Fruits Basket Rewatch (#101) Thoughts:
What if the only Sohma to transform in the first episode was Kyo, do you think Yuki and Shigure would have just convinced Tohru that it was a Kyo-specifc curse? How long do you think they could have kept it up?
Can you imagine if the whole show was the same, but Tohru insisted on staying in her tent, only in the yard instead of the forest. Just demanding independence while still eating meals with the Sohmas, cleaning the house, etc. The sleepover episode with Arisa and Hana would have been HILARIOUS
AU where everything is the same, but Tohru DOES get her memories wiped at the end of episode 2, but Yuki keeps his promise and befriends her (and she still ends up living with them somehow)...and we just get to watch the Sohmas panic as they try to stop her from remembering or discovering their secret AGAIN. Tohru still meets all of Yuki and Kyo's wacky relatives....just with NO context for why
The degree to which Kyo is used to being physically hurt by others makes me CRAZY
I would love to see Kyoko interact with (re: drop kick) Shigure
The fact that we never get to see the Sohma's panic when realizing Tohru's birthday is coming up makes me SO SAD
So....Kagura is a lesbian, right? We can all agree about that? Deeply attaches to an emotionally unavailable, but always near-by boy and makes liking him her whole personality so she never has to interrogate why she doesn't have feelings for any OTHER boys?
It is absolute BS that Hatori's hair and eye color is black. His sea horse form is YELLOW. my man should be BLONDE, WTF
ALSO, re: zodiac colors--the original dragon in the flashback is GREEN, so really Hatori should be rocking a green hairdo. AND Momiji should have WHITE hair, since the original rabbit was white. (I do like the idea of Momiji looking like his mom so, head cannon the other rabbits had white hair but Momiji's mom's genetics said "fuck that" and made him blonde anyway) Actually more about Momiji, if he did have white hair, I think they should have committed to him having red eyes too--that would have been such a fun added layer to the curse and their appearances
The fact that the 2019 anime felt the need to clarify that Hatori can't ACTUALLY wipe memories....but in no way addresses the fact that Tohru is best friends with a Real Psychic. Totally not explained. Understood by all to be just....A Thing that happens.
Also, RE: Tohru's birthday? Considering what a big deal the story makes about Tohru's first new years without her mom, you would really think the author would also mention Tohru's first birthday without her mom too. Maybe even some existential dread about one day being older than her mom was when she died.
ALSO ABOUT BIRTHDAYS the end of the series should have mined the Sohma's birthdays as angst filled count down clocks to when Kyo would be imprisoned/when everyone would go back to Akito!
The first season really makes me a Momiji truther....homeboy has had it down bad for Tohru from DAY. ONE. 😭😭😭
If you ever want to freak yourself out for fun, think about someone in the Sohma family, maybe a distant, branch family--never once having a zodiac member being born to them. They are straight up in the dark about the curse that runs through their blood. One day, one of them hears in passing that some important family member just passed away. Oh well. They didn't know them, and they won't be invited to the funeral, so it passes out of their mind without a second thought. But then....they get pregnant! Yay! But then....those same important family members, who have never looked at the branch family before, never acknowledged them, start to circle....start to pay a LOT of attention....do you think the "inner" family would tell them about the curse? Probably not, right? They would wait until the baby is born to see if they are born with a zodiac spirit....🫣🫣🫣 can you imagine????? (Tbh a lot of pregnancy things are essentially body horror to me but STILL!!!)
The hot springs episode gives me Big Gender feelings about Momiji...Yuki and Kyo are in blue robes, and Tohru is in pink. Momiji is in green and that makes me go "!!!!!" (Plus the next episode with his high school uniform!!)
Have we, as a fandom, addressed the fact that Akito definitely gave Yuki/forced Yuki to have matching haircuts? (I personally head cannon that the fact that Yuki's hair is asymmetrical is because he cut it himself after he moved to Shigure's as a way of exerting some control over himself)
Fully believe (not a head cannon, this is just factual to me) that the reason Shigure and Ayame do their weird flirting thing is because as teens, Ayame came out as some kind of LGBTQ to Hatori and Shigure, and Shigure immediately started joking about needing to watch out for Ayame falling for him, but Ayame was like "what you're not my type, Hatori is my type" and that fucked up Shigure so bad that Ayame started flirting with him just to repair his ego. Now that they are grown its just a running bit.
HUGE AU that I looove thinking about---Ayame taking Yuki and running away with him after Yuki reaches out to him when they are kids. Ayame, a big gay disaster who has never had to work a day in his life, trying to raise baby Yuki, who is still sick and traumatized. It becomes a road trip movie as they have to stay one step ahead of the Sohmas coming after them, as Ayame tries to build a life for his brother and repair their relationship
