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Reviewed by Brigid Alverson “The Sohma family is so full of difficult people,” Tohru Honda observes in volume 3 of Fruits Basket. This may be the greatest understatement in the whole series: as she speaks two of the Sohma cousins, Kyo and Hatsuharu, are busy beating each other to a pulp. Shadowed by an ancient curse that causes them to turn into animals from the Chinese zodiac, the members of the Sohma family have grown accustomed to lives of sadness and anger. But things are beginning to change. Tohru Honda, a cheerful orphan, has come to live with three of the Sohma cousins, and the rest of the family is beginning to react to her as well. With volume 3, the story begins to take a darker turn. The first volume played the situation mostly for laughs, and the second offered some hints that this was going to be more complicated than a simple tale of a sweet girl who cheers everyone up. This volume begins to reveal the family’s desperation. The Sohmas sense that Tohru may be the key to escaping their fate, and that may put her in jeopardy. At the same time, it becomes clear that some of the family’s problems are of their own making, beyond any curse. As the book opens, a new cousin, Hatsuharu, arrives to pick a fight with Kyo. Thin, smart, and stylish, Hatsuharu is nothing like his animal, the ox, and he seems to have broken free of the zodiac traditions that bind the family as well. When he was young, his relatives told Hatsuharu that he was slow and stupid, like the ox, and that the scheming rat would trick him, as he did in ancient legends. But when he confronted Yuki, Hatsuharu realized that he didn’t have to buy into those traditions, and he credits Yuki with giving him the freedom to be himself. The book also gets a little weirder when Momiji makes a return appearance and treats everyone to a trip to a hot spring as a Valentine’s gift. Momiji’s appearance is so childlike that his attraction to Tohru is, well, icky, even though he is only a year younger than her—a fact that she only learns after they spend the night in the same bed. And finally, the characters are beginning to evolve. Kyo has mellowed a bit and even controls his anger in one scene. In a moody conversation with Tohru, he begins to question the hard shell he has put up around himself. Shigure admits that he is not as nice as he initially seemed but is willing to use Tohru to escape the curse. Tohru, on the other hand, remains cheerful, industrious, and endlessly understanding of the boys’ moods. In the style that makes Fruits Basket so popular, the deeper story is told as a thread that runs through a series of everyday vignettes: the school race, Valentine’s Day celebrations, a double date, a trip to a hot spring. As the story begins to move forward, the characters go beyond the shallow stereotypes of their zodiac animals and start to assert their own will. That makes the story more interesting and more unpredictable. Comment on this review of Fruits Basket v3 on the Manga Life Forums. |
6 October 2009
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