Natsuki Takaya's Fruits Basket, published as a series of mangas from 1998-2006 and turned into a one-season anime in 2001, was one of the first anime series that I really fell in love with. A friend lent it to me my senior year of high school and, though it took me a few episodes to get into it, I quickly went from entertained to hooked. I watched it every year all through college, sharing it with different friends. Recently, after a long hiatus, I decided to watch it again and see if the magic is still there. It is.
In my upper twenties now, I'm looking at it a little differently and more critically than I did before. The dialog isn't always super well-written (especially the translation for the English subtitles--read my note at the bottom of the post!), and, yes, it tends to lean towards the melodramatic, but there are still so many things that the show gets right.
Here are five major things that make Fruits Basket really remarkable. (*There are some vague spoilers, but I don't give away any significant plot points.)
