Fruits Basket

I was annoyed at times at how it suddenly veered off, giving me the backstory of who was where right when I was interested in something else, when I finally wanted some resolution to their zodiac curse; though I can see why it happened that way. Even a tree, if you want it to be healthy and fruit well, has to stand on proper roots. Even a house has to have a proper foundation to keep it from collapsing. That's basically what's great about this anime – you get everything here. Everybody started somewhere, everybody grew from something, everybody grew up somewhere, and everybody ended somehow. After watching it, you realize that it's classic Shōjo, that the fantasy elements are just there as an accompaniment, they're not the main point, because ultimately it's about the psychology of the characters, their development and transformation. None of the many characters were just "that", they all had shades of gray. They made mistakes, they suffered, they rejoiced, they loved, they hated. Even though a couple of the characters keep turning into animals, in the end it's an ordinary human drama about how much family background matters. I loved it, I devoured it, gobbled it up until I was sorry I had to say goodbye so soon. In the end, even the characters I usually don't like very much (Tohru and her boundless altruism, Momiji and his childishness) I grew to love here, because they didn't just contain one thing, they outgrew it. I fell in love with this anime because of its characters as they grew and matured. Not to mention that it ended well in the sense that we get answers to all the major questions. (05/07/2021)