Alternate Titles: フルーツバスケット | Furuba
Genre: Shoujo | Drama | Comedy | Action | Psychological | Romance | Mystery
Company: Studio DEEN | Furuba Production Committee
American Liscensing Company: FUNimation
Format: 26 episodes (24 minutes each)
Dates: 04/26/2000 to 03/16/2001
Original Creator: Natsuki Takaya
Age Rating: 13 and up

Synopsis: Fruits Basket is the story of a 16 year old, orphaned girl named Honda Tohru that gets accepted to live in the house of her classmate, the handsome boy Sohma Yuki and his cousins, 16 year old Kyo and 27 year old Shigure. However, all these guys and parts of the rest of their family (both close and distant) hold a curse; if they're hugged by the opposite gender, they are transformed into specific animals of the Chinese Zodiac! And that's only 3 of the people cursed with the spirits of the Chinese Zodiac (Out of 13; the cat's an extra)! So, now everyday is an adventure for sweet Tohru, as she gets to know everyone better...and competition for her attention is rising between Yuki and Kyo (who hated each other already to begin with)! But it's not all fun and games...the Sohma Family curse is certainly no laughing matter...what horrible cruelity and heartbreak hides in the darkness of this curse?

SCORE: 97%

A surprisingly entertaining, hilarious, dramatic, mysterious, angsty and psychological girls anime! Nevermind that it's kawaii too! ^_^

Plot: As far as originality goes, this show has it...yet...it doesn't.

The characters are awesome and very definite. Tohru is genuinely as sweet as she acts and a little dense (usually that kinda personality would piss me off, but you can't help but like her always caring attitude). Kyo is very brash but cutely sensitive. Yuki is aloof and just as sensitive on hiding his feelings as Kyo (and funnily enough, knows he looks girly and hates it. LOL, that's kinda rare with pretty boys, especially in shoujo anime). Shigure is hilarious but sneakily manipulative. Kagura is annoying, but respectable. Hatsuharu split personality and tendencies to act a little strange is hilarious. Momiji is annoyingly cute, but surprisingly mature. Hatori is admirable and cool, and Ayame is the fruitest straight man alive (LOL) Uo and Hamajima are great friends to Tohru and hilarious; it would be cool to have best friends like them ^_^. The rest of the zodiac characters are funny and neat, and Akito is fucking creepy and a real jerk and bastard. ^_^

The plot holds together very well and reveals plot points at a very good pace, but the plot may be a little predicatable for some. The timing and pacing of this anime may be too slow for many. I thought it was about right, but it really depends on how much patients you have (it's definitely not as slow as .hack//SIGN or Noir). The slow pacing may even be painfully annoying for some, but most of the time the series is not slow at all, and each episode is well filled with plot and seems even wonderfully longer than its 24 minutes.

A great thing about this series is that it knows when to take itself seriously and when not to. The series even makes fun of its own genre (shoujo) by using pretty backgrounds and moments (complete with flowers, sparkles and lace) excessively to make hilariously, ridiculous jokes about itself. The jokes, puns and humor is executed well, and I laughed myself silly several times. There are even a few jokes when the characters talk towards the audience, but it doesn't ruin the series at all or even make the cast act out of character. Dramatic moments are done wonderfully and executed well...I've never felt so much emotion portrayed so well in series like this one. The feel of the manga was also wonderfully perserved in the show.

But, on how this series is not original. This series has several elements of Ranma 1/2. For example, the transformations from a curse (even though it's from hugging, not water), martial arts fighting is frequent, romantic angst of high similiarity, and the slapstick humor and puns, complete with the destruction of Shigure's house on a regular basis, just like the frequent destruction of the Tendo dojo in Ranma 1/2. Hatsuharu even comes across as being kinda like Ryouga of Ranma 1/2, having a knack for getting lost anywhere and showing up the first time with intentions on having a martial arts fight with Kyo. However the similarities to Ranma 1/2 end there. Fruits Basket has a beauty all its own and a wonderful story, great characters, humor executed a whole lot better, and a dramatic atmosphere that Ranma 1/2 could never pull off. This series is definitely better than Ranma 1/2 and really is an entirely different genre and quality from Ranma 1/2 (and better quality at that).

Absolutely wonderful characters and story! You'll definitely have a favorite character in this series since they're so diverse! The series ended in the only way it could since the manga (even at present date), was still going, but it was a wonderful ending that had enough resolution to satisfy me. This series just need another season! It's too good to have ended like this! (Note to self: need to catch up on the manga now...I wanna know what's gonna happen with the rest of the story now!)

Visual: The visuals of this series are great and well made. If you don't like the use of computer rendered effects in animation however, you may not like the visuals. However, the computer added visuals worked beautifully and helped the atmosphere of the series immensely. The effects and coloring merged and went with the animation perfectly.

I will warn you that Tohru has extremely big eyes, even for anime standards, and everyone in this series is a pretty girl or boy. However, all of this is easy to get use to and enjoy. The backgrounds are beautiful and the character design is very accurate to the manga (if not better than the manga on appearing a little more realistic and solid in proportions). Gotta love the eye candy of it all!

Sound: The music is something to get use to. The opening is slow and may bore you, but you'll really appreicate the opening and ending themes after seeing the entire series, that'll leave you with a fuzzy feeling and a feel of melancholy. The music definitely fits scenes and really set the moods. Ayame's bizarre band theme is the greatest!

The sound effects are HILAROUS! You can tell the director had a hand in the sound effects, and the sound effects alone can sometimes make the joke or mood in a scene.

I LOVED the voice actors! All of them were great, and I really enjoyed Yuki, Shigure, Ayame and Tohru's voices, but I especially love Kyo's! This series made Seki tie with Kappei as my favorite male voice seiyuu. He's so versitle in his roles, and he did an awesome job as Kyo!

The Dub: Well, the dub is by FUNimation (and I've watched nearly half the series dubbed now, the first 12 episodes to be precise). I did like FUNimation's dub of Yu Yu Hakusho, but this dub slightly lacks when it comes to acting. (It was funny hearing Kurama's dubbed voice come of Shigure, and Keiko's coming out of Tohru. I recognized those voices immediately). However, the dub is tolerable for most voices (at least most main characters), and the script writer did a good job of even slipping in a couple new jokes into the show without changing the humor, or especially the story and characters. The acting isn't perfect, and nothing can match the original acting of the Japanese, but it's okay, all the same. Average quality if not a little below because of some real stinkers by bad choices on voices for some characters. Half of the cast was good, the other half sucked ass. It's no Trigun dub. ^_^

I've seen all of it dubbed now; it was all good except maybe Ritsu's voice...it left something to desire. That and Momiji's voice still sounded too much like a young girl instead of a little boy.

Dub Letter Grade: C

Extra Rants and Bitching: I LOVE THIS SERIES! ^_^ I especially love Kyo and Ayame (but I absolutely adored the vast majority of the rest of the cast also). This is one of my all time favorites, and I hope you watch it all!

Score Comments: 97% is a very excellent score. It got docked a little for pacing that just might have been too slow (but I thought was good). We need a continuation of this series! I want more episodes! ^_^