Fruits Basket 22
July 19, 2009
Natsuki Takaya – Tokyopop – 2009 – 23 volumes
I waited to read this until I had the final volume. I kind of wish I hadn’t, because everything I was looking forward to was in this volume. It ends in a really good place, and I find I’m not very curious about the lives of the characters after this, or how Akito is going to live with himself or whatever. Everything just ends here, and now I’m not really looking forward to the final volume.
Though I’ve been pretty caught up by the ending the past few volumes, and I tend to be pretty positive when I write these reviews, I’m still not all that fond of Fruits Basket. I was reflecting on the series after I finished this volume, and it’s kinda… I don’t know. A dozen characters who are depressed because they are cursed to turn into animals when people hug them? A horrible, dark core to the series based on the head of their family, driven by… selfishness? Cursed with selfishness? Nobody else can love them, because they’re cursed to be loved only by Akito, who abuses them instead? The dark past and the bad blood between Akito and his mother is because… they fought over who Akito’s dad loved more? I guess as the series got more and more serious, it was kind of easy to forget that the horrible, ostracizing curse that everyone always talked about was to turn into a cute animal (except in Kyo’s case). And as engrossing as some of the stories were, I frequently found that I wasn’t terribly interested in the sadness of side characters. Even though I probably was when I was reading the story, which is proof that the writing style is at the very least addictive. I think I would have liked it better had there been less characters, but the fact that the emotional trauma was spread out over 25 or so characters made things far less interesting and believable for me in the end.
Again, I realize I’m saying this after a slew of positive reviews for the later volumes of the series, and I’m about to talk about how much I liked this volume. But it’s more or less how I’ve always felt about the series.
This volume pretty much wraps everything up. Everything about the curse, a lot of things about the relationships between all the characters, but especially everything for Kyo. He speaks to his dad, and then has to take care of this business with Tohru.
The scene between Kyo and Tohru is just about perfect. The whole series led up to it, and it does everything you would expect. Everything, everything, everything. And it’s wonderful.
And that’s why everyone loves Fruits Basket, I think.
July 20, 2009 at 7:13 am
[...] on vol. 2 of Emma (i heart manga) Shannon Fay on Falling Into Love (Kuriousity) Connie on vols. 22 and 23 of Fruits Basket (Slightly Biased Manga) Melinda Beasi on vol. 23 of Fruits Basket (There it [...]
July 24, 2009 at 6:16 am
you make me want to go back and read this volume..just to see the two of them together. yuki, and mostly kyo have always been what really drew me to the series. more so than Tohru, who kind of dissapears from the story in the last couple of volumes. i mean, i know we needed to give Yuki, someone, but the characters from his student council never gained a place in my heart. it was always about the sohmas. i’m so sad that it’s over. and i’m just glad that kyo got what he deserved in the end. *sighs*
July 24, 2009 at 5:06 pm
Yeah, I can kind of understand how the student council had to exist so that there was no bad blood between Yuki and Kyo in the end for both of them wanting Tohru, but I agree with you, I always hated those student council parts because the characters felt completely unnecessary and I felt like I was wasting time reading them when I could be reading the main story.
But that scene between Tohru and Kyo was literally worth absolutely anything and everything when it finally happened. I kind of want to read it again right now.