Fruits Basket

Episode 26

At last the snow has melted, and spring has come again! Fruits Basket kicks off its second season with a focus on Yuki—and I guess there are some other characters on the sidelines too. (It's great to finally see the Zodiac complete in the opening and ending theme songs!) On the one hand, even if it is the Year of the Rat, I'm not sure it was the best idea to bring viewers back into this story with Yuki as our only familiar anchor between two brand-new characters (Kakeru and Machi) and two minor characters that nobody likes (Makoto and Motoko). On the other hand, at least we're squeezing those lingering drips of Prince Yuki fanclub drama out of the story right away!

After a brief recap of season one from Tohru and the promise of an exciting summer break ahead for the Soma family (at least Shigure hopes so), Yuki reluctantly heads back to school for his presidential orientation. There's much work to be done before he can take over as head of the student council next semester, but surely a stick-in-the-mud like Makoto Takei will scout reliable pencil-pushers to support Yuki through this transition, right?

Or he could get burdened with a couple of Zodiac-level problem children in the roles of vice president and treasurer instead. According to Makoto, Kakeru and Machi fall on the right side of the line between genius and insanity, but Yuki's already exhausted after five minutes of trying to understand these weirdos. At least he's not the only one trudging into summer vacation with a mountain of stress on his shoulders. Motoko Minagawa continues to stalk her idol from afar, dreading that some femme fatale on the student council will steal him away before she can confess her true feelings for Yuki in her final year of high school.

In other words, our stakes are starting low after the intensity of season one's finale, and that's okay. Yuki's quest to become strong enough to carry his trauma in an overwhelming world has to begin with baby steps, and we might as well check in with Furuba's small host of classmate characters before the long break away from school makes them irrelevant to the main cast's lives for a while. It's not the most exciting material for viewers eager to learn more about the Soma curse, but these relationships are bound to be important for Yuki on the other side of summer vacation, as he strives to become more independent from his family. As Motoko points out, her prince has already changed a lot over the past year, and he'll have to evolve even further to work hand in hand with a force of personality like Kakeru or a fearful shade like Machi, to say nothing of the other two student council members he's yet to meet.

So how has Yuki changed from the regally cold rodent we met at the beginning of the series? This episode makes a compelling case for his growth long before Motoko calls it out directly, as we see him react very differently to his new comrades than he might have even a year ago. Despite his thousand-yard stare at the prospect of leading them, Yuki does manage to keep his cool around two oddballs who remind him of family in all the wrong ways. From her gray hair to her extreme messiness to her fear of being touched, first-year Machi resembles Yuki in his own freshman year of high school, drawing a sharp contrast to the more confident, patient, and emotionally vulnerable boy he's become. Her behavior makes it clear that she wants as little to do with Yuki as possible, but he's immediately intrigued by her strangeness, actively wondering after Machi as he marvels at her disastrous attempt to reorganize the shelves she tore down for unknown reasons. But Yuki's growth as a character becomes even more obvious when faced with Kakeru, who steals the show with his unholy combo of traits from the two people Yuki resents most: his brother the Snake, and his rival the Cat.

Kakeru Manabe cannot be stopped from cracking wise at a mile a minute and jumping at every chance to jab holes in Yuki's thin veneer of chill. He has all the ego and passion of Ayame combined with the spice and stupidity of Kyo, doing and saying whatever he wants, all while oozing the kind of shameless honesty and effortless charisma that makes Yuki feel inferior and weak by comparison. He was already feeling blue before meeting this incredibly frustrating person, since Kyo reminded him that morning of how boring and lame the Rat seems, eternally held back from expressing himself by childhood fears that froze his heart. So when Kakeru teases Yuki about his girly face, one of his greatest insecurities, this triggers his trauma response and floods his brain with darkness. Even if he consciously knows that this new guy is just teasing him and wants to be friends, he can't yet control his overflowing feelings, the kind he talked about keeping a lid over in the first season finale: "How dare you. I already hate myself, and now I hate you."

Yuki could have responded to this in many different ways—shutting down completely like he did as a child or firing back a cruel remark like he would around Kyo—and in truth, he doesn't exactly pick the best option. He does get defensive and visibly angry, but he's grown enough to stand up for himself without trying to hurt Kakeru back with his words, and this small step forward yields surprising results. Kakeru not only apologizes, he even tells Yuki that he thinks he's an interesting person and wants to be friends with him even more! The fear and hatred that sent Yuki into fight-or-flight mode vanishes, replaced by a baffling new feeling of happiness he wasn't expecting—nobody has ever called him interesting before.

It's a refreshing ray of hope for Yuki's future in an otherwise innocuous episode of minor-league setups and payoffs. Kakeru may be insensitive just like Ayame and Kyo, but Yuki doesn't have the same terrible baggage weighing down this new relationship that he does with those family members, and he's starting this new chapter of his life much stronger than before. If the Rat wants to survive on his own in the human world, he'll need to get used to other people with their own traumas (and carefree spirits who act without thinking) bruising him on accident, so learning to bond with these difficult student council members is bound to be great practice. Maybe he can find the brotherhood and friendship that the Soma family denied him in Ayame and Kyo's friendlier doppelganger? Or maybe not. Kakeru does seem like a pain in the ass. Who joins a student council because they think it'll be like a sentai team?

And so ends another delightful episode of Fruits Basket—alright fine, I guess I have to talk about Motoko Minagawa. Her segment of the episode is less about her than Yuki, reinforcing what we already know about how Tohru has brought out the best in him, and the parts of the episode that are about Motoko are probably its worst. After reminding the audience why it's so hard to like the Prince Yuki fanclub as anything more than the butt of the joke—they're so shallow that even learning that Yuki enjoys natto, a smelly food usually associated with old people, is enough to puncture their fantasies about him—we're expected to believe that one sincere smile from Yuki (because Motoko's super-polite speech reminds him of Tohru's) would awaken her to a whole new level of self-reflection and unspoken gratitude toward Tohru Honda. Well, I don't buy it! You're not fooling me, Regina George!

To be fair, Motoko's realization was paced out more convincingly in the original manga and 2001 anime version of her story, but to replicate that more gradual epiphany, this remake would've had to devote an entire episode to her character, and ain't nobody got time for that. As is, the most meaningful part of Motoko's brief turn in the spotlight is the final conversation she shares with Yuki, where they both acknowledge that they're putting on a show of confidence for others while barely keeping it together on the inside. It may be the only thing they have in common, but it's sweet and relatable nonetheless. As she makes clear in her proclamation not to give up on making Yuki her boyfriend next year, this won't actually change anything about the club's behavior, but we'll need something to laugh at after summer vacation ends, trust me. Ultimately, Motoko's microsecond of character growth is just a consequence of the incredibly empathetic way that Natsuki Takaya writes all her characters. With rare exception, if somebody shows up more than a couple times in Fruits Basket, they're going to get a navel-gazing chapter and a teachable moment. I appreciate that most of the time, but episode 21 already slammed the door on caring too deeply about the Prince Yuki girls, so it feels like a moot point now.

By the end, this premiere almost seems apologetic about not being able to resume the story with a bang, sprinkling in quick shots of the Zodiac characters without context: Haru is visiting Rin, Momiji is playing violin, and Akito is scheming with a tall young man we must assume is the Rooster. It's a slight step forward in a soon-to-be rollercoaster season. If anything, this episode mostly reinforces that Tohru won't always be the central focus of the story going forward, as each character in this expanding cast grows in different directions beyond her influence, striving to grow stronger with her gentle light at their backs.

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Fruits Basket is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.

Jacob enjoys yelling about anime on Twitter and YouTube. If you're thirsting for more Furuba content, he also co-hosted a trio of podcasts that covers the entire manga.