obviously ship what you want! but i do want to discuss one aspect of fruits basket that takaya wrote so well: it’s how, with tohru, yuki, and kyo, she fakes you out to think it's a love triangle. but once you get to the end of the story and have the full context, you realize you were only “tricked” by the structure of the text and never by the actual text itself.
by the structure, i mean that the first act in particular alternates pretty evenly between yuki-tohru scenes and kyoru scenes. this repeated flip-flop between the two “pairings” is typical of a love triangle set-up. it essentially tricks you into thinking that the whole point is “which boy will she choose,” but fruits basket actually ends up being very subversive in this regard. once all of the characters’ feelings are revealed throughout the story (particularly after chapter 84, aka yuki’s realization and acceptance of his platonic love for tohru), it quickly becomes clear how different these scenes are that feature the two “pairings,” with regards to their tone, development, and overall meaning.
both relationships share so many meaningful scenes with great development, but they're meaningful in incredibly different ways. particularly, takaya absolutely nailed the tonal difference of platonic interactions vs romantic ones when writing yuki and tohru’s relationship vs kyo and tohru’s.
with yuki & tohru, there's an innate comfort and peacefulness in their scenes. they grow closer and get to know each other more and more throughout the series, but there's no romantic/sexual tension and there’s no push from either person to have that be apart of their dynamic. (it’s particularly interesting to note that yuki eventually realizes that forcing himself to flirt with tohru and forcing romantic interactions with her early on felt wrong and uncomfortable, which reinforces how purely platonic their relationship is.) theirs is a very well-developed and touching portrayal of bonding with someone in a fulfilling, platonic way. their friendship is meaningful for them exactly as it is, with no underlying romance.
meanwhile, as early as the first rooftop scene, kyo and tohru’s scenes really capture the heart-racing, almost anxiety-inducing nature of talking to someone that you're attracted to or are developing feelings for. they're still comfortable with each other as friends—they spend almost the entire manga as just friends—but there's still a distinct underlying tension and attraction present in all of their scenes. it’s clear that there’s something more there from the get-go. this only becomes more evident as they continually push those boundaries with each other and have very not platonic scenes. unlike with yuki and tohru, where yuki’s flirting felt uncomfortable and forced for him (and tohru never really flirted with him to begin with), with kyo and tohru there’s a consistent sense that they’re blurring the lines of their friendship as they bond, flirt with each other, and have more romantically charged scenes.
all this to say, takaya has done a really well-done deconstruction of the love triangle trope, where that's what it looks like at first—but upon further inspection, these characters actually have two super different relationships. more than that, i think it’s very satisfying how your first reread of the early manga almost feels like an “aha!” moment. once all of this information clicks in your brain, it’s so clear that yuki and tohru were always going to have a life-changing platonic bond, and it’s so clear that kyo and tohru were meant for each other and were always going to fall in love from the start—even if you were sure you were in for a typical love triangle.
more than the cleverness of how this was written, what i love most about this aspect of fruits basket is that, at the end of the day, both of these relationships (romantic and platonic) are presented as incredibly meaningful for tohru’s arc. it never was about “who would win her love” or “who she would choose.” it was about how two different relationships could be so special and life-changing for her in different ways—and also, for yuki and kyo, how meeting tohru was so important for both of them in, again, two different but incredibly meaningful ways. frankly, takaya went off with this one!
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