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 Words of Truth and Wisdom: Fruits Basket Revisited
Written by Alethea and Athena Nibley
A lot of people are making a big deal about the last volume of Fruits Basket being out now, so we thought we'd join the fun! ...But then we realized we've already talked about most of the things that really stood out in This Very Column! Still, that doesn't have to stop us from trying! Apologies if it's too repetitive.
Fruits Basket was the very first series we translated professionally, so it will always hold a special place in our hearts. We actually turned the translation in... a long long time ago (can't remember when, exactly, but it was a while), so in a way, for us, Fruits Basket has been over for quite some time now. That being the case, it's kind of hard to think of anything really deep to say about it, since it's been so long since we've read it, but! we actually typed some thoughts about it soon before we turned in the script, and now I'm going to cheat and paste those into this column! Mwahahahaha... ha ha... ha.
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We've been in the middle of translating Fruits Basket since the beginning of our professional translating career. Technically we still are, since, like I said, we still have to translate a few things, tweak the script, and turn it in. But after that, we won't be translating Fruits Basket anymore. It's kind of a weird thing to think about, like it doesn't compute. Only we've actually had quite a few looooong periods of time when we weren't translating it, so it probably won't be a whole lot different. (And technically, there's still a fanbook, if TokyoPop gets it and asks us to translate it.)
It's not really a sad feeling. We've translated a lot of series that have ended by now. This is actually the longest series we've worked on, unless you count Negima!, but we're only just starting on it, so that's kind of weird by itself. We don't think it will go on for another 22 volumes, but it's hard to tell with that one.
But anyway, it's a great series, and we're really honored that we were able to translate all of it. We've learned a lot from it, directly and indirectly, about translating and being a good person in general.
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Then after we turned it in:
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Well, it's official. We turned in the script today, and we are no longer translating Fruits Basket in the progressive tense. From all the long, epic stories we've seen, I feel like after something like this, there should be kind of a "And now it's time for a new beginning" at best and a "Now what?" at worst, but as it is, we're just going to go on with life as usual.
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So that's what we said back then, and we stand by it. It was fun translating Fruits Basket, just like it is translating everything else. I seem to remember having more angry outbursts with it than with anything else, probably mostly because we had already read volume five of Saiyuki by the time we started Fruits Basket. Fruits Basket was hard, though. We would explain it to people by saying it looks like Natsuki Takaya is a master of the Japanese language, which means everything is very poetic and hads a bunch of nuances that are really hard to get in English. Of course, the fact that there would often be two different narrations and the actual dialogue all going on at the same time didn't really help, but we eventually got used to it, and now, when we deal with other titles that do similar things, it's a lot easier.
We were actually really sad that Takaya-sensei stopped talking about video games right before Final Fantasy IX came out. That one's our favorite, so we really wanted to know how she liked it.
There's been some talk about how to fill the void created by the lack of new Fruits Basket. Of course there's never going to be anything that's exactly like Fruits Basket, and if there was, everybody would dismiss it as a wannabe Fruits Basket anyway, so trying to replace it seems like a really bad idea. Instead, it would probably be best to realize that there are a lot of good titles out there, and to enjoy them for them, and when you feel the need for some good Fruits Basket, just go read it again.
We were recently at a convention where a manga artist was asked about a certain character who died, and he pointed out that as long as he still makes stuff from that series, that character will be in it, so, in effect, he'll still be alive. And that's pretty much how it is with anything, but even without new chapters being written, you can always go back. As long as the series still exists, it's still alive. So, to paraphrase what that manga artist said, “Don't worry about it 'being over' so much. It's not a big deal.”
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