Izzie Babbles

NGL this one was a challenge but I glad I took it on, and also that I kept the text in.

So this was one of the moments Kyo was having an existential crisis after Cinderella-ish, just in heavy denial about the possibility that Tohru could have feelings for him and..ksjeidhdbaj.

Original scan was across 2 pages so I had to stitch it together and take a lot of creative liberties but I’m really happy with it.

[ Colorized Fruits Basket Manga Scans : Kyoru In Color ]

Original:

TAKARI WEEK DAY 4 - “GROWN UP”

When I started this project, I just KNEW I had to do this scene that was ultimately cut from the anime. I have many feels about it.

One of the things that I think people miss is the zoom in panel on the left that is actually covered partially by Kyo’s face in another panel under it in the raw version. I edited that part out to bring more attention to the zoom - cause giiiirrrrll. You can see that Kyo’s hand moved down so his fingers are over her LIPS and I think that’s very intimate.

***MINOR MANGA SPOILERS BELOW***

I feel like that this panel was included on purpose and also a little obscured on purpose. It’s a little detail that’s easy to miss but I think very important cause it shows a little bit more of the physicality of their relationship that gets overlooked in favor of the extremely emotionally intimate aspects. Which, like, I get it. Their relationship is heavily romantic / emotional, and I think that’s very important. But it’s not devoid of physical attraction and sexual tension. It’s subtle, but think the manga showed this part of their pairing a lot more than the anime does. Kyo is a VERY physical person and he starts getting extremely physically close to Tohru in ways that make it clear this is not a platonic situation.

Anyway. Ramble over. Enjoy!

Please don’t repost.

a day out ❤️✨

Tohru whipping Kyo with her scarf is an iconic move. Pt 1

in a narrative sense, for yuki’s story in particular, their romantic relationship is just…. a little too easy to pick apart. there’s something important about yuki understanding her as someone who needs him in return of him needing her, yes, and that’s something he feels ready to provide for another person (never mind the fact that he does provide this to his best friend and he’s just. wholly unaware of it.). but the big thing that their romantic relationship introduces, in the final chapters of the series, is that there’s this “need” for him to tell someone about his curse. 

it’s more or less a close on his story pertaining to the curse – by this point, he’s had to come to accept himself, and understand himself, outside of his family’s influence; by this point, he has become entirely integrated into a life that seems to be completely untouched by the curse. the student council has offered him a reprieve from his family issues, and has given him to space necessary to really grow away from it and create healthy relationships and a stronger sense of self. 

but, this doesn’t mean that his curse isn’t still a part of him – while it’s a metaphor for cyclical family abuse, it’s also something that has a physical manifestation. the physicality of the curse is something that has more or less been placed on the back burner in his mind, as he instead focuses on the mental trauma it dealt him and trying to move on in a way that allows him to really heal. and he does have this major moment of moving on: during the second new year’s, he accepts that, while he may not have deserved what happened to him in his childhood at the hands of akito and his mother, he’s no longer allowing himself to shift the blame to them when he understands he’s responsible for how he grows past it. this isn’t a moment of him saying he’s “cured” of his traumas, but rather a verbal admittance that he’s going to continue taking his matters into his own hands. 

after this point, the majority of his screentime is spent with the student council, particularly building on his relationships with kakeru and machi. during this time, there’s a narrative shift away from him trying to deal with his problems, and instead being a means of support for his friends. there’s a narrative close on the gap between him and ayame during this time as well; for all intents and purposes, he has worked through his issues that the curse caused for him. again, not “cured,” but at a place of acceptance and healing.

which means that, by the time we get to the end of the story, and there’s this need for these narratives surrounding the curse to close, all that there’s left for yuki in the curse narrative is the question of whether or not he’s going to tell his friends about it. he did the most difficult parts of it already, but there still lies the matter of if he’s ready to tell them about it. his storyline involving his learning to be vulnerable, and opening up to people, does bear weight in this.

except, it doesn’t really take that direction at all. the “curse” to him, by the end of the story, is only a concern as far as its physical caveat goes – his motivation to tell machi about it is purely for the fact that he can’t hug girls. it’s not to do with the devastating toll it’s taken on him and his family, or what exactly he’s been working through and processing the whole time he’s known her and kakeru. the only reason he thinks to bring it up is because it will eventually get in the way of his and machi’s relationship, which has only recently become romantic.

which, to be frank, is kind of bullshit after watching his whole arc unfold.  

his arc in part involves him becoming someone who can be open and vulnerable to others in order to grow and heal. his need for growing past his trauma necessitates that he goes beyond the boundaries of his family and confides in someone who listens to and accepts him just as he is, with no expectations or baggage attached. we do watch him finally have an opening up scene with kakeru, not about the curse or his childhood (in full), but about something that’s still incredibly heavy to him, and it’s at this point that he realizes that he’s someone who can be accepted despite these parts of himself that he considers difficult and hard to deal with. 

this is step one in his being vulnerable with kakeru. it’s not an easy thing, but it’s not the full weight of the curse, either.

now. for some reason, he feels no need to explain the curse to kakeru. it’s not even something that crosses his mind. for all its baggage, and for everything it stands for, it’s just not something he thinks to tell him. there are two standpoints to consider for this:

a) they’re still fairly early in their friendship by the end of the series (a little less than a year), and it shouldn’t be expected of yuki to discuss the extent of his trauma to him just yet, even if he is his best friend. that’s something that takes time. 

b) it doesn’t matter because kakeru’s a boy and isn’t affected by the curse in its physical manifestation. 

point a makes sense. it’s a heavy thing to deal with and yuki is still in the process of really handling it on his own terms. choosing when to open up about it comes in its own time.

point b doesn’t make sense. if we recall from the beginning of the series, yuki considers the curse as something that’s fully socially ostracizing – it’s something that he considered kept him away from all of his peers. and while he does come around to have a better self-esteem and have fulfilling friendships with the student council, i think it’s fully brash to assume that he considers it as something that “doesn’t matter” to his friendships. 

and yet, point b is the direction the story decides to take. yuki only takes into consideration the curse’s physical side effect, and thus that’s his motivation to tell machi. machi, who he does not have as close or as vulnerable a relationship with as he does kakeru (yes, machi opens up a lot to him, but yuki does not open up to her in the same caliber that we see him open up to kakeru), who is only just starting to really, really know yuki, even as just a friend.

“but abby, they’re dating, so she has to know!” here’s a question: why are they dating?

yuki’s story is not a romance. it’s not. as nice as yuki and machi are together, there isn’t actually a need for them to be romantically paired; his story is about being able to open up to other people and accept other people into his life, a social skill that other people usually fulfill during childhood; his story is, in large part, about playing catch-up in the social realm. and while there is a romantic element tied into it via his issues with tohru, he ultimately finds peace in his platonic relationships. tohru and kakeru specifically are the people he needs as friends in order to achieve the next step of his journey; first he needs to learn how to rely on others emotionally, after which point he can become a friend that others can emotionally rely on, without him succumbing to placing others before his own needs. 

machi becomes the first person he feels adequately prepared to reach out to with the intention of being an emotional support. what kakeru is to him, he is to machi. 

so. why are they dating? narratively, for no real reason other than to pair yuki off. they could have had a completely fulfilling relationship as just friends. this isn’t even to mention that machi, by this point in the story, has no friends outside of yuki and her literal brother. they’re the only people who really know her. she doesn’t need a romantic relationship – she needs friendships. she is literally in the same position that yuki was in the beginning of his journey, and she is not given the same care that he was in her own journey of acceptance and discovery. she’s prematurely placed in a romantic relationship because it “made sense” for the end of yuki’s story.

but, moving on. what comes with this is the price of his final confrontation with the curse, and it falling flat because he’s put in a position where he feels forced to tell machi. the fact that it’s something forced brings up two major issues with how it fits in which his characterization: one, that he’s telling her purely because of a technicality. he’s only telling her because of the curse’s physical restrictions. if this wasn’t the case, he would have told, or at the very least considered, telling kakeru about it first instead. two, this insinuates that this isn’t something he feels ready to discuss. for a storyline that is so much about having the choice to be vulnerable, and making that choice in order to move forward, it doesn’t sit well that he felt forced into it because of a romantic relationship that, in the scope of his and machi’s stories, was premature at best. 

If Yuchi was always going to be end game, i would have rather it been after the credits roll, insinuating that there was possibility that gets confirmed in the sequel rather than making it definitive. I agree with you strongly that Yuki’s arc of platnoic love awakening would have been a perfect way to end his story.

Please R&R!!!!!!!

my children, there was another before it, older and untagged

Kudos to Tohru for keeping it together

Cause if somebody looked at me like that 3 inches from my face