Fruits Basket Review

The setup sounds like a farce and the book is not one. Tohru moves in with the Sohma family, the curse turns them into zodiac animals whenever they are held by someone of the opposite sex, and for roughly four volumes that is played for comedy. Then Takaya opens the family up, and what is inside is a study of inherited cruelty: parents who reject children on sight, a head of the house who maims people to keep them close, and a group of young adults who have built their entire personalities around not being abandoned twice.

The character work is why it is a landmark. More than twenty Sohmas matter here and almost all of them get an interior life, a reason for behaving as they do, and a plausible route out of it, which is a rate of return most long series never come close to managing. Consensus faults the shape rather than the substance. The early art is stiff and the screentone heavy pages can be hard to read, the middle volumes sprawl as new zodiac members keep arriving, and the pacing sags badly before the last act pulls everything together.

Tohru's relentless kindness reads as a device to some readers. It works anyway, because the book is honest about how much repair costs and how long it takes.