Fruits Basket Vol 18

[meganbmoore]

I have a confession to make.  Most of the f-list who I browbeat into reading who have started reading FB in the last year or so seem to start out liking Yuki, and then eventually prefer Kyo after a while.  Me?  When I started reading, I straightup disliked Yuki.  Something about him simply rubbed me the wrong way.  After a few volumes, I came to not mind and then passingly like him, but my main use for him was that him being around meant Ayame and Haru would show up more. I was never interested in him until the last handful of volumes, when he finally got his own storyline separate from Tohru's.  While I'm not remotely invested in his relationship with Machi, I find it much better than any romantic relationship he could have had with Tohru, which would have beenexclusively about her making him feel better about himself.  With Machi, he feels better about himself because he's able to help someone.

On the flipside, there's Akito, who I started out hating, and consistently hate more and more.  I keep getting told that at some point, we grow to love Akito, but I don't know how.  Look at Akito's little line about being put on the planet to be loved.  Sweetie, EVERYONE was put on the planet to be loved, most of us just try to earn it and prove ourselves worthy of that love by being decent human beings.  Not by treating people as possessions, physically and mentally abusing them, and abusing anyone else who forms a relationship with them.  Not to mention sexual abuse.  (Yes, Akito's relationship-using status and emotional manipulation to confine him to a sexual relationship with Akito, as well as the attack on Rin, specifically targetting her feminity and deliberately "destroying" it are both forms of sexual abuse.  That Akito does not literally rape either one doesn't remove the factthat one is an abusive relationship centered around a force sexual relationship, and the one an assualt and torment deliberately centered around sexuality.)

Shigure needs to have his head examined.

Spot comments:

*Sohma's make cute babies.

*Haru should be admired for his tenacity.  Not to mention apparently admirable upper body strength.

*Hiro will make a good brother.  Except...why can't he hold the baby?  I thought that there was no problem as long as the person of the other gender was of the Sohma bloodline, which his full blooded sister would be.

*If I went by manga and jdramas, I would assume every Japanese parent was either dead, stupid and had to be taken care of by their kid, abusive in one way or another, or kicked their kids out.  Concerning.

*Nowhere near enough Kyo.

*In case it wasn't clear: I hate Akito.

 

ETA:  Zodiac hugging has been explained.  Megan just has a bad memory.