Alone/Not Alone For The Holiday
Episode 8
The thing I remembered most about Fruits Basket is that every episode of the original had some part or another that either hit the right emotional note, was utterly charming, or was just fun to watch. I would have been hard pressed to say that the school festival episode was better or worse than the episode where we met Tohru’s family or even the episode where we saw Hatori’s backstory which was a personal favourite of mine.
Fruits Basket 2019 has this same consistent charm.
Eight episodes in, and while I’ll still say that Kagura’s introduction wasn’t as great as it potentially could have been with a few minor changes, every episode has given us enough charm and emotion to make the experience as a whole fairly unforgettable and yet individual episodes just kind of blur together as a series of moments in the lives of these characters.
Episode 8 of Fruits Basket focuses on New Year’s and we learn early on that Tohru is going to be alone for the holiday as she has turned down the invitations of her friends, not wanting to intrude on their family time, and the Soma’s are returning to the main house and will not be around. Tohru takes this is typical Tohru fashion which, as Yuki points out early in this episode, is fairly inscrutable.
It isn’t that Tohru is hard to read. She’s pretty obvious. But the problem is given she’s always looking out for others and trying to protect them, calling her a liar when she says she’ll be fine is difficult even for the closest of her friends.
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The episode is full of delightful Yuki and Kyo moments though the MVP of the episode, as it was in the original anime, is Hana.
Hana takes it upon herself to guilt trip the other two into abandoning their plans and returning to Tohru for New Years giving us a delightful emotional ending to the episode even if the future implications need to be considered.
Fruits Basket continues to be a beautiful and emotional affair and honestly I have very few complaints about how this is progressing. I really enjoyed every moment of the episode even knowing where it was going as this one is all about the feeling it constructs in getting there.
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Karandi James
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Images from: Fruits Basket. Dir. Y Ibata. TMS Entertainment. 2019.
It astonishes me how *Fruits* just manages to keep hitting the feels with a faction of the buildup any other show would need.
It definitely knows what its strength is and is sticking with it.
I don’t know why, but anime girls in those russians hats are just like catnip. Can’t get enough.
Also this episode was great.
I hate how much anime figurines cost.
I’ll eat that price GLADLY for a statue of Hana in that outfit.
It was a great look and I think you are right, it would make a great figurine.