#for all his vices and faults (of which he has many) Shigure was very kind and gave Tohru excellent life advice and I love and respect him

[runawaycarouselhorse]

[rosethi]

s2e09 Kyoru SO MANY FEELS and HOLY I just realized Kana+Hatori (Kanatori?) is a foil to Kyoru

I have waited so many years for this adaptation so here’s all the brilliant things that I’m crying about (a lot of them things that I’ve seen other people mention!) 

Also in the midst of editing this I finally realized why Kana was written so similarly to Tohru, and how Kanatori’s past tragedy is a perfect foil to Kyoru. Everyone loves how tragically romantic their story is and rightfully blames Akito for ruining their happiness, but it is much harder to see the dark messages about their relationship that is subtlely conveyed through contrast with Kyoru.

First, the resemblances:

Kind-hearted outside girl and initially withdrawn cursed boy fall in love

Girl find out about curse and accepts boy

Boy with miserable life becomes softer and happier

Akito disapproves

Deconstruction of tropes

Early on in the story, Kanatori is established as a trope that kyoru then spends the entire story deconstructing.

“love is like spring”

Kanatori : love is often compared to a blooming spring season, which Fruits Basket uses explicitly as a metaphor for Hatori’s love. Hatori calls Hana his spring, and their relationship follows a clear direction from meeting in winter, blossoming in spring, and wilting in winter. Hatori’s heart is reflected in this arc as he goes from having an untouched heart, to loving passionately, to breaking his heart and leaving it in seemingly eternal winter. Kana and Hatori’s relationship is ephemeral like the seasons, their happiness only lasting two months and knowing each other for one year. Their love follows the more common relationship trope of having the life-changing experience of falling in love dramatically.

Kyoru: In contrast, Kyo and Tohru’s relationship is a slow burn with no discernible beginning (or end). The episode begins with kyoru during autumn, followed by a more recent scene at the beach during the summer. Kyo wonders when his feelings started because he can’t place a time. By the time that he realizes that he loves Tohru, it feels as if he has always loved her from the start. Their love is all-encompassing over all seasons of the year, because it’s their daily happiness from being with each other that gradually and unknowingly turns to love. It re-enforces the idea that the most important thing that Tohru did is to just stay and live life together with Kyo. This also leads to deconstruction of the next trope...

“love heals all” 

Kanatori: Once again Hatori and Kana’s relationship serves as a foil to Kyoru. Kana shows how self-defeating and tragic love can be if the relationship is based on healing and fixing each other. Hatori lived an apathetic existence of being duty-bound to his curse. Kana "healed” Hatori with love, accepting his curse and filling him with hope of happiness that he once thought impossible. Hatori wept, feeling like he’s “forgiven and saved for the first time in his life”. It is Akito who reminds them that Kana’s love isn’t going to fix Hatori’s problems, ruining their relationship by pointing out its flawed beliefs. Akito knows that both are looking for salvation from the curse in their love, so he easily ruins their relationship by pointing out how Kana is unable to save Hatori, screaming at her “you’re not wanted / you can’t even break the curse!” Akito then goes further and scars Hatori, which is the piece that truly broke Kana and her love with Hatori irreparably. Kana believed her love is meant heal Hatori and protect him, but instead permanently hurt him. Due to the nature of their love, Kana was driven into an unforgivable position that she failed their duty to protect her loved one from harm. Hatori’s eye is not going to heal back with any amount of love, and so Hana spirals into despair until her memory is wiped. Her final words to Hatori is the core of their tragedy: “I’m sorry I failed to protect you.” Their story highlights the unrealistic ideals of healing love as a fragile relationship foundation. It is romantic and beautiful, but easily destroyed through the uncontrollable circumstances of life. If the purpose of a relationship is protecting and healing each other, it is so very easy to fail.

Kyoru: Kyo specifically says that Tohru didn’t heal him and cure all his problems - the most important thing she did was to stay by his side everyday, sharing life side by side. There’s no misplace romanticism on magically fixing your partner’s problems or taking away their pain. They experienced and shared small everyday joys. Kyoru is sweet and perfect because their love is born from their tiny daily gestures of love and happiness instead of grand dramatic events. Thanks to her parents’ relationship with each other and Tohru’s relationship with her mom, Tohru understands how central sharing lives together is to personal relationships, and it’s why she offered it to Kyo during the True Form arc. On the other hand, while Kyo doesn’t expect Tohru to heal or protect him, demands these unrealistic expectations from himself to consider himself “worthy” of being with her. Kyo is driven by the same romantic notions of protecting that Kana was for the majority of the story. His misguided self-expectation becomes the primary obstacle to their relationship.

perfect protagonist

Akito’s criticism of Tohru - that “she’s too perfect” - is partially a stand-in for the audience criticisms. Tohru is considered a boring, flawless, doormat. But that too is being slowly deconstructed... Tohru’s quirks with her mom’s photo and her dedication towards her mom’s memory are being revealed as grief coping mechanisms. In fact, many of her personality traits are revealed to be coping mechanisms for past personal tragedies.

Other points:

Tohru was so happy for Kyo and he didn’t correct her...he didn’t want to worry or trouble her...and he assuaged her worries for him at the end of the day in the same way.

the “hentai” looking ropes: represents the bonds that ties the zodiac spirits together. They look purpled and corrupted now, like how the zodiac bonds became a curse and burden over time.

the first thing Kyo thought when he was called to see Akito was that Tohru was going to be left alone. 

When she’s finally left alone, Tohru goes to the beach and makes sandcastles...  compare this to New Year’s Eve, when Tohru was left alone at the start of the night, she sat with her mom’s photo and cried.

Manga spoilers under cut:

Other bits about the episode:

“I don’t want to take anything away from her anymore”: Kyo feeling at fault for his mother’s suicide paralleling with his guilt of feeling responsible for Kyoko’s death. He’s been internally fighting the accusations that he’s the one reason for his mother’s death most of his life. Then Kyoko’s death happens and crushes him so immensely that, to go on living, he had to redirect his self-hatred into a singular goal of hating and defeating Yuki. He feels responsible for taking away Tohru’s most important person, her mother, which inadvertently leads to her involvement in the Sohma family. Shigure was really the one responsible for Tohru’s involvement, but Kyo only knows of his own involvement. From his POV, he’s unworthy of being with Tohru since he ruined her life and took away her mom. He has personally experienced the loss of his mom and wishes for many many reasons that she had not died, further intensifying the guilt he feels over Tohru’s mom. Knowing how much Tohru loves and respects her mom, if Kyoko said that she won’t forgive Kyo...no wonder he feels like he doesn’t deserve to be with Tohru. 

Akito is calling Tohru a monster because she accepts and has a close relationship with Kyo. Anyone who accepts Kyo is both treated as a saint for tolerating a monster and a monster for accepting a monster - he has already experienced this with his mother and with Kazuma. His mom was the most affected, being constantly blamed and derided for bringing a monster into existence until she committed suicide. He was raised to believe that anyone would be worse off by having a relationship with him because he is a monster, not to mention be gossiped about maliciously by others. Tohru being with him would cause others to think of her badly, for others to call her a monster...and he loves her too much to bring her down with him.

Resolution to “love heals all” trope for Kyoru:

Tohru’s way of loving Kyo, living life candidly with him, was exactly what Kyo needed (and vice versa, of course). We’ve seen Kyo reject other unhealthy forms of love: He didn’t want Kagura’s love borne of pity, and he found his mom’s blind love suffocating for both of them.

Kyo’s final character development and resolution hinges on coming to terms with a more mature understanding of how to love someone. Kyo sees himself unworthy of Tohru’s love because he fails at protecting her: he wasn’t able to find little lost Tohru, he wasn’t able to save Kyoko from the car crash, and he wasn’t there to save Tohru from a landslide. These are circumstances beyond his control, just like how Akito injuring Hatori’s eye was beyond Kana’s control. We first hear about his disappointment at failing to protect Tohru after Akito’s confrontation with Tohru at the beach house. After Akito leaves, we see that Kyo was held back from joining the confrontation by Haru, and he calls himself incompetent for being unable to protect Tohru from Akito. LIke Kana, Kyo imprisons himself into the unforgivable position that he has a duty to protect his loved one, and yet circumstances both within and without his control still occurs and hurts Tohru. He feels guiltiest for not doing more to save Kyoko, thereby feeling like he personally caused Tohru to lose her mom. Unless Kyoko comes back from the dead, Kyo has trapped himself into never being worthy of Tohru.

Fortunately for Kyo, Yuki is having none of his shit. Yuki is the one who finally literally punches through Kyo’s romantic idealism and makes Kyo realize how immature his idea of love is. Kyo wants to be Tohru’s prince in shining armor but is utterly bested by Yuki when it comes to grand heroics. Yuki is the prince archetype who finds little lost Tohru, saves Tohru from living in a tent, retrieves her belongings from a landslide, and shows up at her relatives’ to whisk her home. In Kyo’s mind, this makes Yuki more suitable and worthy of Tohru, and Yuki is the one who gets fed up with Kyo’s self-deprecating and unrealistic mindset. “Who do you think you are, a superhero? Would you only be satisfied if you could save somebody from a car crash, or save someone from a landslide? You’ve been protecting her, haven’t you? You’ve been with her daily, making her happy, isn’t that protecting her? Do you think it were the same if I were with her?” Kyo had to learn that being with someone and making them happy every day is far more significant and precious than heroics. Seemingly insignificant actions are in fact *special* things that only he can do for Tohru. Takaya-sensei’s message on healthy love is so consistently woven throughout Fruits Basket.

[dolores-lovesfruits]

There is something that has been itching me ever since I entered the fb fandom. It’s been a long time debate ever since the manga and the 2001 anime up till now and Idk, I feel like this topic is overlooked by many, which is kyo vs. yuki/ more like pitting them against each other on who’s better. 

Beware: This is a super long post.

Look, I may be a Momiji stan at heart but I can’t deny that these dudes are awesome. Do note that I am not speaking against those who have their own biases, I’m referring to the people who keep comparing these two in a really negative way to the extent of antagonizing the other party or worse; comparing who’s got more trauma. I saw the latter part on that one facebook post and I was all “wtf?!” 

Now we all know Yuki was criticized for his so-called “surface” character especially back in the 2001 anime where they really botched their chances of developing Yuki’s storyline with his brother, backstory, and president arc; and since the first half of the manga centered on the true form arc, a lot of Kyo stans emerged and at times, shoved yuki in the mud as if he’s not that important to the whole series (which infuriated me and I’m pointing my finger at the 2001 anime for this). The reboot is finally shining Yuki and the fandom, new viewers/old fans begin to love this Yuki more than the old version because this is the Yuki that was portrayed in the manga that we all love. It also helps that there are a lot who posted their metas about him and people have matured enough to understand his situation.

Now moving on to Kyo. Since the second half of season 2 will finally focus on the storyline that Yuki didn’t get during the 2001 anime, this is the part where I’m very intrigued of. Gathering some opinions from manga readers, this is the arc wherein there might be an emergence of Kyo hate opinions. I predicted this for a number of reasons and connected it to what season 2 will show, like Yuki’s backstory wherein we found out that Yuki actually wanted to befriend Kyo; using yuki as a scapegoat; the cinderella arc where Kyo lashes out on Yuki again. Not to mention, Kyo doesn’t really appear that much or get that much spotlight during the second half (except Kagura’s confession and Kyoko’s backstory albeit it’s more focused on kyoko’s) because his spotlight and development will come at season 3.

This is something that really pissed me off. The Yuki hate was based on his treatment towards Kyo and acting like he’s better than him (ex: is when a lot complained during the ore-sama dialogue that he’s acting all superior to Kyo or some shit). If anything, Yuki has the right to call out on Kyo which I’ll explain below. The Kyo hate on the other hand was based on his treatment to Yuki back when they’re younger till now (it rages me when there are fans who blamed Kyo for ALL of Yuki’s trauma. He’s partly at fault, for sure but the fact that they are really blaming ALL this on Kyo was absurd. blame akito or the curse dammit). 

Kyo’s actions are unjustifiable, sure, especially when he’s channeling his hatred to someone he doesn’t fully know but it’s one of his main conflicts in this series. Even as a kid, he still technically started that feud between their relationship even when Yuki just wanted to be friends w/ him but because of the rat/cat hierarchy implanted on him since he was born, it was natural for him to lash out on Yuki, which, resulted on damaging Yuki’s trauma more. It didn’t help that Yuki was used as his scapegoat because not only projecting your hatred also cause to damage to the other person which come of as insensitive, but it also developed Kyo’s unhealthy way of coping esp since he explicitly said that he used Yuki because he wouldn’t be able to take it any longer (it really was the only thing keeping him together which was a super fucked up situation). It’s a lose-lose battle on him

I’m not going to pretend that Yuki is an angel as well. He, too have struggled immensely and his envious thoughts and jealously towards Kyo sprouted his hatred towards him which in any case, is not Kyo’s fault. His internal struggles of not being able to be himself was not entirely Kyo’s responsibility, which developed an unhealthy coping mechanism wherein he puts up this princely facade and also lashes on/ beats Kyo due to his jealousy. I also think a lot are forgetting that while Kyo used him as a scapegoat, deep inside, Yuki looked down on Kyo as well. Based on what Shigure told Tohru that the cat is needed for them to make themselves feel a little better. Which was amplified during Momiji’s grown up chapter (the scene where they are making curry) the zodiacs finally acknowledged the effect of being in the cat’s unfortunate position.

I cannot fully blame Yuki for looking down on Kyo and used his jealousy to beat him up because he reminds him of anything he’s not. At the same time, I cannot fully blame Kyo for lashing out on him when they were kids and used the rat to have a purpose of his hatred. Their feelings manifested from the curse, it just so happened that these two were driven with different coping mechanisms.

In addition, I really don’t understand the point of antagonizing/villanizing person a to person b’s backstory and vice versa when it’s clearly not the case. A lot are forgetting that it’s the bond/curse and akito that made them this way. You can’t fully blame the other party because both of them are victims of terrifying positions (Yuki’s closest to god so he really suffered from akito’s abuse while Kyo’s position as the cat made him mocked and looked down by the sohmas and eventually imprisoned for life for something he was born with). It’s also interesting despite their different childhood experiences, both experienced some kind of isolation (yuki was isolated from the other zodiacs and kept in the dark room while kyo was an outcast and not included in any event because the mere presence as a cat is something they need for the banquet to keep going).

This is the reason why my blood was boiling when they get compared at who’s got the worst trauma or some shit from the two. It’s downgrading the other’s problems and experiences and fucking petty. BOTH, I repeat, both have been traumatized and suffered a lot and it defeats the purpose on portraying different traumas and their journey of fighting their demons. In other words, the two do not deserve to be compared. It’s not a battle between traumas.

If they want to blame something, blame the fucking curse (and Akito). It clearly destroyed the cursed Sohma’s mental health. No need to pit these two into an experience that haunted them both.

I’m saying this because while I was glad and relieved that the yuki hate is slowly dissolving, I noticed that this season might involve some Kyo hate and I just have to fucking slap my desk and be like “Not this again!”

Again, everyone has an opinion on certain characters but there are some that are just “too much”. That feeling overshadows the character’s good points/flaws. Kyo and Yuki are not painted to be the bad guys. They are characters with flaws and conflict going on. Without these flaws, the story wouldn’t drive further. I actually prefer the fandom right now than before because the majority of the main Kyo and main Yuki stans both love and respect the other. I hope it will continue to be like that and just stop with the Kyo and Yuki hate.