It’s been a wipeout for shounen today – will shoujo fare any better?  With as much carnage as Black Saturday has already produced, the last thing I want to do is drop a series I’m already committed to.  But it was another rough week for Fruits Basket 2019.  Another pretty insufferable character, another unfunny comedy episode, another sizeable regression from the series’ earlier highs.  It wasn’t the sort of episode that exactly fills you with optimism, but I have reasons to remain at least a little hopeful.

No question perceptions can change a lot after the better part of two decades, but what I’ve learned about Fruits Basket is that is has a very narrow strike zone.  It’s not very good at comedy, so the lightweight eps have generally not worked this time around.  It has a tendency towards saccharine self-indulgence, so the emotionally intense episodes can quickly devolve into the manipulative.  In sort, the tonal range in which it can succeed is extremely limited.  When it connects, it can be really special.  But that seems to be happening less and less in this version.

As ever, I can’t say for sure how much of this is the first anime being that much better and how much is my perspective changing (though less time has passed since I read the manga, it’s still been a good many years).  I truly, earnestly believe that Akitarou Daichi understood Furuba’s shortcomings and employed his skills as a director to mask them with considerable success.  But whether that’s true or not, with an adaptation as literally by-the-books as TMS’, the series has nowhere to hide.  We see whatever’s on the page, good and bad, warts and all.  And this was a pretty warty chapter.

Ritsu (Kawanishi Kengo), whose equally annoying mother we briefly met at the onsen, is – plainly – not a good character.  The whole cross-dressing thing is never a deception with Kawanishi doing the voice, and the nonstop apologizing is grating within the first 10 seconds.  Also the screaming editor being on-hand doesn’t help – that’s another weak stab at comedy that this version simply doesn’t have the chops to pull off.  It’s just frankly bad, pretty much all of it, and a chore to sit through for 22 minutes.

Next week should prove a real acid test, because it depicts a part of the first anime that was absolutely one of my favorites.  Things are being re-ordered a good bit (the first anime adapted the Ritsu chapter after the one that comes next week), but what we get next really, really should work based on the first anime and the manga – if it doesn’t that would be a very bad sign for this series’ prospects going forward.  My concern is really that I’ve lost the connection here after the past few episodes, and I’m just not going to get it back – but scary as it is, what’s coming next is going to answer that definitively one way or the other.