Krystallina: Next generation sequels are not too unusual in the manga world. But while people tend to say follow-ups are not as good as the originals, sequels still should have their own strengths and be enjoyable on their own. Fruits Basket Another, however, is an extended epilogue to Fruits Basket that lacks its own identity.
The series stars Sawa, an overly apologetic girl who tries to avoid inconveniencing and interacting with other people. Well, one day she ends up being saved by an upperclassman named Mutsuki and stepping on another named Hajime. From their first appearance, readers will know the boys are from the Sohma family, as they are twins of Yuki and Kyo. (Sawa also has much in common with Tohru, but at least her panic-stricken faces gives her a completely different aura from the warm heroine of Fruits Basket.)
But if Yuki Jr. and Kyo Jr. weren’t enough, Takaya throws in several other clones — I mean children — of the original cast. Besides their physical appearance, most of the characters make references that will strike a cord with readers, like one girl who mentions her mother was part of a fan club for Mutsuki’s father. A couple of characters from Fruits Basket also have already made their appearance, including one who went into a different field than I expected.
Technically, though, the plot is reversed from the original. The Sohma family members (so far) get along well, and they invite Sawa to their circle, starting with Mutsuki inviting her to join the student council. Tohru adored her deceased mother, but Sawa’s relationship with her living parent is complicated. Takaya puts some not-so-subtle hints that Mutsuki didn’t reach out to Sawa randomly, and I’m sure that will be covered as Sawa comes out of her shell.
Really, though, no one is going to read this series for the “shy girl finds friends/romance” aspect. Fruits Basket Another has too many references to the original for that not to be the defining feature. Plus, although I know Takaya can’t help it, the art is too simplistic for most shoujo fans. She can only draw a couple of different faces, and there are no animal transformations to liven up the pages.
It’s almost too bad, as I probably would have liked the psychologically scarred Sawa more than the Mary Sue Tohru if she had starred in her own, Sohma-less manga. But there’s no way to make her shine when everyone else is reliving or talking about their parents’ lives.
Krystallina’s rating: 2 out of 5
Helen: While Fruits Basket Another doesn’t appear to have had much hype surrounding its American release, the series has a lot to live up to considering that the original Fruits Basket literally created a generation of American manga readers (including yours truly). Essentially all of Natsuki Takaya’s manga before and since Furuba have been released in the US, but none have lived up to the soap operatics that made Furuba so beloved. Furubana, as this series is so nicknamed, does look like it is going to carry on this emotionally-over-the-top tone but will the series really be able to use it effectively in what’s only a three volume series?
One problem that is immediately obvious is that Takaya has a very bad case of “same face syndrome” amongst her cast, worse than I recall in the original Furuba. It’s true that the majority of the cast members are in fact children of the original cast, so similarities to the original cast and to each other are to be expected (since they’re all cousins to a close degree) and it’s also true that Takaya has suffered several injuries over the years which could, in theory, be limiting her art and style. However, it’s less that these new characters are difficult to tell apart but it feels like they all have the exact same facial expressions, body language etc. This almost makes the story feel phoned in, like Takaya hasn’t put in enough thought into their characterizations.
Even personality-wise, a lot of the characters feel uncannily similar to their parents. Yuki’s son Mutsuki has that same, natural princely vibe that Yuki did (although Mutsuki deliberately plays it up way more often), Kyo’s son Hajime has a similar gruff exterior with a heart of gold (although he’s much more aware of his brusqueness and works harder on it than Kyo did at the beginning, probably a result of Tohru being his mother), and Haru’s son Riku seems to have the same stoic-but-clueless nature of his father. Even Manabe’s daughter, Michi, seems a lot like her dad in terms of personality, it just feels like a lazy kind of “faservice” for the diehard audience of fans who are picking up this spin-off.
The only character who feels completely original, Sawa Mitoma (who normally doesn’t look nearly as much like Tohru as she does on the cover) in some ways reminds me of the Sohmas too! Sawa has a rough home life, with an emotionally and physically distant single mother, and the way that Mutsuki and Hajime seem to sweep in and give her a group of friends almost feels like what Tohru did for the similarly isolated Sohma boys a generation earlier. I feel as if the story would work a bit better if Sawa was given a bit more space to make choices since at this point she’s mostly being tugged around by the boys and not given a lot of space outside of those interactions in the story. It does look like there is a deeper reason for why Mutsuki in particular is interested in Sawa. He keeps mentioning another Sohma that we haven’t met yet (Shiki) and my experience in reading shoujo manga makes me guess that Sawa probably has already met Shiki in the past before the story began but isn’t aware of it.
Overall, Furubana has more similarities to its predecessor than differences. Mutsuki and Hajime even live separately from their parents in Shigure’s old house so they can go to their parents’ school, and I do wish that the meat of the story exerted itself more to be something new and original (although in truth I’m not surprised, I’ve read some of Takaya’s other works and I found them all to be rather flat). I would like to see the old cast one more time, as so far we have seen only Hana’s younger brother and a former classmate who work in the high school, but I’m not sure Furubana will give us that much “fanservice.”
At least a few of the current generation of Sohmas do know about the old zodiac curse however. The curse has remained broken but I suppose it was such a big effect on everyone’s lives for so long, to the point where Hajime is the recipient of suspicious looks from family members, that it makes sense that Kyo and Tohru explained things to him. Right now I would love for the story to slow down and really let us get to know and love all of these characters, something I’m not sure the story will have the time for with only two more volumes to go, but I’m more than willing to stick around and see what happens.
Helen’s rating: 3 out of 5