Fruits Basket Vol 20

[meganbmoore]

WARNING!!! This post influenced by my tendency to get irritated when angst takes precedence over all else in shoujo.


No, really, Takaya, what’s going on? I’ve always praised you for being able to slip seamlessly between incredible angst and great humor, sometimes in the same panel. Now we’re just doing the non-stop angst bit, with a few 2-second breaks for humor. Really, I don’t do well with this much unadulterated angst if there isn’t serious crack and/or swords at the same time.

This volume focused a lot on Akito and Ren, and while their background and relationship is important to the story, I find it difficult to care about or be interested in either one (and Shigure’s role in all this is…affecting my opinion of him) even though I know I’m supposed to at least feel sympathy for them at this point. I’m sorry, but when you devote yourself that much to hurting others because of your own issues, I can’t feel sympathy for you.

And then there’s the curse being broken for some. Hiro finally getting to hold his sister made me sniffle, and I was well on my way to doing the same with Momiji…until that was suddenly all about how Momiji loved Tohru too, and was losing her to Kyo. Uhm, what? What happened to that lovely BFF friendship Tohru and Momiji have always had? Why must Momiji’s feelings be romantic? We already half way went through that with Yuki! I know Takaya is borderline obsessed with pairing people off, and normally I don’t mind, but really, there’s a limit.

I did like Kagura finally moving on from Kyo (even if it did mean destroying a wall…) and that Rin has no problems wearing clothes that show her scars, and Kyo and Kyoko’s relationship was fun (and cute) but why add the complication of Kyo blaming himself for Kyoko’s death? (I’m pretty sure we already knew he was there.) We already know Tohru will forgive him. It isn’t really an issue beyond…more angst for Kyo and Tohru. And they already have more than most can handle.

But it’s still one of my favorites.

Meanwhile, I know it’s been around for a while that Tokyopop has licensed Takaya’s Tsubasa wo Motsu Mono, but did I miss that they’d also licensed Phantom Dream?

Comments

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Hang on, only two volumes left :)

I find myself dropping in attention from a lot of manga when they go on for a long stretch like Furuba did. I think I actually like the Akita and Ren related things (probably for Shigure related reason :)) but the thing about Momiji, oy!

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

This is actually making me slightly irritated with Shigure, because it's bordering on crossing from "seriously messed up" to "taking out angst and frustration on others."

My problem isn't the length (I prefer manga to just get to the point and tell the story, but, well, I am a shounen fan...) but with the fact that it tends to turn into a neverending angstfest towards the end.

The Momiji thing...I mean, what's with that? There were "hello, serious angst looming!" hints in the last volume, but come on! They acted more like siblings before this. Kids in a playground. Mutual platonic adoration society. Did Takaya just realize she broke the shoujo rule that at least one other male must be in love with the heroine so there can be a confrontation? (Why I hate love triangles: They send the message that, for a couple to be happy, someone else must be unhappy. Also why I dislike fanon-created love triangles.)

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Shigure's one of those characters, the darker he seems, the more I love him :D

Heh, I've almost entirely given up on shounen apart from FMA and TRC (not sure if that one counts), they just got me too annoyed.

I tend to eat angst as if it was nutella, but I agree the mix of comedy with angst works better (in general and in Furuba both), especially because it makes the angst too real. Have too much angst and it becomes melodramatic, so we become disconnect from the characters and don't particularly care apart from a "angst, lol" way. Which was a very lengthy way for me to say that too much angst is wangsty.

It's not even there long enough to be a love triangle! I don't know what it is ;_;

I like some love triangles and hate others, it really depends of the handling.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Some love triangles are well done, but most are just inserted because it's easy angst. And yeah, it wasn't really there long enough to be anything but "huh?"

When the angst is deserved (and 95% in FB is) or there for total crack I'm a total angstbunny. but when it's there just to have angst, I have no tolerance for it.

TRC is supposed to be shounen, but I think that it was just a ploy and it has long since given up any pretenses of being anything other than gothic shoujo crack.

Shigure has gotten away with a lot of things that would normally make me swear off a character.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

gothic shoujo crack IN SPACEIN DISGUISE! which makes it awesome. Well crackful at least :)

Oh boy, Shigure doesn't even come close. I think lately I've found myself loving so many horrendously immoral characters that I've given up on any pretence of morality about. I think Cnaiur was the tipping point.

Angst for angst's sake, yeah, good point.

I think what I like in love triangles is when it's set up well enough and you've got a feeling of a three way relationship. Not three way love, necessarily, but of the way each character's relationship with the second character colour their relationship with the third. If that makes any sense.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Cnaiur?

Clamp's love triangles work for me for exactly the reason's you lay out. If the point is romance, they usually (at least in my admittedly limited reading) lay it out. If the point is the relationship, it tends to go all ways.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Cnaiur's a character in R Scott Bakker's Prince of Nothing trilogy of epic fantasy, which is a great work yet one I wouldn't rec to everyone due to its extreme grittiness and antipathic characters. I've seen Cnaiur described as "gay Conan with the intellect of Ender Wiggins", which is fitting - he's also a mass murderer and rapist. And my favourite character from that series. Which, yeah *flails*

Good point about Clamp, they really usually do it well.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Clamp tends to be about all kinds of love and devotion, not just romantic.

[chomiji]

I was pretty annoyed with the Kyo-blaming-himself thing too. The whole Shigure thing, I had long ago filed under "people are weird, and Shigure is weirder than most."

I don't think I took the whole Momiji thing very seriously, actually. Maybe I need to look at again. I do remember coming away with a distinct feeling of "jeez, I hope he finds someone nice."

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Shigure in this part is starting to border on "using others to deal with his angst and disappointments" which is a huge no-no for me. I give him more leeway than I do others because he's more justifiably screwed up, but it still irritates me.

Momiji was in fullblown "this is my love but she loves yyyoooooouuuuuu!!" mode in the scene with Kyo. Which wouldn't have been as bad if it hadn't come out of nowhere.

But really, this whole thing is why I have so many problems with shoujo. In the longer running ones, it seems the mangaka are required to turn them into fullblown angstfests towards the end, or shift the focus to "all these males are in love with the girl and angsting over how it affects their friendship." There are a few exceptions, and FB isn't quite to that point, but...

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

I agree about Akito & Ren--they are both horrible people. I don't feel sympathy for Akito, at all, at best I can just shake my head at how incredibly screwed-up the whole situation is. I don't even know how much sympathy we're supposed to feel for Akito, not too much, I think. Yes, s/he was warped by hir environment, but so were all the other Sohmas, and none of them became raving psychopaths. (Well, not too much.)

I am indifferent to the Momiji/Tohru development; it feels like so much of an afterthought, plot-wise, that I can't get excited about it one way or the other.

Kyo's guilt over Kyoko, however, isn't new. That twist was foreshadowed WAY back, from the first time they all visited Kyoko's grave. I have been waiting on this revelation for FIVE YEARS. And, you know, it's not about whether she'll forgive him (this is Tohru we're talking about), it's whether he'll be able to forgive himself.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I may just be reacting to people's "but once you know Akito's story, you'll come to love her" insistences, but...eeh. Just makes it worse for me, really.

The Momiji/Tohru thing just irritates me because there seems to be no point to it.

Yeah, Kyo's involvement is something we've known about for so long that I kind of forget we know, if you know what I mean. It's been around so long that we just accept it as a given. I think it's just the "oh yeah, more angst!" aspect in how it was presented after nothing but angst in this volume that bothered me.

[amewarashi.livejournal.com]

I was following the raws when this part came out in Japan, and it was such a bore. I agree that part of the charm of Furuba is the angst/comedy balance, and the last -what, four volumes?- of that were pretty much resolving the drama plotlines.

And ugh, yes, Momiji. And he gets worse in the last volume, because suddenly his final resolution was all about Kyou/Tohru. What happened with the joie de vivre and his dreams of becoming a violinist for Momo? Did he lose them as soon as hormones finally hit him? Bah.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Not getting too into Momiji as I've mostly avoided spoilers for this for the last 5-6 years, but yeah. Vol 19 was "hey, Momiji grew up nice!" and this volume was "and was studying how to be a spurned shoujo 3rd party while he was at it!"

[amewarashi.livejournal.com]

I figured you wouldn't be spoiled so I tried not to be specific about it but yeah... just saying it won't be quite solved by the end of the series. And it sucks because I for one liked Momiji a lot.

[anime-heart.livejournal.com]

I kind of like how f-d up Shigure is, it's been interesting to see how the layers peel away. He's so twisted, but also peculiarly pure in his devotion.

Some Furuba characters don't get a lot of resolution. Momiji is one, which is too bad.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

It's some of the ways he deals with being messed up that bother me.

[anime-babble.livejournal.com]

Furuba was one of those series that I started out being completely in love with, and then as it progressed, I got more and more annoyed with several aspects and how they were presented, until I finally HATED it by the end.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

I love FB and confess to adoring angst more than any other thing, so vol 20 was just my thing (also, Kyo blaming himself for Kyoko's death? Not just unsurprising but expected). But even with my angst-lover tastes, I don't see much angst from the Momiji thing. It's more like "I like her and will get over it blah blah" to me.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

It was the the Momiji thing literally came from nowhere that irritates me.

The thing about the angst is that it's pretty clearly being piled on for the ending, and the series has plenty of justified angst as it is. And angst to have angst makes it difficult for me to not throw things.

[umadoshi.livejournal.com]

(Random fly-by comment. ^^)

Meanwhile, I know it’s been around for a while that Tokyopop has licensed Takaya’s Tsubasa wo Motsu Mono, but did I miss that they’d also licensed Phantom Dream?

Phantom Dream got announced months before Those With Wings (last December at NYAF), and for some reason almost nobody noticed (including most of the industry bloggers who were at that con) until Tokyopop mentioned it again when they announced TWW. It was a little strange. TWW seems to be getting more of a push from Tokyopop now, but that doesn't explain the initial lack of attention.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I think Tokyopop in general isn't as good at advertising new manga as other companies. Granted, I don't closely follow licensing announcements, but it seems that when I see them, Tokyopop just has a list and I see it once, while others have more details, and I see it several times.

I think TWW is getting a bigger push because they're putting it out in the omnibus-style edition that they seem to be switching to.

[umadoshi.livejournal.com]

It's true; I certainly see more press releases go by from, say, Viz. But the reason Phantom Dream's original lack of attention strikes me as so odd is that most of the industry bloggers who covered the panel where it was announced listed all of their other new licenses and didn't mention Dream. I'm under the impression that TWW is thought of as a stronger work (I'm less familiar with it, so I don't really have an informed opinion), but I would've thought Takaya-sensei's name would have caught more people's attention.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I haven't really heard much about either, but will get them both when they come out.

I wonder if Fruits Basket just isn't as much of a hot topic anymore? It's still obviously pretty popular, but the manga is finished in Japan, it's been licensed of years, and the anime has been out for years. I think that, even if they still follow it, people tend to just start moving on after a bit. (I think the main reason these shounen series stay "big" for so long is that their anime series go on forever, so it's right there all the time.)

[umadoshi.livejournal.com]

I'm really hoping they pick up Hoshi wa Utau, too--it's not grabbing me the way FB did, but I'm enjoying it.

I don't have a real feeling of how FB's popularity is with the general manga crowd; most people I know who're into it were following the Japanese release, so there is a sense of moving on even though most/all of them are still buying the English release. I assume that the fact it's still selling so well is a good sign for Takaya's other work, but I'm hoping Tokyopop does more cross-promotion. (I think I've heard that they're planning some with FB and TWW, at least.)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I've never paid close attention to it, but in geberal, I've noticed that if there isn't an anime and the Japanese run is finished, the internet crowd isn't likely to be talking about it.

[shiegra.livejournal.com]

With Akito and Ren, I never got the 'sympathetic' angle so much as the 'seriously fucked up and kinda (in Akito's case) flat-out unable to connect/comprehend emotionally and empathically in normal ways'. I had a weird kind of pity for her--I mean, your mom hates you, you're kept totally isolated and brainwashed with the knowledge that these people are born for you (and the bond goes both ways, even if the power doesn't) and grow up totally emotionally and socially stunted and fucked over--but never really got attached to her. Takaya just did her job too well in earlier volumes.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

The fact that her response was to try to make everyone around her even more miserable and to establish ownership over them makes me incapable of caring about her at all.

[shiegra.livejournal.com]

The only thing that enabled me to have any response for her but revulsion was the possibility that she didn't know any other way to deal with--well, anything. But still...I think Takaya managed 'fucked-up but salvageable' in Tsubasa but not at all here.