Fruits Basket 18
February 27, 2008
I read this a little over a month ago. It’s been sitting on the floor with Enchanter, gathering dust. I’m not sure why I’ve been putting off talking about it.
Things still haven’t moved back to Kyo and Tohru yet, which is kind of a bummer. They are brought up at several points, but a lot of the volume focuses on Yuki, who has clearly split from the above pair. Machi and Yuki seem to be drawing together. Yuki and Kakeru seem to be the only two who have the patience to deal with Machi, which is a shame. I kind of like her, even though I’m almost the exact opposite as far as neuroses are concerned. We may also be rid of the Yuki fan club since the president is graduating. Maybe not though… there will be members to replace her.
There is some creepy business with Rin. She goes missing, and much of the volume is spent trying to figure out what happened to her and where she is. Of course Akito is behind this, and Rin wound up taking some physical abuse and being thrown in solitary confinement after being tricked by Ren. It hadn’t really occurred to me how horrible Kyo’s lifetime punishment would be until the results with Rin were shown. It’s hard to watch the characters tearfully taking physical abuse from Akito and not really standing up for themselves, but the scenes with Rin were almost too much. At least Haru finally did some standing up.
What else… there is much talk of breaking the curse, but I know there’s about five volumes left. The curse isn’t going to break anytime soon, unfortunately. Here’s hoping things will meander back to a more direct telling of Kyo and Tohru’s story next volume. Actually… I don’t even know if that’s necessarily what I want. I kind of like some of this family drama, but I still think there’s a bit too much going on and the story is a little too indirect. I also think I’m in the minority with my opinions, so that shows how much I know.
March 1, 2008 at 1:23 am
What I liked about this volume and the last was the reminder that Akito is genuinely extremely frightening to these characters. And also that there are things that terrify Akito, too.
March 2, 2008 at 1:15 am
True. I did like the fact that Akito’s weaknesses are starting to show. Akito has been sort of a background boogeyman for most of the series, so I like that the character is starting to get developed.