[tohru-sohma]

TAKAYA’S NEW KYORU ART ON POIPIKU I’M-

[reddachi]

Just a few more months until it’s the Year of the Rat again! 🐁

[lulubara]

My words hold no meaning or power and die before reaching you.

[boitedecrayons]

What will happen, when you open this box?

[fuckyeahfurubacaps]

[homuras]

⋆ The Sohma Family ☆ Zodiacs ⋆

[shizukku]

GraffArt Shop x Fruits Basket ~ Rainy Season

[riceball-cat]

𝑯𝒆 𝒍𝒐𝒐𝒌𝒔 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒃𝒐𝒚𝒇𝒓𝒊𝒆𝒏𝒅.

[shanagiku]

[kagurazuki]

Lmfao

[hoshiko2000]

While it would have been nice to have the chance to see it firsthand (and in a bit more detail), I’m really pleased that Fruits Basket Another took the time to explore Akito’s post-curse character development beyond the whole ‘she grew out her hair and started wearing pretty dresses and magically became happy’ ending we got in the original Furuba. 

Not at all to imply I have a problem with Fruits Basket’s ending. Believe me, I really don’t and Fruits Baskets ending remains one of the most enduringly satisfying of any manga I’ve followed to date. Endeavouring as an author to wrap up every single character’s happy ending in a single time-skip chapter is always a challenge, and Takaya sensei did what she could with limited pages to split between each character (and god knows there were certainly enough of them). But I know I speak for quite a few fans when I say that when that  final chapter was published 14 years ago (I was 12 then, god I feel old), it was hard not feel a little frustrated that Akito’s character development was left so lacking, especially after everything she herself had been through and all the cruelties she had subjected other people to as well. 

So I’m incredibly happy that Fruits Basket Another has provided a bittersweet  but for the most part happy ending for Akito that not only actually feels much more realistic, but also serves as an masterclass on how to handle a character redemption arc for a previously abusive and toxic character really damn well. 

Akito was a grossly abused and neglected child who grew in to a violent and controlling adult. Akito the victim can not be separated from Akito the abuser, but at the same time her own victimisation, trauma and poor mental health can not be used to take away her culpability for her own actions. 

In addition to the psychologically abusive behaviours she picked up from her own mother, she frequently used - often extreme - violence as a means of control, and left both mental and physical scars on her victims as a result. Scars that have remained long after Akito herself had come to terms, however bitterly, with her horrendous childhood and all the harm she had inflicted on other people, and quietly and privately moved on with her life; reclaiming her role as head of the family in a positive direction, settling down, marrying and eventually - through accident or otherwise - giving birth to a child of her own and becoming a parent. Something which, previously, had been completely unimaginable. 

But while Akito herself may have changed - and honestly, its been beautiful to see such a previously tormented, violent person grow in to such a gentle, loving  parent - we can only speculate that her the damage she has done to the other former Sohma children is still very much felt. In fact, we know that the damage is very much felt; we see in the latest chapters Shiki receiving notes telling him his mother is ‘human trash’ along with other threatening messages. There are still people within the family with enough anger towards Akito to target not only her but her young son. And while harassing a child over the past actions of their parent is obviously deeply, deeply wrong, the level of anger still directed towards Akito is understandable. And Akito herself accepts this. 

And as a result, a massive part of Akito’s character redemption arc involves her not, as so often happens in fiction, attempting to reconnect with her former victims to seek their forgiveness and ‘repair’ the relationships she, herself, destroyed. In fact, in what I think is a first I’ve seen for this kind of storyline, she does the total opposite.

She distances herself from them entirely. 

Not because she doesn’t want to rebuild relationships or be forgiven,

But because she understands that recovery for her victims depends on her no longer being part of their lives.

And in a medium where I have seen far too many abuse-related storylines resolved by the victim ultimately forgiving their abuser for what they have previously done (or even continue to do) to them, this choice of narrative direction is, I feel, a powerful and important one. 

It’s sad to picture Akito remaining - as she always has been - largely isolated and alone within her own family, but she’s made the healthiest decision possible for her victims and I think that’s the point these latest chapters have placed emphasis on. She’s moved on with her life, grown as a person, begun her own family, and while it feels almost heart-breakingly bittersweet, for the most part I’m happy for her. I’m glad we got this little snap-shot of her future, and I’m so grateful that her character development, after all these years, got a chance to be expanded a little further.

[youichi-kuramochi]

Fruits Basket Season 2 ED2 + plant symbolism

[ydotome]

Hatsuharu Souma “Black Haru, White Haru” (草摩 潑春) - Fruits Basket 2nd Season - Episode 14

[chipupuni]

🧡🐱❤🍙❤🐭💜

[samanthorr]

she smile uwu

[athena-neko-blog]

Artist: 🌼Alex on Twitter

[cathedralight]

i’ve been thinking about that scene where tohru is holding rin and saying “being alone is scary... being all alone is terrifying”

and it shows a tiny flashback panel to tohru alone in the apartment when her mom abandoned her...and here’s what i realized: so there are all the obvious reasons that tohru wants to keep kyo from being confined after graduation....but i’d never thought about how the thought of him being alone and confined in complete solutitude would hit her so deep because she experienced that herself when her mom abandoned her after her father died. yes it’s different because she wasn’t being locked up for life because she was considered a monster, and kyoko did eventually come back... but being such a small child, she was in a sense trapped in a small apartment, not that different from a single room, because it’s not like she could really escape that situation even if she wanted to. she doesn’t want kyo to get locked up because she loves him and wants to stay with him and getting confined for life is bad, true...but it goes past that, because she has, in a way, already felt the pain of being trapped and all alone personally—being abandoned—and she doesn’t want kyo to experience the same thing by being confined. that was her past, and she doesn’t want that to be his future.

i can’t really write about this without also bringing up the parallel of kyo and tohru both having mothers who abandoned them at one point or another, because i think for both characters the idea of being all alone is completely tied to the concept of being abandoned by someone they love. obviously kyo’s mother died when he was very young whereas tohru’s was much more recent, but when you think about it, kyoko’s initial abandonment of tohru came at a similarly young and formative age (even if it was temporary, the abandonment had a lasting effect on her throughout the story... and it is later followed by kyoko’s death, anyway). that parallel is the key to unpacking their resulting abandonment issues, although those issues manifest in different ways. kyo’s are coming from a lack of self-worth and from self-doubt (he thinks he was abandoned because of something inherently wrong with him, thinks that every choice he makes causes pain for himself/others and causes people to leave him). tohru’s are coming from a denial of her own needs and feelings (in chapter one she thinks, “don’t feel bad for me, Sohma, because my mother had it so much worse”; she thinks it’s morally wrong and disrespectul to—even a betrayal of—her mother to acknowledge her feelings of pain, particularly regarding her abandonment, rather than redirecting her focus to someone else’s pain; being selfish means she’s someone who deserves to be abandoned).

and it hits me directly in my windpipe when i think about how these formative experiences allow kyo and tohru to empathize with each other like no one else can and influence their actions in the narrative so greatly. kyo has to confront his own self-hate, all the voices in his head, and move past it with his own inner guidance—to accept that he is someone who didn’t deserve to be abandoned and is actually capable of 1) being loved and 2) giving that love back. meanwhile tohru has to actually acknowledge her own feelings for once, above anyone else’s or what she thinks is expected of her, and accept that she doesn’t want kyo to be locked up because she doesn’t want to lose him—not for some greater moral purpose or to save the world, but because she would be devastated to be, you guessed it, abandoned by him. and because of this, she stands up for what she selfishly wants and learns that it isn’t ungrateful or a betrayal of her mother to act according to your own needs, and that she won’t be abandoned just for having ugly facets to her. and he recognizes that he can make choices and exist without it harming anyone, that he can trust himself going forward, and that he can be accepted by others and himself as someone who can be loved, someone people won’t abandon. this growth for both of them is all about action, emotional acceptance, and making choices, at its simplest level. it involves acknowledging what they want now and moving on from their past abandonment, from a time when they were all alone. and then they finally get their shit figured out! and they’re not alone anymore, they’re together.

and i think it’s absolutely bonkers that a pairing that looks like “opposites attract” on the surface actually features two characters who are so intertwined and similar on so many levels. sure, tohru accepts and loves kyo because she’s got a big heart and is very naturally empathetic, but so much deeper than that, she empathizes with and understands him because she’s actually been through some very similar experiences. that’s also why their dynamic works both ways, and he’s able to understand her and empathize with her right back. (which is fantastic for reciprocity’s sake and makes me happy!) those similarities continually reinforce and inform the narrative and give context and motivation to everything that these two do. and to bring it back to the reason i even started writing this, i’m just marveling at tohru’s line to rin because, in literally one or two sentences, in one panel, the narrative connects kyo and tohru and shows how and why they understand and ultimately need each other so deeply.