Notes

1. Boxes still overtaking the condo. Fear they may be a) carnivorous, b) breeding, c) malevolent or d) all of the above. Send help.

2. Things at work are insane.

3. A Feast of Crows makes no sense when you have completely forgotten everything that happened in the earlier three books and can't even find all three books before the fourth is due at the librarty, much less read all of them. Thankfully, wonderful people put up summaries for all three previous books plus "The Hedge Knight." Unfortunately, I'm still confused after reading the summaries. Thankfully, said confusion isn't quite as confusing as completely forgetting everything.

4. I'm at that weird space in which I'm not sure what to blog about. Either that, or I'm not sure what my LJ is for, or if anyone reads, and etc. Do you guys ever feel like that? What do you do about it?

Takaya Natsuki - Fruits Basket, vol. 01-18 + ch. 108 (no spoilers)

I'm going to post another entry with tons and tons of spoilers, so please keep this one spoiler-free. Thanks!

I watched the Fruits Basket anime a while ago, which I liked, but didn't completely fall in love with. I now adore the manga, which nearly made me cry a few days ago.

The Sohma family is under a curse that makes some of the members turn into a zodiac animal when hugged by a member of the opposite sex. Somehow, the orphan Honda Tohru, possibly the most optimistic and nicest person in shoujo manga, which is really saying something, ends up living with Yuki, Kyo and Shigure.

While the curse sounds rather cute to begin with, later volumes reveal how damaged the entire Sohma family is because of it and because of the machinations of the somewhat insane Akito, head of the Sohma family.

The anime follows the manga very closely up till vol. 6, after which it ends. But I really started loving the manga after that point, when things really start to get darker. Almost every one of the Juunishi (the twelve zodiac Sohma people) are horribly damaged and abused, and each reacts to it separately.

I really liked seeing how Takaya kept up with the different parent-child relationships, particularly the two extremes of overprotection and complete abandonment. And I'm sure everyone has already said this, but I love that while Tohru is impossibly sweet, her sweetness and kindness makes sense in the story, since it's about learning kindness and using kindness as a way out of abuse and pain and hurt. It's about making things better, one day at a time.

Um, yes, I am a total sucker for that type of story.

But I like that Takaya has Tohru say that people aren't born kind; they have to learn it.

I had a few qualms in the beginning about self-sacrifice, mainly because Tohru is so self-sacrificing and the message almost seemed to be that if you are that self-sacrificing, other people will step in and look out for you and make sure you're ok, which I don't think is the case in real life (sadly). But later on, even Tohru's self-sacrifice is too much, as is other people's. Characters have to learn selfishness as well as kindness, and I like that they have to remember to be kind to themselves as well.

Takaya's really good at veeerrry slooooowly drawing you in and making you believe that it's a fluffy shoujo piece, and then blindsiding you with PAIN AND ANGST OMG! And I like that more and more characters are explored later on, and the interactions get more complex and detailed, and I started caring about characters who I thought I could never, ever care about.

Also, I am still totally taken in by the cute animals, though I think my rats are cuter than Yuki.

Links:
- rilina's tags and memories

Takaya Natsuki - Fruits Basket, vol. 01-18 + ch. 108 (spoilers)

The non-spoilery overview post is here.

( Giant honking spoilers! )