A Night To Remember
Fruits Basket Episode 17
Two part episodes need to pack a punch to make them worth the mileage, and the wait if you are watching weekly, and episode 17 of Fruits Basket did just that. We hear the end of Arisa’s story about how she left the gang and ended up Tohru’s friend and so attached to Kyoko and it more or less reduced me to tears by the end. I do however find it odd that we’ve learned more about Tohru’s mother from Arisa than from Tohru throughout this series.
Arisa doesn’t relate the whole story to the boys though. She cuts off midway and we have a diversion with the girl gang who were following the group challenging Arisa to a fight. At first it felt like an unwelcome intrusion and then I realise how necessary it was in order for the quieter emotional points of this story to hit home. As a result, while I didn’t all that much like those parts, the episode as whole is better because of them.
And there are a lot of those quieter emotional parts. Whether it is Tohru and Arisa falling asleep in the apartment, Tohru making Arisa a cupcake, or Kyoko carrying Arisa home, each point lingers just the right amount of time and sets off the warm and fuzzy emotions that they are aiming for.
That the girls in the gang end up very much enamoured with Arisa and the post credits show them very much becoming Arisa’s fan club, is kind of sweet in a really goofy kind of way and feels like a nice way to end that part of the episode.
Affiliate Link – Manga
Alright, that’s about it for this week in Fruits Basket. It remains at its best when it is in the process of making me cry and it did that beautifully this week. I still think the new OP doesn’t really fit with that tone however and that’s probably the only sour note to speak of when it comes to this episode.
Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James
Would you like to read more about Fruits Basket’s feels?
Images from: Fruits Basket. Dir. Y Ibata. TMS Entertainment. 2019.
Your fourth screen shot? The one of Arisa and Tooru asleep?
If I were trapped in Shelob’s lair — or even the lair of Ungoliant herself — and if I held aloft that picture, all evil would depart and the sun would shine once more.
Seriously, Tooru’s smile is more powerful than the Phial of Galadriel! Even the light of the Silmarils got nothing on her!
Please forgive the excessive Tolkien references. I just finished rereading The Silmarillion, and it usually takes a few weeks to work it out of my system!
Did you know that your current theme hides “Notify me of new comments via email?” It’s white on white. The checkbox is still there, though!
Ah… problem number 6 for the list of things I may or may not have time to fix over the weekend. I am really grateful for the help I was given fixing my blog after I broke it last Friday but as the week goes on I’m cataloguing more and more things that aren’t quite the way they used to be. Thanks for the heads up.
And yes, Tohru is definitely medicinal. I kind of need to bask in her smile while I try to not get so frustrated with myself for my appalling ability to fix something.
Maybe not – I think I actually managed to find and fix that setting quite quickly. Hopefully.
Arisa and Tohru are like two halves that when put together you get a Kyoko. I wish we could see much more of Kyoko.
As I said in the post, I think it is interesting that we’ve heard more about Kyoko from Arisa than from Tohru.