Shojo anime has a bad habit of being either really well done or just… Sort of cheesy bad. Furuba (Fruits Basket) falls somewhere in-between that line and I’m not really sure if that’s good or bad. I mean I certainly enjoyed the show growing up and that hasn’t really changed since last I watched it, but I feel like I don’t enjoy it to the same extent. At the time it had a relatively refreshing plot line when it was released and I was new to the whole anime scene as well. I have fond memories of it but I also realize its faults as a story, though at the same time I’m amazed at how many tough topics it spoke on. From parent loss to child abuse it covered a lot of tentative subjects that many writers still have trouble bringing up. It also was subject to one of the better anime adaptions, though it did stray from the original manga, which was unfinished at that time.

So basic storyline our main heroine is Tohru Honda who recently lost her mother and has been residing in a tent in the woods, as to avoid inconveniencing anyone, and is soon found by two Shomas: Yuki and Shigure. She is invited to live with them if she agrees to be their housekeeper, which she accepts, though at this point she doesn’t know the curse placed upon the Shoma family. After an encounter with Kyo Shoma she finds out what that curse is. They are cursed by the Chinese Zodiac and turn into their respective zodiacs when hug by someone of the opposite gender. Note that it’s only a select 13 of the Shomas, including one for the cat from the legend. Basically it’s a story of Tohru finding her place and meeting all those affected by the curse, hoping to find friendship in all of them despite their pain. It remains to be a very endearing story about heart, love, and not giving into your own despair because someone out there cares about you.

Now for the characters: Tohru Honda is our main female lead and seen by a many few as the mary-sue, who doesn’t let her own problems get in the way of things, and always seems to say the right thing to the right person. She is our ongiri (Rice ball) and I always found her to sort of be the type of person I wished I personally was. Even with the loss of her mother she doesn’t let it get to her, well not too much anyway, and she loves with her entire heart. Though it is heavily implied she may have depression from the loss of both her parents, but not that she’d let that show. Yuki Shoma is Tohru’s classmate and roommate. He is one of the most popular boys in school, often referred to as a prince, and finds it very hard. Well it would be considering he is the rat from the Shoma curse and it’s hard to avoid females embracing you without coming off as rude. Now Yuki was always hard for me personally to like, as he was sort of standoffish, and there’s reasons for that. But anyway the more time he spends with Tohru the better and happier a person he becomes, which was something I liked as character growth. Mentally abused for years he wants to live free from the chains of the Shoma house. Kyo Shoma is the black sheep of his family, as he is the cat from the legend and curse, and therefor is seen as an abomination. He is basically mocked by his family and others, but is constantly trying to prove himself. Hot headed and a martial artist Kyo was easier for me to like because his issues were laid out bare the moment he stepped in. He had an inferiority complex and it shows in a lot of his actions, he also knows that he gets way too angry sometimes but he doesn’t always know how to stop it, and he obviously wishes to become an actual member of the zodiac despite it being impossible. He genuinely wants and needs someone to love him for who he is despite his faults. Then we have a whole slew of other characters that I can’t even begin to get into as that would take up a lot of time and probably would be extremely boring, despite the fact that I could carry on for probably hours about all the characters. So those were the far most important of the cast. So we actually meet all of the zodiac members in the manga whereas we only get almost all of them in the anime which ended far too soon in my opinion.

Anyway so it’s sort of a meet a character and help them with their problems sort of story but in the best sort of ways. It was always endearing to me and I suppose it still is. Anyhow there is that issue of there being a short anime. It had the same issues many did at the time it was made: The manga was nowhere near done. Fullmetal Alchemist, Soul Eater, and many other series I could name off the top of my head had fallen victim to this. But with the release of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood there’s hope for a new version that is pretty much faithful to the manga. Now the actual anime was never really bad… I mean it’s subpar to things now a day but still it was a good honest shojo when I was growing up.

The animation was… Not the best, but alas it was a part of its time, and was awkward. Not in an annoying sort of way more in the way that you know you’ve seen better animation. The art in then manga, drawn and written by Natsuki Takaya, started off very typical style of its given genre, and it looked to be very inspired by certain style choices seen in Sailor Moon. But over time it grew into an art of its own and much better in my opinion. It had a lot longer proportions than before, which may bother people, but hey if you can make it through xxxHolic without cringing then this manga is nothing. Honestly I enjoyed the growth of this artist, though it wasn’t quite the leap other mangaka had made, but it was great none the less. It has characters that you can distinguish from one another which is something that’s very important for artists.

I suppose next is sound, which oh… Okay so I’ve never seen the anime subbed, I grew up with the dub and just generally prefer to keep it that way. I mean it has great actors like Laura Bailey, Eric Vale, and Jerry Jewel, who all have outstanding records of roles, though this anime might not be the shining example of that. Though I do enjoy it as one of those animations that sort of helped these actors get out there, considering we now have all three of them as some of the most accomplished actors of animation… But I digress; the sound is nice and light overall, and boy does it work with the type of story it’s working with. Literally both the opening and ending are so nice and quiet that I could fall asleep to them if they were lullabies…  Though the dub did a big no-no in my book by doing a dubbed version of the opening, which has always been a bad move in my personal opinion, because then we end up with things like Sakura Kiss from Ouran… But it actually wasn’t that bad of a dubbed song; in fact it stayed pretty true to the original.

All in all this series remains good in my book and is worth a look. It has a lot of heart that many series don’t have, you feel for these characters and you want them to get those happy endings. I still enjoy this series and think it’s worth a look. “Because even the smallest of words can be the ones to hurt you, or save you.” This anime while short ended where it needed to and is sort of like Fullmetal Alchemist’s first anime ending where everything flowed well and as a story it worked.

Anime: 7
Manga: 8.5