Fruits Basket Review

The 2001 series adapted a quarter of the manga and stopped. This one takes all twenty three volumes across three seasons, and the difference is not merely completeness but tone: knowing where the story goes, the adaptation plays the early comedy lightly and lets the cruelty underneath show much sooner. Tohru is the reason it works. Her kindness is treated as a strategy she built to survive grief rather than a personality trait she was issued, and the series is willing to say what it costs her.

The zodiac curse turns out to be a story about a family run by an abuser, and the show handles Akito, Kyo's confinement and Rin's history with a patience a shorter run could not have afforded. The animation is clean and expressive without ever being remarkable, and the second season sags in the middle while it services a very large cast. The comedy is thinner than the drama. By the final season this is one of the best character dramas the medium has, and it sticks the ending.