5 Reasons Why Fruits Basket is (Still) Amazing

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.)


1.  It turns the manic pixie dream-girl stereotype on its head.

And not in the way that you might think.  At first glance, Honda Tohru seems like THE manic pixie dream-girl.  After all, she steps into a household full of d/repressed boys and completely turns their lives around, giving them all the emotional love, support, and understanding that they never had.  Not only that, but she does it with that over-the-top, irrepressible cheerfulness that characterizes so many anime girls.  What makes Furuba so emotionally rich, however, are moments like this:

Kyo (to Tohru): "You could stand to speak up for yourself a little more.  Complain a little, get upset, or something!  Let people know what's on your mind."

Honda Tohru is a manic pixie dream-girl, at first, but the boys in her life make it clear that they don't want her to put other people first all the time.  They not only adore, but respect her, and they want to be able to help her as much as she helps them.  Now, that is true love. 

2. Furuba addresses complex emotional issues that almost every child has to face, and they don't pull any punches.  

After seeing the movie Inside Out, my friend said, "It's not just a good movie, it's an important movie"...because it teaches kids to understand and appreciate their own emotional complexity.  Furuba does the same thing.  They address sibling personality clashes, school bullying, broken families, parental failures, society's tendency to reject people who are strange or different, and the value of painful memories.  And on the way, Fruits Basket makes you laugh, love, cry, and come out determined to be a better person and to recognize the good in others.  Most of all, I think Furuba carries the all-important message (with great conviction) that your real family are the people who love and care about you, whoever those people happen to be.  As the opening song says, "You can't be born again, although you can change."  The situation you were born into is not your destiny. 

3. Fruits Basket is anime comedy at its finest. 

There is so much you can do with a cartoon that you just can't pull off with live action.  Furuba exploits all the wonderful possibilities of animated comedy: different drawing styles, decorative backgrounds, sound effects, music cues, arrows, meta-use of anime conventions, etc., etc.

Kyo on a truly epic laundry trip:

Dramatic house-cleaning, anyone?

4.  They dispel the ridiculous myth that "No one can love you until you love yourself."

Or any of the other variations on that theme.  Seriously, go to Google Images and type in "until you love yourself."  The results are all clearly meant to be inspirational, but they're positively awful.  This sentiment, which I've heard in many places, puts all the blame on the victim.  If other people don't like/love you, it must be because you don't like yourself!  Fruits Basket is the only show I've ever seen that treats this concept with the contempt that it deserves:

https://youtu.be/TmjuYpd9RM0?t=854

By the way, this episode, #17, is actually called "It's Because I've Been Loved That I've Become Stronger."  Go Fruits Basket! 

5. Fruits Basket has a predominantly male cast with a female lead who spends much of her time cooking, cleaning, and providing emotional support for a bunch of guys...and yet it still rocks my feminist world. 

We've already talked about Tohru's manic pixie qualities.  However, the story in general was very clearly written with traditional Japanese gender roles in mind.  Tohru is a very traditional woman, who agrees to cook and clean in exchange for her room and board at the Sohma house.  Not only that, but she explicitly likes doing those things.  She also says certain things in the sub translation that would make many American viewers uncomfortable: i.e. when discussing Kagura's forceful claim that she will marry Kyo one day, Tohru says, "Marriage is every woman's greatest dream."  0_0  (The dub modifies this to the more palatable, "I think every girl dreams about getting married one day.")  So how, exactly, does Fruits Basket still manage to be a feminist show? 

I have to start by saying that Tohru is clearly not doing these things because of male oppression or the expectations of others.  She was raised by a strong-willed, compassionate, independent-minded mother who was also quite tom-boyish.  It seems that Tohru is just naturally an old-school, feminine girl, who really loves taking care of a household and all the people in it. 

But it's not only that: I love how much respect, and I mean with a capital R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Tohru gets from the guys for everything she does.  Also, Tohru may be super feminine, but her two best friends, Hana and Uo, are decidedly NOT, and they are also valued and respected throughout the show for being exactly who they are. 

Furuba even gives a shout-out to all the more feminine guys out there.  It's a running gag throughout the show that Yuki is waaaay too pretty for his own good, and they portray how he struggles to cope with being perceived as a "girly boy."  The later entrance of Yuki's flamboyantly gay elder brother only serves to highlight this. 

Last, and certainly not least, it's just refreshing to see a female lead who is so well-treated, who really drives the plot, and who doesn't need to be some sexy, kick-ass warrior woman to do that.  Don't get me wrong, it's great that there are more warrior women in movies these days.  It's great that women are increasingly allowed to do what men have always done (in real life or fiction), but how about a woman who can do what women have always done and get some credit for it?  That, to me, is the real feather in Furuba's feminist cap, and I wish society in general could give feminine qualities and virtues the respect they really deserve.  

~~~~~~~
Note on the Translations: 

If you're going to watch the show, I ought to warn you, the official subtitle translation is terrible, and the English voice-acting for the dub is equally terrible.  However, I found a nifty way to get around this--without resorting to fansubs!  If you're watching it on DVD, go to the language menu and choose "English language with English subtitles," then when it starts playing, use your remote to change the voice track back to Japanese.  Result: you get to read the dub translation (which is waaaay better than the sub translation) while enjoying some quality Japanese voice acting.  Ta-da!