is the next day, during a student council meeting. A new, perfect box of chalk is placed in front of Machi, and you can see in her eyes that the perfection is about to make her snap. Yuki, knowing this, calmly reaches over and breaks a piece of chalk, ruining the “perfection” of it. It’s very sweet of him and a very cute moment for both.

Then we cut to Tohru handing Kyo a flower, which is whiplash to the previous episode I’m glad we got.

The next sequence was a bit confusing at first, as I thought we’d sort of covered this already in season one, but we get to see Motoko. She’s called Yuki out in order to tell him that he made her high school days happier, and that she truly loved him. Motoko also hopes that Yuki himself will find happiness, which I think is a nod at her recognizing Tohru’s influence on him. It’s kind of cute, because even Yuki seems to appreciate her words, and we get to cut to a nice graduation song that actually kind of made me cry.

Motoko is still in a classroom when someone finds her. It’s Nao, and it appears that she was the girl he was in love with, which I LOVE. I HOPE HE OR SHE OR THEY ARE HAPPY TOGETHER OR EVEN APART, JUST THAT HE EVENTUALLY GOT TO TELL HER OR SOMETHING AND AHHHHHH. He tells her that goodbye is not the end, and it always leads to “nice to meet you,” which is sweet for both of them, considering her graduation and his being left behind.

Then we get to meet Hiro’s baby sister, Hinata, a true cutie pie. I think I cried here, too, for different reasons.

Finally, we see Kagura having picked up Rin’s diploma (YAY SHE GRADUATED YAYYYY), and wondering where she is despite her mother’s warnings not to investigate. Hatori and Shigure are a bit suspicious, too, and we see Akito with a pair of scissors.... OwO

[I know what happened and I hate it.]

I’m glad I could finally do these, it’s been a couple of weeks of hell, to be honest. Hopefully, Fruits Basket will be back at it again and I’ll have something more to wax poetic about, haha. Thanks for reading!

[shizekarnstein]

Unpopular opinion but sometimes I can't with this fandom. Katsuya was a fucking paedophile but it's ok bc "it's fiction and he and Kyoko really loved each other uwu)", Shigure became so obsessed with a woman that he manipulated almost everyone he knew in order to get her all to himself but he "is funny and even in his selfishness he ended up helping everyone. Also he really loves Akito uwu". Yuki and Kyo can beat each other up for entire volumes (hell Kyo's first apparence was literally crashing through someones rooftop and wrecking everything without a regard for who could be under the ceiling at that moment) but it is funny.

Kagura going by all your posts is even worse than Ren or Akito. And here is my (personal) hot take on why:

Kagura was introduced as a romantic rival of sorts and considering the majority of you grew up watching the 2001 anime or reading the manga in your teenage years, experience tells me at that age when a female character seemed to threaten the fav pairing the visceral reaction was to loathe her to hell.

In the early volumes furuba had tons of typical cliches and gags of those times and in Kagura's case it wasnt well managed bc she had practically zero screentime in comparison to Kyo and Yuki. Takaya even attemped to offer a in universe reasoning for her over the top violence by her being the boar, an animal always charging forward... and then left it at that. You know why Kagura never apologized to Kyo for beating him up? Bc in universe it was a joke. It wasnt meant as something serious. Everything that breaks Shigure's house is a joke in this manga. Later on going in hand with the more serious tone shift in the story, violence and abuse were treated more seriously and in consecuence all those previous examples of comedic violence were forgotten. The next time Kagura raises her fists and hits Tohru is treated for what it was: something not funny in any form, regardless of why she did it. It's even called out on page.

Kagura is a woman. Internalized mysogyny is something we all need to be on the outlook for. If I condone Kagura hitting Tohru bc she was upset with her for not admiting her feelings... then what about Yuki doing the same thing after Tohru fell off that cliff? Easy: she had less screentime than Yuki and Kyo. Kagura's punch was in the heat of the moment and not the culmination of volumes and volumes of those idiot boys trying to be sincere with themselves. And as I said... Kagura is a girl. Men get a slap on the wrist for whatever in this manga but Kagura is some kind of demon.

She even apologized to Kyo for using him but somehow this is a bad thing??? I wonder why Shigure gets a pass in that case mmm mystery.

And the final part. She bothered Kyo. And as I said before, everyone who breathes in Kyo's general direction is deserving of the electric chair going by all the posts I read in the tag.

You know what? It's actually a miracle Kagure ended up written as well as she is considering the limitations of her screentime and overall chatacterization.

I'm not saying you all have to become Kagura stans. Dislike her for all I care. But I'm honestly??? at all the posts I see talking about her as if she is the worst person in the manga when... she really isn't. If you are mad at the over the top violence rant against the author herself, not her freaking character. And even then never forget this manga has all the marks of it's time. And as for her selfishness? That treat I call good writting. A fucking miracle when I think about how she started out.

[yukisohmasmokesweed]

Hi! I know you don't like Kureno very much and it's totally understandable given his character!! but if ever, what sort of plot amendments or story rewrite will u give for him or u have in mind in order for him to be at least more tolerable for you? I hope this question is not very offensive for you. I like your blog and how you run it!!

not offensive at all!! i dont like kureno very much but i do think he’s pretty interesting (or, that he has the potential to be). plus i don’t mind discussing characters i dislike since i usually dislike them for a reason lol!

this is hard because i think kureno’s biggest detriment is his relationship with uo, but that’s what connects him to the rest of the cast and it’s also his motivation to do his one plot-relevant thing (reveal to tohru that his curse is broken/akito’s gender). so he would still need a person who could be his insight into the outside world to make him realize that the life he chose for himself is not fulfilling and that he should do something about it. it helps that uo ties him to tohru, but seeing that he has met tohru before and he knows her affect on the other zodiacs, i’m not sure it’s completely necessary.

i think instead of a romance arc it would be more interesting to delve into why kureno acts the way he does. i always call him boring, and it’s because he is, but i also think it’s a mob situation where he’s repressing his personality so that he draws as little attention to himself as possible/so he doesn’t have to Feel his Feelings that might start conflict. he’s meant to parallel yuki in a lot of ways, and it would be interesting to contrast yuki’s desperate wanting for himself and him clawing his way out of the sohma cage for any amount of autonomy with kureno actively deciding to numb his desires completely and trap himself inside for someone else’s sake in a deeper and more personal way. instead of realizing that the only way to be with the person he loves is to leave the sohmas, he could realize (like yuki) that his life has intrinsic value and that his expected servitude to the family is wrong and should have never happened in the first place. of course he’s so deeply entrenched in the inner sohmas that there’s nothing much he can do about it, and would go about things the same way, revealing information to tohru in hopes that it will make a difference. 

the way that he comes to this conclusion is where i’m stumped though.  i get what takaya was doing by giving him a love interest in the main cast because it makes the audience care about it more, so that’s why i’m a bit stuck, because there’s no one really in the cast that would make sense for him as a love interest. he could get the tohru inspirational speech treatment like the other zodiacs, but i don’t think that alone would convince him to let go of a secret he’s been holding for ten years. maybe if he was exposed to the other zodiacs more and saw how much their lives have improved since they’ve begun making outside connections and realizing that sitting on this information will harm them even more as time goes on....but even so, kureno wasn’t motivated after all that shit went down with hatori, rin, and kisa so!

i think i also mentioned in a previous post that if we wanted to do a Takaya Everyone Knows Each OtherTM thing, he could be connected to kyoko or maybe even katsuya in the past and when he meets tohru, she reminds him of them, plus he can see how much she loves the sohmas and i think that would be a decent motivator. i hate stuff like that but it’s very takaya-like lol but everyone knows kyoko so i guess it wouldnt be too out of left field if he had a random chance encounter with katsuya and tohru’s speech pattern gives him a blast to the past and a bunch of empathy.

this is a hard question! because kureno has so little screentime and so much of his arc revolves around his romance, it would end up being a completely different thing. but in general i guess i would want to exchange the romance arc with an arc focusing more on his emotional development and having his eyes opened to the possibility of a life outside through realizing his life has value and that he should have autonomy over it.

[animegenork]

Fruits Basket Season 2, Episode 12

I enjoyed this episode just as much as I thought I would. And I really like that it came after the Kagura/Kyo episode, because it’s really about something somewhat similar but also drastically different. Takaya-sensei, I see you. ;)

First, some things of note:

I think I had a full “oh, that’s why” moment with Hatori. He wasn’t exactly the most attractive to me for a long time, but I finally understood what the hype was about in this episode. He the man.

Does anyone know the name of the bitchy old woman? Cuz she was always my least favorite for always being mean to anyone who’s not Akito and I need to know if she has a name or if I can laugh at her nameless expense...

So anyway.

The best part about Takaya dedicating an entire chapter to Mayuko is that you don’t expect it. She was just the sarcastic teacher you liked but couldn’t tell why you liked. BUT THEN TAKAYA SAID, “LET THERE BE LIGHT,” and suddenly we had someone who mattered in some way to at least one member of the Sohma clan. But enough digressing about how side characters deserve their screentime (shoutout to the MLP: FIM episode that was ONLY about side characters).

Even though Shigure himself says that he’s perceptive and Mayuko took this as fact, I think it’s really important to point out just how perceptive he is. Sure, we could brush off some of the things he says and ignore them since they never seem to come to fruition, but... we can’t. In the very beginning of the series, Shigure mutters to Kagura (though she doesn’t hear), “I get jealous, too.” We don’t actually see him show us this until way later in the series, beyond the scope of the original anime. And though we don’t technically know it right now, that is precisely why he asks out Mayuko. The thing about Shigure is that he is incredibly selfish, though he passes it off very subtly as being narcissistic. But no, he’s a selfish bastard (that I love anyway) who has an endgame goal in mind that we can only dream of figuring out. (Unless, of course... we’ve read the manga. :P ) I think this just goes to show how amazing Takaya is at writing these characters and fleshing them out over time. You have to WAIT for answers such as these, and I am HERE for it. In any case, it’s just amazing how by looking at Mayuko he was able to determine her feelings for Hatori. She’s apathetic enough that I certainly wouldn’t be able to tell, and maybe that power, in Shigure’s hands, is terrifying. Who’s to say?

But Shigure isn’t the most important part of this episode. Mayuko is. Well, actually, Hatori arguably is, so let’s just say they both are. Though we can’t really tell at first, Mayuko and Hatori are very similar. Their cutting remarks to Shigure are always the best, and Kana affected their lives in similar ways. Mayuko says that Kana makes her feel like she can be kind, which Hatori agrees with. I don’t think Hatori is able to recognize his own kindness, because the manga, at least, consistently references how Hatori is one of the kindest Sohmas. I think Mayuko fell in love with that kindness, because other than the obvious hotness that is Hatori, why else would she care so much about his happiness? It’s hard not to fall in love with Hatori’s special brand of kindness, especially when paired with the two clowns he’s stuck babysitting all the time.

I have to really admire Mayuko for supporting Kana AND Hatori through the Akito debacle. She doesn’t know what’s going on, save for the memory suppression bit, but she wants them both to be happy. [Let’s not skip the fact that Mayuko cries for Kana, though her friend can’t possibly understand why her normally calm friend is doing so.] A part of her mourns the fact that they can’t be happy together anymore, and all these feelings come to a head when Hatori says “Happiness isn’t for me.”

No, Hatori. No. Shut up.

Dear Lord, thank you for Mayuko for SCREAMING while she cried. The manga didn’t get this across enough, I think, so it was interesting to see just HOW upset she was that this man she admired and loved for so long was so convinced he wasn’t allowed to be happy. And why is that? Because like the other Sohmas, Akito somehow has him convinced that he’s not allowed to love anyone, and ever since losing Kana, he’s begun to believe it himself. With Kana happy and married now, he thinks maybe such things aren’t meant to be for him.

Mayuko, bless her soul, says that is bullshit. Not in so few words, but yeah.

Interestingly enough, she has a bit of a breakthrough in this episode, though it’s significantly quieter than her sobbing fit with Hatori. She realizes that even though she’s been lonely, that’s no reason to date someone, and that’s precisely something that readers/viewers can learn from her. The episode is not truly about her, but about her relationship with Hatori and just one of many catalysts leading to the collective Sohma happiness. I guess we should be glad Shigure dated her in name only, because that means she gets to have all the fluffle with our boy Hatori.

I think my favorite part of the episode, as well as the chapter of the manga, is the indirect reveal of how Mayuko’s relationship with Hatori plays out. Fruits Basket is fantastic at indirectly telling you how things turn out, such as Mayuko saying it would take a while for Hatori to call her by her first name again - implying they see a lot more of each other. We’re nowhere near done with this anime, and this it the only purely incidental glimpse of the future we get, but I think it’s so fantastic that Takaya gave it to Hatori. Hatori, one of the first Sohmas we meet. Hatori, who has the constant support of his two clowns. Hatori, the one we all want to be happy BECAUSE DAMMIT, HE SHOULD BE.

The best part of this episode, I think, is when Kana encourages Mayuko to pursue Hatori. Of course, she doesn’t know what this could possibly mean for Mayuko - having her best friend tell her “go ahead, go after my ex” - but it is great nonetheless. Now, both Kana and Hatori can be happy, and with that comes the added bonus of our favorite teacher being happy!

Overall, I just love what this episode did for Hatori, as well as for Furuba’s victim of not-enough-screentime, Mayuko. I wish them all the best, even though I know very well how things turn out for them. ;)