Manga Diaries – Fruits Basket Volume 15

If you don’t know what my diaries are, please go here. Spoilers ahoy!

Otherwise, let’s go!

• Cover: Is the BIG SECRET revealed in this volume? Can’t be too much longer.
• Page 10: Or maybe it’s a Yun-Yun volume.
• 12: Let us bold some words so you know they’re important because reasons.
• 14: Did Yuki-mama not “deliver” Ayame to Akito as well?
• 18: I forget the age difference. 10 years? 12?
• 23: Oh, guess not. Still a ways to go for Akito’s secret. Like we don’t know what it is.
• 25: Kyo’s lucky Yuki didn’t repeat his words back at him.
• 29: How could you not want to hug Yuki?
• 31: Don’t remember Fruits Basket saying how long Kyo, Haru, and Momiji have been close (relatively speaking). Obviously longer than I though.
• 35: Naked mole rat…
• 38: Wow, young Kyo looks awful here. Also showing that the hat is really Kyo and Tohru’s connection, not Yuki and Tohru’s. Poor Yuki can’t even have a memory to himself…
• 46: Come on, look at Akito here. Is anybody really buying this is a guy?
• 53: You would think a oya-baka like Kyoko would have several pictures of Tohru. I mean, I know this is before the big cell phone revolution, but still. Also, “okaa-san” being used is rare.
• 62: Fat naked mole rat…sorry, Yuki.
• 67-68: Just be friends…all you gotta do just be friends…
• 70: Really playing up the whole “mother” thing.
• 73: Kakeru speaking for all of us.
• 78: Still kind of feels like a ret-con.
• 84: Giving away the bride…a few volumes too early.
• 94: If Kyo was smart, he’d suddenly go away on a training retreat.
• 96: Kyo caught flirting.
• 102: …I’m not sure who this is. Ritchan?
• 106: Who decided to do a straight (regular) version of Cinderella? Surely someone has the talent to do a rewrite.
• 111: “Otouto-kun”, another rarity.
• 113: …Well, at least it’s not Snow White…
• 115: Finally, some sense. Of course, the author could have just started with a crazy version of Cinderella. Too many fairy tale plays already.
• 116: If I was visiting the school, I wouldn’t choose Cinderella over any gender-flipped or revised version of a regular fairy tale.
• 118: Tohru looks like Hana here.
• 121-124: Yuki’s look is more damaging than a physical blow.
• 127: Let’s quickly dump the love triangle and introduce someone who quickly realizes Yuki isn’t a prince! Yay, romance! (This is sarcasm, of course.)
• 130: And still, the reason why they just didn’t recast is…?
• 132: Awkward position.
• 135: I always find it kind of funny when fonts are chosen that look nothing like real writing.
• 139: Best scene, right here.
• 140: The title’s actually pretty catchy. I didn’t care for Disney’s live action Cinderella, so it’s got to be better than that.
• 144: Yuki looks like he should be casting White Magic…CURAGA!
• 148: Can you imagine if this was a line in a U.S. high school play?
• 149: Kyo should have just been like, “Screw the play!” Ad-libs are more fun anyways. That reminds me, I hope we can still screw up the play in the Final Fantasy VII remake. I so hope that game has dual audio…I want to hear both Sakurai and Burton screw up the show.
• 151: One of my favorite parts in the movie George of the Jungle: “Thor, are you arguing with the narrator?!” He had all the power. The Narrator in The Powerpuff Girls was pretty funny as well.
• 157: Just saw the snake on Hana’s bowl. Ayame’s work?
• 161: Kyo caught completely off-guard.
• 162: Well, Cinderella could have asked for a lifetime supply of yakiniku…
• 164: But whatever happened to the stepmother? Was she allowed at the shop?
• 167: Kyo’s double nightmare.
• 168: Another oya-baka.
• 169: Man, Okazaki has been gone a long time…wow.
• 172: Kyo has now been cast in the role of shoujo heroine.
• 176: Momiji the mind-reader.
• 180: Hiro the idiot.
• 189: Best distraction plan ever!
• 194: Yurusenai! 許せない！愛と正義のセーラー服美少女戦士 Sorry, wrong manga. That’s for another rant…

So, a very Yuki-dominated volume. More flashbacks about his childhood as Takaya tries to explain how Yuki confused motherly love for romantic love while laying the foundation for Yuki x Machi. Yuki confirms Tohru x Kyo, but Kyo still understandably doesn’t believe Tohru could feel that way for him. Otherwise, I’m sure Yuki fans loved all the attention, but I’m sure they were/are upset at his rather odd exit from the love triangle. I never thought Yuki would end up with Tohru, but to make him feel like a son toward her…a strange choice. It also doesn’t help that Machi’s entrance and her comments about him not being a prince is perfectly timed with Yuki’s own revelations.

I do love a crazy school play, but I kind of wish the “gee, we miscast” parts were cut short for some other school festival activities. Either they should have set up “Sorta Cinderella” from the start, or have the writer get fired up and completely change the script once she saw the cast. It just seemed like a waste of space when you knew the play wasn’t ever going to be performed normally. It might have been funnier if the writer asked for an eccentric Cinderella right from the start but ended up getting more than she bargained for. I also wish we could have gotten more of Hiro and the others’ reactions and thoughts rather than just random audience members. Show that he can control his mouth even though he wants to tsukkomi everything. Haru would also do well with the random comments, and Kisa could add some faux melodrama when Onee-chan is rejected by the prince.

Overall, I was kind of bored. I mean, we already knew Yuki’s childhood was awful, was the boy in Tohru’s memory, and also sees Tohru as a mom. The play goes as expected, and the play set up is wasted on realizing Hana is not a normal Cinderella instead of Tohru trying to get Kyo to expand his world or him awkwardly flirting with her. Yes, Tohru is too sweet to be a stepsister, we get it. Show something else.

Oh, I just found a book about had a bunch of games and ice-breaker ideas called Games, Games, Games (or something like that). I  browsed through it, and one random page I opened to had the Fruit Basket game. I had to laugh.