Krystallina: The blurb on the back tells you, “Don’t miss the grand finale of Fruits Basket Another!“
Well, considering Takaya is writing occasional one-shots, the first centered around one of the most important characters in the series, it’s hardly a finale. But even disregarding that, volume 3 is definitely not grand.
Sawa goes to a Sohma family cottage during summer break in the opening chapter, and it’s the school festival in the final chapter. Those feature Sohma antics, fluff, and melancholy, but they also feel like filler. They have their moments, but neither chapter builds up to anything major, like seeing a fan-favorite character from Fruits Basket or a big romantic scene. I don’t mind the more subtle, blossoming feelings versus a sudden confession, but this also means there are fewer stand-out moments.
Volume 3 is all about the middle two chapters. The weakest part of these key chapters is when Sawa meets a former friend of hers from elementary school who reveals something about her mother. It feels a bit sudden; I think a more natural way for the truth to come out would have been one of the Sohma family members slipping up. Regardless, we learn more about what kind of person Sawa’s mother is, how Sawa is connected to the Sohma family, and see her react with these revelations.
One of the themes of Fruits Basket is change, so it’s no surprise that this is also a theme of Another. But I really wish Takaya had cut back and focused more on this type of character development that made Fruits Basket so popular in the first place. Another just doesn’t have enough time to do this with all kids of Furuba characters popping up.
Take Shiki, for instance. It couldn’t have been easy being the child of Shigure and Akito as well as the next head of the family. He’s had an easier childhood than his parents, but he’s still a rather emotionally distant middle schooler. Yet we do see him making attempts to out of his comfort zone, and I really wanted to see more of how he would grow.
And Sawa. When we learn how much of a narcissist and opportunist mom is, well, it’s no wonder Sawa is a Negative Nancy. Sometimes the greatest cruelness is under the guise of caring. It’s something the original Fruits Basket touched on but really resonates here since everyone else has had decent childhoods. But Sawa never gets a chance to confront her mother and cement her internal growth.
But hey, who needs that when we can see children of dressmakers get excited about dressing up someone…
There were also a few close-ups (mostly of Sawa) that barely looked like they were in Takaya’s style. It was like Takaya tried to be very detailed, but they ended up looking less like themselves. But I already was so let down by this volume’s story that it didn’t matter much anyway.
Krystallina’s rating: 2 out of 5
Helen: Fruits Basket Another’s final volume may have had it’s strongest material to date, but even that only serves to reinforce just how uninspiring this spin-off sequel was.
Fruits Basket is I believe Natsuki Takaya’s best-selling manga on both sides of the Pacific and when her formula works it works — she takes a realistic, modern-day setting that’s already familiar to the reader and uses those familiarities to build conflicts centered around personal relationships and societal expectations that toe the line between heart-gripping and too melodramatic to be taken seriously. I’ve read two other of Takaya’s works in English, Tsubasa: Those with Wings and Liselotte & Witch’s Forest, which both featured fantasy settings and much smaller casts, two things that immediately meant that Takaya wouldn’t be able to play to her strengths and it shows.
I suspect that’s why her other series have never gained much traction in the US and even this series never produced many ripples in a community where literally an entire generation (yours truly included) came to manga specifically through Fruits Basket.
I’m still a little confused about what Takaya was trying to achieve with Fruits Basket Another, as none of the main cast so much as appear in a single panel for the entire short series, and yet tons of their children appear, as if the audience should immediately form a strong connection with them instead. Almost unsurprisingly, the only entirely new character, main character Sawa Mitoma, is the only character with any kind of arc but Takaya has also chosen to make her an incredibly passive character so that there’s a reason for Sawa to be dragged around by the current Sohma generation. The bones for a compelling story were here, of a young girl who’s beginning to realize just how toxic her mother is and finding both the reason and the ways to not let that define her own life, but the story is too crowded with misplaced “fanservice” with all of the winks and nods to the reader.
If Takaya had created a “proper” fanservice-y short series, and actually shown what the cast of the original Fruits Basket were up to almost 20 years later, then I would totally read it! Likewise, if she had created an entirely new story but with similar themes to Fruits Basket I would be happy to try that out as well. The issue here is trying to combine these two ideas and leaving very few fans satisfied in the process.
Helen’s Rating: 2 out of 5