| about
trismugistus.com
and digital-bondage.net
are my web sites.
trismugistus.com
is where I upload my anime, manga and tv&film reviews,
and also where I occasionally post short stories and
longer works I've written.
digital-bondage.net
is my wallpaper site and provides anime, manga and other
desktop wallpapers in a variety of resolutions. I also
have a few tutorials and some resources, such as psds
for you to download.
I also run a site called scan-city.org,
which provides scans from the latest japanese anime
magazines for you to download and use in your wallpapers.
You can also read my blog here
or check out my anime list here. |
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| details |
| The Genre: romance/comedy |
| The Format: 4 DVDs from MVM/Funimation |
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| The plot: The Sohma family is cursed. However,
this is no ordinary family curse. When a member
of the family is embraced by a person of the opposite
gender, they transform into an animal of the Chinese
Zodiac. The Sohma's managed to keep the curse
private for generations, but when a young girl
stumbles upon their secret, life at the Sohma
house changes forever. Conflict erupts as Zodiac
rivals clash in the most unusual household. Young
Tohru Honda must promise the secret will remain
her own, or face the consequences! |
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| opinion
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| One of my biggest areas of irksomeness for
anime has always been that they don't put enough
episodes on each disk.
They are getting better--many series now are
spread across only 6 or 7 disks, whereas back
in the old days 8 or 9 disks was the norm. And
I guess you can make arguments about bit-rates
and associated quality; or extras and multiple
audio tracks taking up a lot of room, but the
reality is that DVDs are huge, and these things
really don't fill the disks.
Fruits Basket almost single-handidly proves this
point--it's great quality, has the usual multiple
audio tracks and even has extras, but it's a full
26 episode series spread across a mere four disks.
This gives an episode count of 6 ep's on two of
the disks and 7 on the last two--that's double
the episode count I've seen for some series!
Hmmm... This review is kinda backwards isn't
it?
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Normally, I start by talking about whether
I like the show or not and only mention
things like the disk count and extras at
the end. However, there is a reason I'm
doing this one backwards. With this sort
of value for money, even if the series was
merely okay it would almost be worth buying
it despite that. I mean, compared to the
size of the usual investment that's required
to buy a show, this is almost free.
Okay, it's not almost free, but you get
the point--I'd be hard pushed not to recommend
this 4 disk mega bargain unless it was the
worst show ever made. And thankfully, it
really isn't.
The Fruits Basket anime is an adaptation
from one of the most popular shoujo series
ever. For those not familiar with the term,
shoujo means 'girl' in Japanese, and as
this name suggests, it's a more female centric
comic. But what does that mean? Well, rather
than focusing on action, adventures, guns
and swords, explosions and fan-service,
Fruits Basket is about love and relationships,
life-lessons and that sort of thing.
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I know, sounds kinda boring, right? Well, you'd
be wrong.
A unique element that Fruits Basket brings to
the table to help spice things up is the curse
of the zodiac. When hugged by members of the opposite
sex, certain cursed members of the Sohma family
turn into the animals from the Chinese zodiac.
Our protagonist, Tohru Honda, is actually not
a member of the Sohma's, but it is through her
we encounter this family and explore their curse.
I should perhaps also explain that these zodiac
animals have stories associated with them that
us westerners may not be that familiar with (I'd
recommend you go and do a bit of research, though
it's not necessary for understanding the story).
One of these stories features the cat, who is
not an official member of the zodiac, being tricked
by the rat. Therefore, in the Fruits Basket story,
a lot of the plot concerns the animosity the people
cursed by the cat (Kyo Sohma) and the rat (Yuki
Sohma) have for each other.
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All of which sounds an awful lot more complicated
than it really is--trust me, watch the show and
it all makes perfect sense. The reason it makes
perfect sense is that the manga the anime is adapted
from is very well done.
The manga is always careful to take its time
and explain and explore issues and themes in a
careful and sensitive way. However, and this is
what makes it so good, it's never patronising
and it never feels like it's talking down to us
or preaching at us; nor does it feel artificial
or contrived.
In some ways, what I would draw parallels with
is the Oh My Goddess manga (and anime). In OMG,
we have a protagonist who is a kind-hearted soul,
keichi, but he's also a bit wet. We also have,
of course, Belldandy, who is so nice you can almost
feel your teeth melting as you read the books.
However, and this is the key, it never feels
like that when you're actually reading it, and
the same is true for Fruits Basket. If you do
a simplistic overview of what's going on and the
characters and their personalities, it can seem
a bit trite and contrived. However, the real depth
that is invested in the characters and the way
the story is told more than compensate for this.
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Something else that's handled particularly
well by the anime the issue of the adaptation
itself. At the time it was adapted, the
Furuba manga was not complete (it has since
finished). Oftentimes, when an anime is
adapted from an incomplete manga, you get
a lot of divergence towards the end as they
try both to make the story fit into 26 episodes
and to give it a 'proper' ending.
All too often these efforts result in an
unsatisfying or downright poor ending. Here,
whilst the ending is stuff that doesn't
appear in the manga, they don't try to 'finish'
the story in any way. For example, the steady
pace of the manga meant that several of
the zodiac members hadn't actually been
revealed when they were making the anime,
but instead of try to force them in, the
anime just leaves them out.
Also the end of the anime is quite satisfying,
but it doesn't actually act as a full-stop.
It's more like a semi-colon, giving you
information on how the story might probably
proceed, but not boxing it in.
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It's open-ended, yes, but not in a too obvious
stab at a sequel, and not in a way that leaves
all the questions unanswered.
This kind of holds true for the adaptation in
general--although it's got the same stuff as the
manga, it always manages to successfully tread
the line between simply being an un-original animated
version of the manga (like ten-ten) or buggering
about with the story so much it might as well
not be called an adaptation (like hellsing). Furuba
stays true to the story, but also doesn't just
retread it.
Another great thing about the manga and anime
is the cast of supporting characters. Again, furuba
manages to carefully walk between the problems
of having un-engaging, 2D caricatures and of loosing
focus by spending too much time and effort on
them.
As I think you can tell, I like the Fruits Basket
anime a great deal, and what with it being on
just 4 disks, have no hesitation in recommending
it to anyone. |
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| summary |
| The Summary: A very good adaptation of the
manga and staggeringly good value for money. |
| The Score: 4/5 |
| The Pictures:
(click for larger versions) |
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