Fruits Basket continues to run on all cylinders.
Creative Staff:
Story/Art: Natsuki Takaya
Translation: Sheldon Drzka
Lettering: Lys Blakeslee
What They Say:
Spring is in the air, and with spring comes break! When Shigure takes Tohru, Yuki, and Kyo to the Sohma’s vacation home to make the most of Golden Week, the inevitable game of cat and mouse rat is already underway, with sparks flying between Yuki and Kyo. But leave it to Tohru to smooth things over! The peace doesn’t last, however, when another Sohma (or two?!) drops in!
But even a vacation can’t prepare the group for the surprise that awaits them upon their return. When a face from Kyo’s past makes an appearance, he lets a shocking secret about the cat out of the bag.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Fruits Basket delivers perhaps its heaviest volume to so far, and we’re not even halfway through the entire series. In the fifth and sixth volume, we are—in Takaya’s own words—propelled the rest of the way through the story by its events.
The key thing happening is, of course, the reveal of Kyo’s true form. It’s grotesque, it’s monstrous, and it apparently smells worse than anything you could experience. In the previous chapters, Kisa’s story was expounded upon; how she was bullied for her hair color and the sound of her voice, and how she had to be accepted for being herself before she could truly love herself. The same is true with Kyo. His true form is the epitome of everyone else’s hatred of him as the embodiment of the cat that curses him. No one accepts the form, except Kagura. His own mother used hollow words to try and assuage Kyo to no avail; he saw how she always checked his wrist for the beads that suppress his true form. Tohru accepts his true form with open arms. She’s scared. She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know what to do. She only knows that they should go back home. To Shigure’s home. To their home. Together. Because if they don’t, he may never again.
But back to Kisa… She’s found herself in a similar situation to that of Yuki’s back in his elementary school days. They were both young, they’ve never experiencing something like this before, and they didn’t know how to react to it. Without guidance, kids just blame themselves. “Well, they don’t like me because of my hair color…because of my voice…I am the only one to blame.” Which is untrue on all counts, of course. Tohru has become the healer of hearts while Fruits Basket remains the bringer of (my) tears.
If this volume was about anything, it was healing relationships. Yuki and Kyo fight like none other, but they aren’t throwing fists much anymore. Yuki and Ayame are even beginning to mend their relationship. Yuki wants to reach out to Ayame more, and learn more about why he so desperately wants his brother’s affection after years of negligence.
Takaya knows all the characters she’s crafting are broken. Starting with Kyo and all the way through to Ayame and Kisa, the Sohma family has had their share of drama. But Tohru has provided a healing hand to each and every one of them in her own little way—more than Hattori could ever do with his hypnosis, which is literally brushing the problem under the rug. She truly brings out the best in people.
In Summary:
Fruits Basket has always been one of my favorite manga series of all time, and this volume only solidifies it. The first two volumes were excellent, but this includes my favorite anime story in Kisa’s and brought tears to the eyes twice (with Kisa and Kyo). It is truly the turning point in the series as well when several of the characters (Kyo, Yuki, and Ayame, namely) want to grow from who they are into the person to make Tohru proud in the case of the former two and make Yuki proud in the case of the latter.
I’ll also mention that Yen Press’s books are top notch. They’re just slightly nicer than their Yowamushi Pedal books, which are already pretty high quality, and have no discernable readability problems. They also include color pages for a good portion of the chapter title pages as well, which is a really nice bonus. At only 20 bucks (four dollars cheaper than Yowamushi Pedal at MSRP), this book is a steal for a shojo classic.
Content Grade: A+
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: July 26, 2016
MSRP: $20.00