Fruits Basket: Good Beginner Anime
 Jun 12th, 2007
Advantages:
Very funny, nice art style, good value for money .
Disadvantages:
Main character is a bit one - dimensional
Recommendable:
Yes
Detailed rating:
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  MentalSarcasm
About me:
- Ancient History student.
- Comic and anime fan.
- Football fan.
- Chocolate addict.
- Jewell...
Member since:08.06.2007
Reviews:12
Review rated by 9 Ciao members on average: very helpful 
Tohru Honda lives in a tent. Her mother passed away several months previously, so she went to live with her Grandfather. But then the house needed some renovations, her Grandfather went to live with relatives and asked her if she had any friends she could stay with, she said yes but she did not want to ask them. So she decided to live in a tent. One day, walking to school, she comes across a house. And here she meets Shigure Shoma, and his cousin (and her class mate) Yuki. That evening, Yuki and Shigure are walking home from a restaurant, when they come across Tohru and her tent. She is ill with a fever, so they take her home, her tent is destroyed by a landslide during the night, but Yuki returns to it and digs out her possessions. They invite Tohru to live with them as their housekeeper, neither of them can cook and their house is a mess. As Yuki shows Tohru her new room, then ceiling caves in and a young man with orange hair fall through it. He begins with fighting with Yuki, Tohru runs forward to stop him, slips, and lands on him, only to find that he transforms into a cat!
Shigure runs up the stairs to find Tohru holding a big orange cat. The shock stuns her so much that she falls against Yuki and Shigure, who transform into a rat and a dog respectively. And here is the main storyline, the Sohma family is under a curse. Twelve members of the family turn into one of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac when they are hugged by a member of the opposite sex. Shigure turns into a dog, Yuki turns into a rat, and Kyo (the orange haired one) turns into a cat.
The series is definitely one of the best animes around. Alternating between comedy and romance with the occasional fist-fight thrown in. But there is a dark side as well, which slowly develops over the rest of the series. This volume does not touch on it though, and sets up the basic aspects of the characters nicely. The dub is very good, although many people who watch the sub (subtitled into English with the characters speaking Japanese) first complain that Yuki does not sound right in the dub (in Japanese he is voiced by a woman, while in the dub he is voiced by a man) but it grows on you are a while. My main problem with it is that Tohru is far too nice. She never gets angry, or is selfish and has a permanent smile on her face. After a while it gets a tad nauseating. But the rest of the characters are fantastic, from Yuki and Kyo’s near constant arguments to Shigure’s inability to take anything seriously, and that is just in this volume! This is a good series to watch with someone who is new to anime as it has a great storyline, a lovely art style, and some truly wonderful characters.
Plus with 6 episodes to a disc it is also very good value for money!
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by (44%):
18.06.2009 14:52
Good review. ^_^