Fruits Basket

Title:  Fruits Basket
Mangaka:  Natsuki Takaya
Length:  23 Volumes
English Translation?  Yes.  All released by Tokyopop.
Demo/Genre:  Shoujo/Fantasy/Comedy/Romance/Drama

How did I hear about it?  It's pretty hard not to have heard of this one.  It became a priority to read because it came highly recommended by my otaku buddies.

When the recently-orphaned Tohru's living situation suddenly becomes unstable, she decides to take matters into her own hands and take care of herself by living in a tent.  However, she has erected her tent on the outskirts of the Sohma property.  When Shigure and his younger cousin Yuki (who is Tohru's classmate) discover her situation, they invite her to stay with them for a while.  Soon, another Sohma cousin, Kyo, is added to the mix.  Things seem like they may be fine until Tohru discovers that the Sohma family is cursed by the spirits of the Chinese Zodiac.  Those who are possessed by one of these spirits transforms into their Zodiac animal when either their body becomes weak or they are hugged by a member of the opposite sex.  As Tohru meets and befriends many members of the Sohma family, she learns that the curse isn't all about cute and fluffiness at all.

First off, I loved the art.  This being her first long series, the art changes over time.  The shift in FB though is way more dramatic than much of the manga I've read.  It's really astonishing to try to compare the style in the first volume with the one in the twenty-third.  While I liked her style in the beginning, I absolutely loved her "new" style.  The lines are softer, and I feel that more subtleties become apparent in the facial expressions.  The picture I chose was from fairly late in the series (volume 17, I think), so it exhibits her shifted artstyle, though there's still just a tad more evolution to it in the last few volumes.

This is definitely in my top five favorite manga of all time (so far, at least).  The premise sounds horribly gimmicky, and the story could have easily become something light and silly.  However, the drama that unfolds completely sucked me in.  It has quite a large cast for a shoujo, and so many of the characters were just brilliantly written.  Actually, I found the main protagonist to be the weakest character of the bunch.  She was upstaged by virtually all of the other cast members.  It's not that I didn't like her.  She was just more or less a typical shoujo heroine:  a bit naive and nice to a fault.  For the first half of the series, I really had no opinion of her.  Somewhere around the halfway point though, Tohru becomes a bit more argumentative and displays a little self-doubt as she struggles to find a way to help her friends with their plight.  I enjoyed watching her develop these human traits.

FB features a love triangle between Tohru, Yuki, and Kyo.  I loved both boys, though I may have been a bit more in Kyo's corner.  He was the tsundere character of this series, and those types are my favesies.  Kyo is possessed by the spirit of the cat.  Hey, wait...there's no cat in the Zodiac, you silly goose!  You are right, there's not, which is why Kyo has it particularly bad in the Sohma family, being possessed by the animal who was kicked out of the original Zodiac.  His mother committed suicide when he was young and his alcoholic father has always maintained that it was because she gave birth to a monster.  Kyo, as the cat, is shunned by the Sohma family and doomed to a life of solitude and isolation, though many of his fellow Zodiac members count him as a friend.  Yuki is very popular at school, but he's had it pretty rough, too.  His parents, like many Zodiac parents, have very little contact with him, and he has been subjected to a great deal of emotional abuse at the hands of Akito Sohma, the young head of the family (more on him to come later) since he was very young.  The final member of the particular Sohma house that Tohru finds herself in is Shigure, ten years their senior and owner of the house.  He's basically the only member of the Zodiac who seems relatively unaffected by the curse (mentally and emotionally, I mean.  He still transforms.  Oh, and he's the dog).  He's a novelist who writes serious novels using his name and trashy romances under a penname.  He's rarely serious and often a little perverted, but occasionally his real personality comes through, and we see that he's actually selfish and manipulative.  I absolutely loved all three of these men.

The rest of the Zodiac was populated with memorable and likeable characters whom we got to know very well (okay, except for one that Takaya-sensei said she was regrettably unable to give more screentime due to page restrictions).  Each of them have unique pasts and tales.  We see more pain and heartache as many of the children have horrible relationships with their parents due to their...affliction.  Sometimes mothers have a hard time dealing with a son that they can never touch, and some parents feel so far removed from their Zodiac children (they belong more to Akito than to them) that they don't bother to form a relationship with them at all.  These circumstances lead to a smattering of "damaged" characters.  It sounds like it would be repetitive, but as I said, their backstories and personalities end up being so unique that you can't help but love them.

And then there's Akito...  Akito, Akito, Akito.  He is by far one of my favorite villains ever.  I would love to tell you why, but I'm doing my best to keep this review as spoiler-free as I can.  Let's just say that perhaps he's the most broken character of them all.  He's about 20-21 for the series, yet he is regarded as the head of the entire Sohma family.  He's cruel and emotionally immature.  Most of the Zodiac members have been subjected to his emotional and physical abuse for years.  He can't stand for any of the Zodiac members to have anyone in their lives more important than him.  For example Hatori's (possessed by the spirit of the dragon) request to marry his girlfriend was met with a rage that resulted in one of his eyes being permenantly blinded.  I wish I could talk about Akito more, but if you by chance have not read FB, I would hate to spoil it.

I could probably talk about Fruits Basket all day, but I guess I should start wrapping up.  This series was funny and sweet, but it was also dark and moving.  It had a large cast of memorable characters and one of the most perfect endings of any series I've read.  There's a reason why this series is in my top five, people!  It's fantastic, and I have the entire series in my collection.