I needn’t have worried about the slackening plot momentum in Fruits Basket. As Adam Stephanides promised, volume 17 roars out of the gate with all kinds of crazy revelations and high drama.
(Spoilers after the cut.)
By Tezuka’s jaunty beret, that Sohma family is just plain creepy. I know this shouldn’t come as a revelation or anything, as there’s already ample evidence of their multifaceted dysfunction, but damnation, people!
The major revelation of the volume is unsettling to me mostly for my reaction to it. The knowledge that Akito is a woman comes shortly before a significant shift in my sympathies regarding that character. While readers learn a number of other painful secrets about the head of the Sohma family, I’m left to wonder if my sympathies that easily swayed because I found out that this ghastly creature is a woman? Or was it just the cumulative effect of that revelation plus all of the startlingly horrible bits of new information I received? Or is Natsuki Takaya just that good that she can drop that many bombshells at once and still make it fluidly unsettling reading beyond surface shock?
I do have to say that the flashback showing the various cursed Sohma children gathering tearfully around Akito’s unsuspecting mother was one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen in a manga in ages.
And in a pleasant change of pace, the volume actually features plenty of page-space for the character who graces its cover. I love Hanajima, and I’m delighted that Takaya is keeping Tohru’s non-Sohma friends woven into the narrative. Her little brother is a treat too.
I’m still not entirely persuaded by Rin as a character, but I’ve got plenty of reason to trust Takaya at this point.
The Manga Curmudgeon 
Oh man, the older Sohma kids and Ren scene is just the first of many spine-tingling moments you have to look forward to in the final volumes of the series. 🙂 Not all of them are quite so eerie, but they definitely pack some serious shojo manga punch. I had been getting bored with the endless student council stuff (which I think is brilliantly executed, but only in retrospect), and was almost considering dropping the series when vol. 17 came along and I fell in love with the Sohma family all over again.
I got really impatient with the student council stuff, though I kept reminding myself that there really aren’t any trivialities in this series, ultimately. I’m reasonably certain that it will come back to make me weep later, though how isn’t really apparent when you’re… well… slogging through it.
I’m looking forward to my spine tingling! How many more volumes are there?
This is one of my favorite volumes, though not, in fact, for the Akito revelations. This is the volume where Takaya finally stops teasing us and really begins to show Shigure’s machinations, including some of what he really feels. His blunt declaration of hatred to Kureno is topped only by one of the most twisted declarations of love in shoujo manga (“I want to trample her to a pulp”). Shigure is one of my favorite characters in the entire series, though I understand why people who saw the anime first may hate him. 🙂
By the way, next volume is almost all Rin, so hopefully your doubts will be assuaged there.
And there are 23 volumes.
[…] Moon Diary at Prospero’s Manga. At Precocious Curmudgeon, David Welsh has some thoughts about vol. 17 of Fruits Basket (warning: spoilers!). Craig Johnson is disappointed by vol. 1 of Translucent at Manga Life. Nick […]
I’m getting goosebumps just remembering this stuff. I kept up with the Japanese revelations by summary on a mailing list, so alas, this won’t be new to me, but I haven’t /read/ it translated, so I look forward to it.
Re: the student council. It was here that I really started to seriously love Yuki. When the series started, Shigure was my favorite, but Yuki’s quiet bravery, continuing on, trying to be strong, finding someone whom he can support rather than the other way around… it just makes me so, well, /proud/ of him. Ultimately, Yuki ended up becoming my favorite character.
Shawn: It was really impressive how Shigure shifted from mildly amusing cad to full-on bastard romantic. That’s another example of the benefits of re-reading the series, looking back and seeing seemingly benign or throw-away scenes in a different context. (I saw the anime episodes after reading a lot of the manga, and my only major reaction was to want to place a curse of my own on whoever cast the voice of Momiji.)
Jun: That’s a good point about the student council scenes. They really do show progress and courage on Yuki’s part, and it’s a nice way of illustrating the weirdness and isolation of his life so far.