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animegenork · 3 years

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Fruits Baskets Final Season Episodes 2 & 3

What? No, I didn’t watch these on the Fridays of the weeks they came out. No, I wasn’t dying from school---

Anyway, back to the grind.

Episode 2

I swear the gif search function HATES me and what I’m trying to do---

Anyway.

I would like to make this very clear. Shigure is a little bit evil. A little bit. But it’s mostly from being twisted by the zodiac curse and his strange form of love. So if you wanted to punch him this episode, that’s good. He needs to be punched. A lot. Like a lot. God, he’s so evil. Moving on.

So the episode begins with young Akito asking Shigure if he loves her. This is, as we’ve seen, something that Akito fixates on, mostly due to her father accidentally warping her with the idea of being eternally loved by the zodiac members. He responds with a very earnest love confession that sort of explains why they spend so much time together, but it also confuses things a bit, at least at first. What with the zodiac spirit, it’s unclear how much of Shigure’s love is real and how much isn’t up to him. That may factor in to whatever the hell is up with him now.

Cut to Tohru working on graduation ceremony flowers and nearly asking Shigure about breaking the curse. Of course, she can’t, because it’s hard to bring up, and she’s only seen 2 sides of Shigure at most. Naturally, he already knows what she’s thinking about, because he’s Shigure. He’s just that good.

Tohru continues to struggle even at school, when she realizes that there’s so much she knows that she probably can’t talk about with Momiji or Haru or anyone else. And since the curse is this ever-present thing to them, she’s not even sure if they’ll believe her or how they’ll react. Rin is the exception to this, of course, since she was already looking for information on it.

There are some shenanigans with the Prince Yuki Fan Club, and Tohru and Kyo are left alone (probably on purpose) by Hanajima, Uotani, and company. But I’ll get back to that in a sec.

Yuki tries to help out other classes with things, but they won’t let him because... well, uh, they think he’s too busy... and he... isn’t... I’m sorry, that’s just so funny to me. So anyway, he runs into Machi, who is being all adorable and stubborn because she wanted to say hello and chased him all over the school to do so. It’s cute, because Yuki’s not used to that much effort being put in to something for his sake. I love Machi like that UwU

Back to Tohru and Kyo, they’ve been waiting for HOURS. Tohru decides to tentatively try out her Kureno talking point, but as soon as she brings up the curse maybe being broken, Kyo tells her that hypotheticals like that are pointless (this is implied paraphrase). He does this mostly because he’s in that pit of despair of “I’m never getting out of this” but also because he doesn’t want to give himself a false hope that might never come true. Tohru, however, becomes sad, because of course she wants to save him from having to be locked away like the previous Cat. So there’s a bit of moment where she’s about to cry.

And then Kyo *sniffle* gives her a flower to make her feel better. *sobs*

Technically speaking, this scene should’ve been in the last season or SOMETHING, I honestly thought they WEREN’T going to put my FAVORITE scene in the anime, and then they did. What’s cute about this scene is how torn up Kyo is from hurting Tohru’s feelings, and how almost desperate he is to make her feel better. It’s a sweet moment, if slightly awkwardly animated, but it’s a rare Tohru and Kyo moment where they don’t even say anything and you can SEE everything they want to say. Of course, they’re interrupted, because they always are (HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT LIKE NEVER HAPPENS WHENEVER YUKI AND TOHRU HAVE A MOMENT?), but hey, I got my fluff, I am fed.

There’s brief mention of Rin and how Tohru hasn’t seen her lately, and I hate it because I know where she is.

Anyway, now on to Shigure being Shigure.

He’s torturing his poor editor again, and he walks away from what appears to have been a heated conversation with... HIS PARENTS. THEY EXIST. I dunno what it is with rarely seeing zodiac parents (besides the obvious cases of Kyo and Momiji), but there you have it. We see then that there’s a big Sohma dinner outing with Akito there, so clearly Shigure planned that. His skills of perception and foresight are serious scary, and I really wonder how the hell he developed them.

There’s a flashback to before Tohru and Kureno’s revealing conversation, and we see that Shigure hates Kureno for being so close to Akito. Of course, Kureno makes it clear that Akito doesn’t love him, that she’s always wanted.... well, he doesn’t say, but I think all of us are familiar enough with how this anime works that we know who he means. But Kureno basically wants Shigure to stop being so cold to Akito, and this is because of how much he wants to keep her happy more than any personal feelings about Shigure.

This is where it gets a bit dicey. I’ve actually got a strange fondness for this scene, if only because it sort of but also not really gets to the heart of why Shigure is the way he is.

Shigure appears in Akito’s room, and she’s basically jealous that he was out with another woman. Then she brings up his sexual relationship with his editor (nonexistent), which is rather petty, but then, when was this duo not about pettiness? The implication Akito makes is that he sleeps with every woman he meets (explains a lot). She then mentions that Shigure slept with Ren, Akito’s mother (I’m not going to touch on how screwed up that is), which is why he’s living in a house away from the main estate. Shigure acts all cool and says that was a long time ago, he’s been punished, but Akito points out that he almost wanted to leave. Which... he did, but not for any lack of love on his part. And he says that. He recalls the conversation we see at the beginning, in which he tells her he cares about her more than anyone else. Understandably, she’s frustrated, and she asks why he always tests her.

It’s because she slept with Kureno. Petty, I know.

The phone conversation comes back. Everything you need to understand about Shigure is in one sentence: “I love her so much that sometimes I want to spoil her rotten, and sometimes I want to crush her into a pulp.” This is nearly verbatim of the manga translation I read a long time ago, and it’s always stuck with me. The thing is, Akito was always told she’s special and she can do with the zodiac as she pleases (which she says directly in this episode). It seems a part of Shigure didn’t like that that extended to those that weren’t him (Kureno), and his love for her warped and twisted into this kinda toxic relationship. (Kinda, she says, as if it’s not very.) This makes him want to be kind to her, but at the same time, he wants to be mean to her and show her how much pain she’s put him through, too. It’s pettiness at its extreme, but it’s somehow more believable than other forms of petty jealousy I’ve seen.

Oh yeah, and then they have sex.

Once again, there’s brief mention of Rin, perhaps she’s in the hospital, we don’t really know. But the main part of this all is Shigure remembering that before Akito was born/in his life, he had always been sort of waiting for her, which is mostly the zodiac spirit talking but is also interesting nonetheless. How much of Shigure’s love is influenced by the zodiac curse? How much of it is him? I don’t know if we ever find that out, because frankly, the curse did a lot of things to everyone involved, including him.

I still love Shigure, don’t get me wrong, but this is SUCH an interesting episode.

Episode 3

Precisely the gif I wanted. Hehehe.

IT’S A MACHI EPISODE! AND I LOVE HER, SO THAT’S ALRIGHT!

Still pissed about Kyo’s screentime being so awful lately. ads;fkjsad;fklsda

Some student council shenangians occur as always, and it’s revealed that Nao has a crush on someone, which is why he declared Yuki to be his rival on day one. Also, Kimi is a golddigger.

Some girls come in and gossip about Machi making a mess again with one of her outbursts, and they mention a rumor about her trying to kill her brother, which is why she lives alone. Kakeru looks quite displeased to hear this, and Machi walks in on the conversation and runs away, with Yuki wanting to go after her.

Kakeru tells Yuki later that the rumor is “mostly true”--that is, that’s the story he’s been told as well. Of course, he’s wary to believe it, because while they’re not terribly close, he knows her a little better than the parents do. He then tells a story of seeing Machi making footprints in the snow, almost obsessively, and he’s not quite sure why she did it (but Kakeru has a Shigure streak, so I wonder if maybe he does know?).

So Kakeru decides to pull a sort of jerk move and visit Machi while with Yuki, and she tries to turn them away to no avail. Of course, Yuki isn’t put off by the mess, since he and Shigure used to live that way, so he’s all cheerful about it while Machi is dying in the corner. I will not talk much about the bra incident, but that was honestly the most hilarious few seconds.

Finally left alone, Machi asks why Yuki is there, assuming it’s about the rumor her classmates mentioned. She says she’s done trying to correct everybody, since no one ever seems to believe her anyway. (That is all too relatable, especially in high school.)

But Yuki doesn’t even mind. He asks something else instead: does she hate perfection? And she says yes. TEN POINTS TO GRYFFINDOR.

Wait. My bad.

Anyway, Machi has a flashback to what I believe I’ve mentioned before, which is Machi’s mom forcing her to be perfect so that she could beat Kakeru in the succession war (England?) with her family. When that was called off, her mother would say right in front of her face (jerk) that Machi was boring. Machi asked her why she would say that when she was just trying to do what she was told. Her mother has the gall to be offended by the implication that it’s her fault (IT IS, YOU IDIOT--) and then turns around and says maybe she raised Machi wrong.

Here’s a hint: that’s not what you say to your CHILD.

Poor Machi didn’t know what to do with herself. What is she supposed to do if she’s just a “mistake” her mother made?

Yuki, in his cute way of knowing precisely what she means, tells her she’s worked hard to get where she is, and that he’s glad she’s here. She’s not used to compliments like that, and it’s a very sweet moment. That’s when she admits that she was just trying to take care of her brother, but her parents wrongly and automatically assumed she was jealous and trying to kill him (which says a lot about how god awful they are). And she’s finally able to let it out and cry with Yuki, who offers to go leave footprints in the snow with her.

My heart might’ve burst during that, not gonna lie--

I think my favorite part of the episode is the next day, during a student council meeting. A new, perfect box of chalk is placed in front of Machi, and you can see in her eyes that the perfection is about to make her snap. Yuki, knowing this, calmly reaches over and breaks a piece of chalk, ruining the “perfection” of it. It’s very sweet of him and a very cute moment for both.

Then we cut to Tohru handing Kyo a flower, which is whiplash to the previous episode I’m glad we got.

The next sequence was a bit confusing at first, as I thought we’d sort of covered this already in season one, but we get to see Motoko. She’s called Yuki out in order to tell him that he made her high school days happier, and that she truly loved him. Motoko also hopes that Yuki himself will find happiness, which I think is a nod at her recognizing Tohru’s influence on him. It’s kind of cute, because even Yuki seems to appreciate her words, and we get to cut to a nice graduation song that actually kind of made me cry.

Motoko is still in a classroom when someone finds her. It’s Nao, and it appears that she was the girl he was in love with, which I LOVE. I HOPE HE OR SHE OR THEY ARE HAPPY TOGETHER OR EVEN APART, JUST THAT HE EVENTUALLY GOT TO TELL HER OR SOMETHING AND AHHHHHH. He tells her that goodbye is not the end, and it always leads to “nice to meet you,” which is sweet for both of them, considering her graduation and his being left behind.

Then we get to meet Hiro’s baby sister, Hinata, a true cutie pie. I think I cried here, too, for different reasons.

Finally, we see Kagura having picked up Rin’s diploma (YAY SHE GRADUATED YAYYYY), and wondering where she is despite her mother’s warnings not to investigate. Hatori and Shigure are a bit suspicious, too, and we see Akito with a pair of scissors.... OwO

[I know what happened and I hate it.]

I’m glad I could finally do these, it’s been a couple of weeks of hell, to be honest. Hopefully, Fruits Basket will be back at it again and I’ll have something more to wax poetic about, haha. Thanks for reading!

#fruits basket #furuba #fruits basket final season #kyo and yuki loving hours #also tohru and machi loving hours #all day every day #i like how i highlighted these two couples with the gifs

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