Fruits Basket is a pretty decent manga to say none the least. I tend to hate fantasy shoujo types so Fruits Basket was never really up there for me.

Okay I would LOVE to know someone like Tohru/Tooru... but as the main character of a shoujo manga I don't think so. It's almost as if she was born to cater to the emotional needs of the Furuba characters which is kind of disgusting. She's like this perfect little housewife angel who is suppose to hold people when they cry and smile after the world burns up.

It's giving young girls unrealistic expectations to be this sort of feminine being who needs to be perfect and always willing to go the extra mile in order to be loved. Whose point in life is to sacrifice her own feelings to make others happy, not that she has much negative feelings to start with. Tohru is an angel. All the hot Sohma guys fall in love with her, or at least like her. (kinda saying something if you ask me) Her kindness totally crosses the boarder of naivety, to the point she is completely used and abused.

Okay with all that aside a good point in Furuba is the range of characters. Also... I don't really see why people keep yapping about how it's just so darn hilarious, I think I've felt more depressed than happy after reading this manga. I haven't read the whole thing but I've read up to vol18.

It's definitely not ALL THAT but for people who are somewhat new to manga I would recommend it.

I think it just barely reaches being okay. The only reason I even continued to read this manga after the first volume was because the characters were cute but after a while even the steady introduction of cute new characters got tedious. Tohru only has three emotions shoujo sad, shoujo happy, and just too shoujo for words. >.< Its like no matter what you do she will only have those reactions. You trip her as she walks down the hall in school and cause her to drop the lunches she made for everyone, cuz that just the proper shoujo thing to do, and her response is "I am shoujo sad, *tear* but I will perservere because two chapters from now we will be best friends." You cut holes in all her clothes, her response, "I forgive you because I know you were just angry at..., Lets be friends." "Have the house clean before I get back wench!" "Yay! Cleaning I am bursting with shoujo happiness because I love to do things like clean and cook and put other before myself just like all girls should if they want to be good people." She is like a robot. She wasn't even that upset to be living in a tent. Tohru is a teenage girl! Where are here rampant mood swings caused by her uncontrollable teenage hormones?!


I also can't see how anyone can say this manga is realistic, its seriously not. There is no realism in how the problems are solved. They fight over something for years and years and suddenly Tohru shows up says lets be friends, I love everyone and everyone is joyously happy skipping through the field of flowers and love. And realisticly a teenage girl living with a bunch of guys she has just met one of whom is a hentai novelist would reflect pretty badly on her character. Also the type of family she has that would allow her to live that way and even her grandfather not knowing where she was staying.
He didn't even try to check up on her or call her? These are things she should be mad about but she just cries and thanks her grandfather for looking after her (he obviuosly did it very well considering she spent time living in a tent in the woods *sarcasm*) !

P.S. Giving your child permission to live with three you've never met and do what they want might seem like a good idea at first, but after a second glance it sounds like the making of a missing persons case.

Before I comment, I'll admit that I only watched all 26 episodes of the anime.


Well, the fight that happened for years and years could also be a petty one. Those ones can be left open to be fixed if the two involved want to make up, with somehow Tohru brings that to the table with her character, with a fresh or outsider perspective perhaps? ;) Kyo's and Yuki's zodiac-grudges do seem like these, at least in the anime and to me.


One of them is a hentai novelist? I must've missed that in the dubbed/dubbed version of the subtitles. I knew there was something "funny" about his character.

I think it's idealism and the type of shoujo and story this is, that I knew that Tohru was safe with these guys, especially after when we know some of their deeper problems (Kyo and Yuki fighting all the time). But Tohru would have to be the type to love playing the mother role since she has to tend to 3 guys. Women are drive nuts by habits by their husbands, and Tohru never has that happen in all the 26 episodes.


Well my older sister watched I think the first 4 episodes of Furuba with bad subtitles, and when she found out on top of Tohru's nutty camping, that she was also traspassing, I think it's safe to think that she thought Tohru was a little crazy (naive would be the nicer term for it). And Tohru might've even gone to the trouble of hiding that she was hiding in a tent from her grandpa. But maybe not, as Tohru is too angelic and honest for that. The "hole" is that her grandpa didn't even ask for the phone number of where she was staying and felt it was okay to only contact her via the school. O_o


Well grandpa did meet them, very briefly when they came to get Tohru back. xD

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Well, I DO think Fruits Basket is fantastic, one of the best I've read along with Ai Yazawa`s works. I agree about someone saying FuruBa not completely realistic -- but this is shoujo manga after all. It's true they don't have "ordinary" lives--but why do all stories have to be lifelike? I once read a great shoujo about pirates and I loved it. And I'm definitely not a pirate, as far as I know. If all stories were like real life, it'd be very boring. I like variety.

I also think the characters are very well-done and the character development is excellent, in my opinion. I've read too many series where a character changes abruptly and unrealistically. An example is KareKano. I WTF-ied when Yukino turned from a deceiveing, shallow fake to a suddenly wise, mature girl who gives lessons to Maho. What the hell?
Don't get me wrong, I love KareKano, but I felt the change was too sudden and unbelievable. Besides, I felt as if the whole point of the series was missed in favour of their dull romantic relationship.

Regarding HYD, I stopped reading that series because it was very repetitive (how many times do they travel abroad?), but I've come back to it after a looong time... and I'm hating it. The storyline just took a turn for the worse; it seems so much like the draggy telenovelas I watch here (I'm from Argentina), and Tsukushi is annoying me with her indecision (who do I choose?). I thought she was cool at first but now she's morphed into another wishy-washy shoujo girl. I heard it has a bad ending as well T.T so I don't know if I'll keep on reading.

Going back to FuruBa, Tohru isn't the only character of the series and she loses a lot of protagonism later on, so talking about her exclusively makes no sense to me. I always felt the story was less about Tohru herself than about the Sohmas' backgrounds and their relationship with her.

I agree, however, that FuruBa has its downs and some people glorify it as it was the greatest thing since slice bread, when it's not. Especially when the manga-ka started paying too much attention to the Student Council and Kyoru--there were a lot of more interesting things I wanted to read about.

.....anyone ACTUALLY read this and not completely ignored it or skimmed through it?


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I did. I think Furuba is even greater than slice bread.

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more like slice bread WITH BUTTER

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fruits basket was one of my first mangas & i own all of the english volumes. in the beginning i was like such a big fan & made my friends read it 2, but now, its really boring. i never got 2 read the end, i had like 2 chapters left. btw, if any1 does know how to read the last chapters online, let me now

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yea, fruits basket is awesome...but i do agree with you on the tohru part. I've always kinda disliked her for some reasons, you've just put it into words for me

I think Furuba is definitely overrated. It's probably cause I'm sick of generic shoujo heroines. I never got past the first volume but my friends end up telling me everything that happens anyway -_-. I think it only gets this much popularity because of all the pretty Sohma bishounen XD The power of fangirlism is very scary.

It's so true! XD


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I think that this manga was good. Well I did see all 26 episodes and they were all adorable. There are so many characters that there has to be at least one that one can easily relate to.
True that is seems to keep jumping the shark, but don't all popular manga do this at some point? Inuyasha, Bleach and even Naruto are staring to just get too long (at least be happy that FB is not as long as Naruto and Bleach). I mean if it's making lots of money, the authors are going to be pushed to keep on going. And also the author has some accident with her hand, so maybe that affected her manga.
I have to admit that the ending of the manga was so cute, though I did not understand what they were saying.
I am not sure why so many hate Tohru. It’s her personality that helps the manga to be so cute. How adorable would it be if she was not that way? If she was mean or something? Or even if she was a complete Bi*ch? I know a hole bunch of people hate her (Like Relina Peacecraft) because she ends up with the popular hot guy. Is this was so many of you hate her? I must admit at times she does get on my nerves, but hey, it’s still adorable...
Why is this manga so popular? Because it’s adorable, sweet and can sometimes remind us of how nice some people can be. Since we don’t see such kindness often we are surprised and perhaps don’t think that such people exist.

I kind of agree with you, because Tohru is being used, and she's an unrealistic character. The reason why people think that it's so hilairious is because the characters are so real to them. But it's not that Tohru is being neglected of her emotions too. She does have problems, and she doesn't ignore them, and neither do the Sohma's.

The thing with stories is that you have to make the characters have a strong personality trait, or the readers would just lose interest. Tohru just has a knack for handling the Sohma's problems. Anyone in the world could help another. Tohru's assistance is just emphasized by the fact that EVERY character in the book needs her.

Fruits Basket was one of my first mangas I owned. I got my friends and cousins addicted to it, and they got their friends and cousins into it...It's an endless chain...


You can read them on stoptazmo.com.

Does that mean volume 23, chapter 135 is the last one or the end? I couldn't be sure because noone else had marked it as "completely scanslated". It's also the last one listed on the site...

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Chapter 136 is the last chapter (and is apparently longer than normal). Sephiroth's Samurai Girl is translating it in the little free time between studying for her A levels (she's in UK).

She'll get it out the door one of these days, never you fear.

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