With Fruits Basket reaching its end, I figure now is the time to review the series as a whole. For purposes of this review, I won't be comparing it at all to the original anime and just judging it on its own merits.
Fruits Basket is the story of the Soma Family and the curse that looms over them. Tohru discovers it by chance and ends up involved in a lot of the family drama. Anyone who is cursed by the Zodiac has an unbreakable bond with each other, as well as the head of the Family. The curse seems to hinder the members of the zodiac in two distinct ways, one of which being they turn into an animal if they hug a member of the opposite sex. While it leads to some funny moments, if I'm being entirely honest it's more of a side thing to the whole plot than anything else, beyond occasional gags it's only relevant concerning Kyo, The Cat zodiac.
The more pressing issue is the one they are all bound to, Akito. Because of the bonds of the curse, every member of the Zodiac is destined to love Akito, but as it turns out the head of the Zodiac is rather cruel and sadistic. It's as though every member of the Zodiac is forced to love their abuser, no matter how many horrible things happen to them as a result. The cat is a bit of an odd one out. Despite still having that bond, Kyo is an outcast from the rest of the family and is treated as a monster of sorts.
As the show progresses you learn more about how cruel Akito can be, but what I like in the show is that you learn so much about the character you start to feel a bit of sympathy for the devil. It's as though no one truly knows what the original promise that forged these bonds was, but regardless you start to feel as though Akito believes that these bonds are the only thing in the world that matters. So despite Akito acting like such a violent and selfish child, it doesn't take long for the show to convey how very lonely they feel deep down. On top of all of that, you have Shigure, the Dog, who at first just seems a bit playful. Despite that, it's clear he has his plan working, the nature of which isn't entirely clear until much later in the show. You do start to get the idea that Akito isn't the only one with a more cruel side, though I'll leave it to you to watch and learn all that about Shigure for yourself, it's worth noting the show does a great job at building up Shigure.
At its core, Fruits Basket is a love story. It does sort of toy with the idea of a sort of reverse harem kind of show, but I don't think it tries to hide that the main couple of the show is Tohru and Kyo. Where I feel Fruits Basket gets this right is that they don't immediately start acting like a couple of love-struck youths. The show takes its time building up the relationship between all of the characters before it starts to pull the trigger on any kind of budding romance, and it ends up feeling a lot more natural as a result. The more she pokes her nose into the Sohma family's personal business, the more she learns and the closer she begins to grow with them. It feels like a very natural progression.
This is helped by the main characters all being incredibly likable. It's kind of a core to making any romance work is you need to like the people involved. Kyo has a lot of anger and resentment in him that he tries not to let out on people not part of the Sohma, though often fails at this. Even when he is trying to be a good person, which is most of the time, it's clear all his actions get filtered through anger. This plays very well off Tohru, who is both very sensitive but determined to see the good side of others. This leads every time Kyo responds as he does, she feels like it's her fault, leading Kyo to desperately try to over-correct as he feels horrible.
I am going to be careful to not spoil anything, but a huge highlight of the series comes as Tohru and Akito start becoming more acquainted. Very specifically you see aspects that both characters share, despite how polar opposite the two of them may seem. It does wonders at adding a very human element to Akito beyond the negative aspects, while also doing a lot to make Tohru seem as though she is not just some pure human being. It also adds a connection between Tohru, our hero, and Akito, our villain, that honestly wouldn't have existed otherwise. At times I feel the revelation came a bit late, as much of the show barely feels like there is any real relation between the protagonist and antagonist, but at the same time, I don't think that revelation could have come any earlier and still had the impact it did.
There are two issues with the show though. One is something that is a really hard line to walk, and that is how often you hear characters start to wax philosophical. For the most part, the show does this very well, but there are more than a few times I think it drags on way too long, and you kind of just want them to get back to the story. It feels like a lot of pointless padding sometimes.
The other is that while most of the side-cast is fantastic, the younger characters are all pretty insufferable, Kisa and Hiro are about as generic as you can get for child characters in anime, and are pretty much the least interesting of anyone in the show. Even their presence in the story is negligible, and there is only one moment that Hiro adds anything to the plot at all.
Overall I loved watching the reboot of Fruits Basket. It's wonderfully animated, I love the majority of the characters, and it succeeds in getting me into a slice-of-life kind of anime where normally I tend to stay away from the gerne. If you want a funny, touching, and kind of dark at times story about love and a cursed family, definitely give it a watch.
