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Reviewed by Brigid Alverson The cursed and neurotic Sohmas get more interesting in volume 5 of Fruits Basket, but cheery orphan Tohru Honda is starting to get tiresome. As the volume opens, Tohru’s housemates Kyo and Yuki Sohma are brooding instead of fighting. Readers of the previous volume have at least a clue what is going on: After visiting her mother’s grave, Tohru fell asleep on the porch. Kyo found her there and spent a tender moment gazing at her, while inside the house, Yuki picked up some scattered papers and a baseball cap, and something he saw gave him pause. But it never seems to cross Tohru’s mind that they could be upset by anything other than her doing something wrong, so she apologizes, confusing everyone, which causes Kyo to trip and fall off the trail they have been hiking on, which starts him fighting with Yuki again, so life really does go back to normal. Tohru also displays the manga-girl tendency to regard any setback as a major disaster. When she gets a poor grade on an exam, and has to take a makeup test, she completely freaks out, convinced she will never fulfill her dead mother’s wish that she graduate from high school. In fact, Tohru spends much of the book bug-eyed with pain, surprise, or emotional overload. It’s time for her to show a little of the steely backbone that was evident in previous books. Meanwhile, the older three Sohmas, Shigure, Hatori, and Aaya, are getting much more interesting. Shigure has brought everyone out to the family’s lake house to take Hatori’s mind off the fact that the woman he loves is marrying someone else that day. Shigure and Aaya suggest that Hatori crash the wedding and bring back the memories he has erased from her mind, but Hatori dismisses this as a romantic notion and broods on the impossibility of regaining lost love. The trio also throws around some hints about a new love interest, a mysterious Mayu who makes a cameo later in the book. We get at least one new Sohma in every volume, and this time it’s Kisa, a young girl possessed by the tiger spirit. Kisa’s schoolmates have been bullying her in a particularly cruel way: they laugh whenever she speaks. As a result, Kisa stops speaking and runs away from home. Hatsuharu rescues her, and Tohru applies her usual combination of sweetness and insight to get the girl on her feet again. The incident triggers the Philosophical Discussion that also seems to crop up in every volume; this one, about self-acceptance, is actually pretty good. After that heavy episode, we get a bit of light humor when Tohru’s creepy psychic friend Hana gets the best of some snotty classmates who have formed a Prince Yuki fan club. The best scenes in this book are the ones where the Sohmas, with or without Tohru sit around and talk about their lives. All the male characters have become more complex, and with so many different personalities in the same family, the dynamics are getting pretty interesting. There is sadness in this volume, but also a whiff of hope, as the Sohmas begin to realize that they are not helpless in the face of the family curse. Interested in writing for MangaLife? We're always looking for talented reviewers and columnists, so drop us a line! Charles Webb Editor-in-Chief, MangaLife.com |
1 September 2010
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