Takaya Natsuki - Fruits Basket, vol. 01 (Eng. trans.) (reread)
Finally, I start a week late in the Great Manga Reread Project: Fruits Basket edition!
Spoilers for this volume under the cut; spoilers for later volumes further hidden using spoiler code. Please use spoiler code for later volumes in the comments! Also, I've only read up to around ch. 126 (aka, I am where Akito is female, Momiji and Hiro have had the curse lifted, and Tohru has just fallen off the cliff).
Uh, I may have gone a little overboard in taking notes; I suspect I will get lazier as I reread and much less detailed.
Spoilers for vol. 1
I actually first watched the anime, courtesy of cychi, and only then read the manga. I had really liked the series, but the manga! Oh, the manga! If it gives you any idea, the anime only goes up to around vol. 7 or so of the manga, and the manga gets exponentially better with each volume. I think because I watched the anime first, I didn't pay that much attention to the first few volumes of the manga, which the anime follows fairly faithfully.
I also began the series biased toward Yuki; I have a huge aversion to love triangles, which Fruits Basket managed to avoid thank goodness, but I still sort of picked sides. I know most people start off loving Kyo. I think I got stubborn when Kyo was set up as the more sympathetic one for the viewer. Also, Yuki is the Rat! I am totally and completely biased in that regard! And he has a lot of the same hangups that I did when I was a kid, including feeling lonely and distanced from people who maybe admired you (for me it was more good grades than being beautifully silver-haired and purple-eyed, amazingly enough) but didn't necessarily like you and wanting to be more of an open, friendly person like Kyo.
This time around, I still like Yuki, but my heart just goes out to Kyo right off the bat.
I cannot get over just how perky Tohru is. She lives in a tent! Good lord! I can see why people do put this series down from the first volume; Tohru seems entirely too good to be true, and the setting could easily be "Look! Cute and perky heroine shacks up with tons and tons of bishounen who all like her! And they turn into cute animals too!" But even in vol. 1 there are hints at how deep the series will go and why Tohru isn't just your average cute and perky heroine.
I like that we can already see the interesting relationship between Kyo and Yuki, how they both envy the other for what they don't have -- Kyo of course wants Yuki's place in the zodiac and how Yuki's accepted into the family, while Yuki wants Kyo's immediacy with people (even the roughness and yelling) and wants to be as far from the Sohma family as possible and closer with others. And I like the hints at Tohru's relationship with her mother, which reads as a fairly interesting mother-child relationship to me. Kyoko is a great mom, but she isn't all about sacrificing herself for her child and gently enduring all woes like every other mother-figure in anime and manga. I like that she begs Tohru for sukiyaki.
It's also worth noting that Takaya is already setting up what will be some of the main themes of the series. Character-wise, she's laid the groundwork for both Yuki and Kyo, but she's also done a significant amount for Tohru, from the often repeated "Tohru, you should just be yourself!" ("Tohru wa Tohru-rashii!" or something like that from what I remember of the anime) from Kyoko, to "Sometimes it's all right to be more selfish" from Kyo, to her already intact bonds with her mother and with Uotani and Hanajima. (btw, much love for Tohru's circle of female friends!) And, of course, there's the set up of the quintessential Tohru-as-onigiri imagery with the introduction of the onigiri in the fruit basket; I like how it ties Tohru in with the title of the series.
I particularly love how there's a tiny panel of wee!Tohru smiling and jumping up to the cry of "Onigiri!" in the distance when Yuki and Kyo bring her home from her relatives' place; it's such a small note, but it's so great thematically (she fits! she found her place in the fruit basket!) and it's OMG SO CUTE WEE!TOHRU too!
Random notes:
Foreshadowing notes (vague spoilers through ch. 126 for all except when noted):
I can't get over how much stuff Takaya managed to put into vol. 1, particularly the things that don't pay off until twenty volumes later!
Possible thematic notes:
Sample spoiler code:
Spoilers here.
Links:
- Thread collecting all vol. 1 GMRP posts.
Spoilers for this volume under the cut; spoilers for later volumes further hidden using spoiler code. Please use spoiler code for later volumes in the comments! Also, I've only read up to around ch. 126 (aka, I am where Akito is female, Momiji and Hiro have had the curse lifted, and Tohru has just fallen off the cliff).
Uh, I may have gone a little overboard in taking notes; I suspect I will get lazier as I reread and much less detailed.
Spoilers for vol. 1
I actually first watched the anime, courtesy of cychi, and only then read the manga. I had really liked the series, but the manga! Oh, the manga! If it gives you any idea, the anime only goes up to around vol. 7 or so of the manga, and the manga gets exponentially better with each volume. I think because I watched the anime first, I didn't pay that much attention to the first few volumes of the manga, which the anime follows fairly faithfully.
I also began the series biased toward Yuki; I have a huge aversion to love triangles, which Fruits Basket managed to avoid thank goodness, but I still sort of picked sides. I know most people start off loving Kyo. I think I got stubborn when Kyo was set up as the more sympathetic one for the viewer. Also, Yuki is the Rat! I am totally and completely biased in that regard! And he has a lot of the same hangups that I did when I was a kid, including feeling lonely and distanced from people who maybe admired you (for me it was more good grades than being beautifully silver-haired and purple-eyed, amazingly enough) but didn't necessarily like you and wanting to be more of an open, friendly person like Kyo.
This time around, I still like Yuki, but my heart just goes out to Kyo right off the bat.
I cannot get over just how perky Tohru is. She lives in a tent! Good lord! I can see why people do put this series down from the first volume; Tohru seems entirely too good to be true, and the setting could easily be "Look! Cute and perky heroine shacks up with tons and tons of bishounen who all like her! And they turn into cute animals too!" But even in vol. 1 there are hints at how deep the series will go and why Tohru isn't just your average cute and perky heroine.
I like that we can already see the interesting relationship between Kyo and Yuki, how they both envy the other for what they don't have -- Kyo of course wants Yuki's place in the zodiac and how Yuki's accepted into the family, while Yuki wants Kyo's immediacy with people (even the roughness and yelling) and wants to be as far from the Sohma family as possible and closer with others. And I like the hints at Tohru's relationship with her mother, which reads as a fairly interesting mother-child relationship to me. Kyoko is a great mom, but she isn't all about sacrificing herself for her child and gently enduring all woes like every other mother-figure in anime and manga. I like that she begs Tohru for sukiyaki.
It's also worth noting that Takaya is already setting up what will be some of the main themes of the series. Character-wise, she's laid the groundwork for both Yuki and Kyo, but she's also done a significant amount for Tohru, from the often repeated "Tohru, you should just be yourself!" ("Tohru wa Tohru-rashii!" or something like that from what I remember of the anime) from Kyoko, to "Sometimes it's all right to be more selfish" from Kyo, to her already intact bonds with her mother and with Uotani and Hanajima. (btw, much love for Tohru's circle of female friends!) And, of course, there's the set up of the quintessential Tohru-as-onigiri imagery with the introduction of the onigiri in the fruit basket; I like how it ties Tohru in with the title of the series.
I particularly love how there's a tiny panel of wee!Tohru smiling and jumping up to the cry of "Onigiri!" in the distance when Yuki and Kyo bring her home from her relatives' place; it's such a small note, but it's so great thematically (she fits! she found her place in the fruit basket!) and it's OMG SO CUTE WEE!TOHRU too!
Random notes:
- This is really dumb of me, but I got all confused when I noticed that the zodiac animals on the front cover are in the wrong order! This is largely because I can never quite remember the order, so I was trying to figure it out, and then was all, "But! The dog goes after the chicken! That one I am sure of!"
- I forgot about the intro. notes that TokyoPop put in this volume! I'm glad they did; it was just a nice little thing to have, particularly after I've gotten used to Del Rey's fairly good notes in the beginning and explanations and footnotes in the back (especially appreciated for xxxHolic and Tsubasa for CLAMP crossover knowledge I lack and for xxxHolic and Mushishi for Japanese folklore knowledge I lack).
- Stupid language note the first: (disclaimer: took four years of Japanese in college, and as such am by no means a native speaker. Also, I suck at linguistics so take this with a giant grain of salt) TokyoPop transliterated the title as "Fruits Basket" from the katakana (Japanese script usually used for foreign loan words) "furu-tsu basuketto" (the hyphen indicates an elongated vowel and is written out as a dash in katakana). For some reason, "furu-tsu" seems to be the accepted loan word version of "fruit" (as opposed to the non-loan-word "kudamono"). I think a lot of the time, the ending consonant in transliterated loan words are turned into "[consonant-sound]+u." This usually works out pretty well, since the ending "u" usually disappears into the consonant sound (ergo, "desu" sounding like "des"). But the "u" ending for t is "tsu" instead of "tu," so I'm wondering if they chose to use the "u" ending and just make it randomly sound plural instead of going for the slightly less-used "to" ending (as they did in "basuketto" for "basket"). *shrugs* Dunno. Also, Japanese uses number markers instead of plural nouns to indicate counts, so the whole plural vs. singular thing may not have been in consideration. Or I could be making all this up, who knows!
- Obsessive rat notes that really only interest me: Wah! The rats are so creepy in that panel with Yuki! I sniffle for the rat portrayal. Also, because I am obsessed with rats, I think Yuki is really more like a cat than a rat. So there. Though I am very amused to think of what things would be like if Yuki were like my rats.... Maybe he is a little like Bya, who is very alpha rat and beats everyone up effortlessly, hee. (also Kyo is totally like Ren who pretends to be grumpy but really just wants his chin scritched but alas Ruki is nothing like Tohru. Ruki is really much more like Shigure. Except cuter and less skanky and therefore even more sneaky.)
- I love the small panel of Kyo's creepy smile before he falls in through the roof; it's so nifty to try and see the little details that Takaya throws in the panelling and the art.
- I also really love that Hanajima keeps doing things with Tohru's hair in the background; in one scene, she's curling it (where is the thing plugged in, really?!), and in another, she's braiding it. It's just a nice throwaway moment to show how close they are.
- OMG CUTE YUKI!RAT ANGSTING IN THE RAIN! *dies and is dead*
- Secret base! I love Tohru's mental picture of it, complete with "secret toilet."
Foreshadowing notes (vague spoilers through ch. 126 for all except when noted):
- Boy with red cap! I am amazed that this showed up on what, page 5 or something?
- rilina has already commented on the cliff being unstable here, so I won't, except to express even more amazement for Takaya! This reread is going to be such fun, I can already tell!
- I ditto fourthage's notes on where Takaya is going with Akito here; the conversation with Shigure in flashback really doesn't quite fit with what we find out later.
- (spoilery through vol. 7) Dude! The teeny-weeny panel with Kyo sleeping through the rain! With a note that he's usually sleepy/grouchy during the rain! Again, I flail at Takaya's foreshadowing! And she introduces the idea of Kyo's true form with Kagura too!
- Already we're getting looks at Shigure's sneakiness and his strange relationship with Akito.
- Dude! Uotani compares Kyo's hair to Kyoko's in this volume! More set up for the connection between Kyo and Kyoko?
- I love that the series almost begins with the story of the cat's position in the zodiac and Tohru's immediate sympathy of the cat; Kyo's an essential part of the story even before his character is introduced a few chapters later.
- I also can't believe that even in vol. 1 there are hints at the deeper dysfunctions within the Sohma family; the mindwipe isn't treated as a funny shoujo magic joke. And the creepiness is further cemented with Yuki's memory of having an entire group of children having their minds' wiped because of him, complete with Akito telling him that no one will like him if they know he's the Rat.
- I love the hints of Katsuya and Kyoko's relationship in the final few chapters; it's just a panel of the two together with Tohru's grandfather reflecting on them, but it's nice to have. Ditto with the gradual introduction of Kyoko as a Yankee, from Tohru jokingly saying that she'll promise by burning cigarettes into her arm or in blood or something with the side note: "That's what Mom would do!" Come to think of it, that's sort of creepy, but since it's in a little joke chibi panel, it doesn't come off as such. And then there's a larger panel later on of Kyoko with her feathered seventies-hair and full Yankee regalia.
I can't get over how much stuff Takaya managed to put into vol. 1, particularly the things that don't pay off until twenty volumes later!
Possible thematic notes:
- I'm trying to take note of when people are in wafuku versus Western dress; Shigure's almost always in kimono (he jokes about the novelist in kimono), though he of course puts on a suit to interface with the outside world. Maybe there's something with the inner-Sohma circle and wafuku? Akito's nearly always in kimono. Visual signifier of what's in the family and out? Tradition and family? Or it just looks cool and I am overanalyzing.
- I could have sworn that rilina had a note on Uotani's long skirt signalling rebellion as opposed to modesty; something about schoolgirls usually shortening their uniform skirts or rolling them up. Except I can't find the note, so maybe I am making that up.
- Trying to figure out if there are class issues -- Kyoko is a high-school dropout, and it seems as though Katsuya (Tohru's dad) comes from a distinctly more middle-class family who was probably pretty horrified by his marriage to a former gang girl. The Sohma family seems to be typed as upper class or at least upper-middle-class, particularly with the designation of Yuki as prince of the school. And there's the fact that Tohru is working all through school doing cleaning work, as opposed to going to after-school study sessions to prep for college exams. I'm also wondering how the uniforms might or might not obscure signs of class. But I'm not sure how obvious all this would be and if it even fits into signifiers of class in Japan or with the Japanese class system in general.
- Suffix notes: Tohru calls Yuki "Sohma-kun" both out loud and in her head, except possibly one moment when she thinks of him as "Yuki" or "Yuki-kun" (I can't recall and don't have my book with me). She calls Kyo "Kyo-san" out loud but thinks of him as "Kyo-kun" in her head, even before Kyo yells at her for calling him "-san." After that, she calls him "Kyo-kun" out loud and just plain "Kyo" in her head. And I think Tohru is usually very polite, at least from the commentary I remember?
- Big thematic quotes: "Mingling with people, hurting them, getting hurt by them... that's how you learn about others... and about yourself. If you don't, you'll never be able to care about anyone but yourself." (shigure to Kyo re: hurting Tohru and Kyo needing social practice) This is so one of the main themes of Furuba, OMG so much love for the series!
And: "She [Kyoko] said that people aren't born with kind hearts. When we're born, all we have are desires for food and material things. Selfish instincts, I guess. But she said that kindness is something that grows inside of each person's body... but it's up to us to nurture that kindness in our hearts. That's why kindness is different for every person. [...] When I thought of all the different shapes of human kindness -- imagining them as round or square... I got really excited." (Tohru to Yuki on people being kind) OMG SO MUCH LOVE! I love that the entire series is about all the different characters, even the non-major ones, finding their own kindnesses and seeing what shapes they take. And going back to the first quote, they find their own kindnesses by reaching out to people, by taking part in life and by hurting and by being hurt and by learning from all that.
Sample spoiler code:
Spoilers here.
Links:
- Thread collecting all vol. 1 GMRP posts.