#froobs

[gerardwaysmissingballsack]

Lord forgive me for I have sinned

[blood-injections]

This frame is so slutty I know he’s supposed to bead but like. Boobs.

[animebw]

This girl is simultaneously the world’s purest cinnamon roll and an absolute shambling disaster of a human being barely held together with duct tape and glue sticks.

[ieropilled]

yes and i also remember his acupuncture tits out selfie

OH my god yeah. that needs to be talked about more. if you ask me

[twink-frank]

TRICK OR TREAT!!

Treat.

[foundationsofdeslay]

copped wwwy and dunes tickets in like a 30 hour period

AND seeing fob in july........ crazy

[sheer-art-attack]

I got. Really bored

[animebw]

Fruits Basket is a story with a big legacy. It’s held up as one of the definitive shoujo properties, one of the stories that stands as a landmark for the entirety of its genre to live up to. It’s also one of very few manga to get two cracks at an adaptation after the first time around ended up disappointing. Only the best of the best, the likes of Fullmetal Alchemist and Hunter x Hunter, get second chances to tell the entirety of their story in anime form after a truncated first go-around. That is an exclusive fucking club. But Fruits Basket worked its way in nevertheless.

And now that I’ve finished season 1? I think I understand why.

Fruits Basket is good. It’s really, really, really fucking good. It’s a story of broken people trying to put themselves back together. It’s a story about the radical healing power of kindness as an active choice in a world full of misery. It’s a story about the complexities of love and how it can be your greatest salvation if you work to nurture and cultivate it. It sees the depths of pain we can sink to and refuses to give up on getting better regardless. It’s kind not in ignorance of suffering, but in defiance of it. And it extends that kindness with open arms toward its (almost) entirely lovably cast, showing the ways they build each other up and find the strength in each other to try just one more time. This show makes me laugh, it makes me cry, but more than anything, it makes me hope. It makes me hope that no matter how bad things get, there will always be a second chance waiting just around the corner. Even two decades after it was written, it shines just as brightly.

Is it flawed? Fuck yeah, it’s flawed. You can’t walk two feet in this show without bumping into something at least potentially problematic. Plus some of the characters are grating, and as I mentioned before, this adaptation’s visual aesthetic is probably the least interesting direction they could’ve taken it in. But when I think back on this first season, those frustrations aren’t what I remember. I remember all the incredible bits of character banter. I remember the horrifyingly accurate portrayals of the trauma of abuse. I remember how Arisu and Saki’s backstories absolutely fucking destroyed me. And I remember the joy of watching these characters struggle through their demons, hand in very lovable hand. Fruits Basket is far from perfect, but its missteps can’t stop it from being a staggering accomplishment of emotion-driven storytelling. If the second and third seasons are even half as good as this one, it will still have earned its place as shoujo’s forever masterpiece. I give season 1 a 9/10, and here’s looking forward to even greater things to come!