Boy, that was a rough week for Fruits Basket 2019.  This is not the sort of nostalgia trip I especially enjoy, being reminded of unpleasant things long forgotten.  And it’s somewhat unsettling in what it says about future prospects for this series, which has me more than a little concerned.  And it all comes courtesy of a single character who really derailed the whole story.  But then, Fruits Basket is like the weather in Chicago (where it was 65 today and 4-8 inches of snow are expected tomorrow) – if you don’t like a character, just wait a bit you’ll get something completely different.

I was almost going to say “I’d forgotten how much I hated Kagura“, but the truth of the matter is I don’t remember hating her quite this much 15 years ago or whatever it was.  It definitely took me back hating a Kugimiya Rie character, though – that used to be pretty much a weekly occurrence back in the day, when her breed of screeching tsundere was all the rage.  I was always sanguine about the flaws in Fruits Basket, nostalgia goggles be damned, but Akitarou Daichi had a way of mitigating them as much as humanly possible.

That’s what concerns me most, to be honest.  It’s not like Kagura is going to be a weekly presence – that’s no spoiler, as any viewer can figure out who the core characters are here.  But as much as I enjoyed the first three episodes of this reboot it was clear that it was considerably more somber than the first one.  There’s an old truism that comedy is much harder to pull off than drama (there’s a reason you can’t spell “truism” without “tru”), and it strikes me that while the new version might be able to pull off the darker emotional moments well enough, it may struggle with the comedic ones.  That’s not a deal-breaker of a problem, but it’s not trivial as those are both a big part of the Furuba formula.

I guess the question with Kagura, then, is which is the biggest reason why she’s so much worse this time?  The obvious possibilities: Akitarou was so good he smoothed over her awfulness, Kugimiya’s performance, or how much I’ve changed as an anime viewer in all those years.  Maybe it’s some combination of the three, but Kagura really is a trial here, and the moments that are supposed to be funny are just kind of painful.  She also plays into the very old-school gender stereotypes that were never Fruits Basket’s most winning trait.

Almost – but not quite – redeeming the episode was the rooftop scene between Tohru and Kyou, which I remembered quite clearly from the first time around.  I missed Horie Yui’s depth and range here – Iwami Manaka is quite winning on the whole, but she seems to have only one move for the big emotional or comedic moments and that’s “go louder”.  Still, it’s a good take on the scene, and easily the best of the episode, even if that stuff Tohru fed Kyou about how great it is to have something in love with you even if they’re a psychopath was a bunch of BS.

As I think about it, there’s an element of Fruits Basket that makes it fare better on initial viewing that repeat (or after reading the manga).  Because it’s such a carousel of characters (the Sohmas are a big family) I now find myself impatiently waiting until the wheel gets around or back to the ones I really like.  That’s not a problem when you don’t know any of those characters or have ingrained feelings about them – you can just take the story as it comes. Fortunately I do like more of them than not, but there’s no question my anticipation level for some eps is going to be a lot higher than for others.