#furuba analysis

Akito also lost her father at a young age, but unlike in Tohru’s situation, her mother permanently rejects her afterwards. This gave Akito a fear of abandonment and causes her to aggressively cling to the other zodiac members. As the head of the family, she believes that she’s owed a relationship with them. She maintains these bonds with extreme force, lashing out at the possibility of them caring for anyone else.

Boy, what do you mean, "why?" She accepted you at your lowest point and showed you kindness and warmth you've never known. You have a completely reciprocated give and take dynamic in your relationship. She encourages you, listens to you, understands you, and fights for you. There was no possible way you wouldn't fall completely in love with her.

I get that this is also probably a throwback to Kagura saying that love isn't based on logic. But that's how her feelings for Kyo were. Yuki mentioned that he was actually jealous of Kagura's explanation, because it still meant that she had a form of reasoning for her romantic feelings to be valid. Yuki had to accept that his feelings for Tohru weren't romantic, which made him feel lonely and lost. He wanted a love that was based in some reason. He saw Kyo and Tohru and found that romantic affection can be found in the total capacity that one has to love a single particular individual. And while that totality can be inexplicable, it's also divinely fated and rare.

Everyone's experiences in life form them to have the capacity to love and understand someone out there in a way that only they can. But you can go your whole life without ever meeting that person. There can be a level of reason to it, and it does matter.

(Disclaimer: I haven’t read the Fruits Basket sequel yet—this post is based on the original manga + anime)

Let’s talk about Akito and mental health.

Akito is introduced in a deeply dysfunctional environment. Her father treats her like a divine being because of her inherited role, while her mother resents and envies her. She's raised as a boy (which, narratively, is… questionable in terms of the transgender stereotypes it leans on). From early on, she’s isolated, idolized, and emotionally manipulated. It's the kind of abuse that often creates more abuse.

As a result, Akito becomes emotionally immature and abusive. I wouldn’t go overboard with labels, but she does show strong narcissistic traits. Her self-worth is so fragile that she needs to control others, to keep herself at the center of their world—especially the Zodiac members. She can’t handle empathy, and the idea that someone else (Tohru) could become the emotional center of that world drives her wild. In season 2, she literally sabotages the vacation just because she can’t stand the idea of them being happy without her.

One of the most telling moments is when Shigure tells her that he slept with her mother to hurt her, because she had done the same with Kureno. And Akito responds: “You don’t get to do that. I can, because I’m God.” It’s a brutal, honest expression of how twisted the Soma family dynamic is, and how entangled her identity is with control and punishment.

And yet, despite all this, I found myself grateful that Akito is given a breakthrough. As a psychologist, and as someone who has been on the receiving end of this kind of personality, I believe in healing. I don't think abuse can be forgiven easily (nor should it be !) but I do believe that people can grow and change.

Akito decides to walk away from the system that made her who she is. She leaves the Soma house. She accepts that the curse will end with this generation, and stops chasing the fantasy her family fed her. In her own way, she too breaks the cycle of intergenerational trauma. Just like each of the Zodiac members do in their own way.

So I get it when people in the fandom say “I can’t forgive Akito.” That’s fair. And in-universe, people like Rin absolutely have the right not to forgive. You don’t owe forgiveness to someone who hurt you. Some characters forgive but never forget. All of that is valid. Everyone deals with abuse differently. As a victim myself, I can forgive but never forget and the relationship is broken forever.

But sometimes, the impulse of the fandom to loudly declare “I’ll never forgive Akito” also feels like a refusal to engage with the messiness of her arc. It can, unintentionally, come off as dismissive of how ugly mental health struggles can look from the outside. Her behavior is disturbing because trauma often is. But to flatten her character into a villain-only lens is to miss the point of Fruits Basket’s storytelling. I’m glad that Fruits Basket gives space to the idea that some abusers(not all, but some) can reach a moment of clarity. That they can walk away, unlearn, start again. That Akito might, one day, become someone else entirely. Free of the Soma curse. Free of her own pain.

That said… I really wish Shigure wasn’t part of her “new life.” I would’ve loved if their relationship remained something incomplete. First love, sure, the only one who dared to shatter her god-complex. But with all the mutual toxicity and abuse between them, I don’t think a healthy relationship is possible. And they both carry too much of the Soma legacy with them. It's great fanfiction material for angsty exploration but not a realistic ending.

If Akito had lost not only her role and her family system, but also the possibility of a relationship with Shigure, her arc would’ve felt even more grounded and emotionally powerful. It would have mirrored real life more closely: growth often comes with loss. And maybe, paradoxically, viewers might have found her more relatable, more deserving of empathy, if she hadn’t been “rewarded” with a romance at the end.

I wish Akito could’ve found love and friendship outside the Soma household. A different kind of love, chosen freely, not shaped by trauma.

(Just look at how Yuki smiles when they're together! Gah!!!!)

So I've written about Yuki pairings before, and I've been pretty open about both my undying love for Yuchi AND my enjoyment of two of the other frequent Yuki pairings, Yukeru and YukiKyo.

As I've been doing more analysis, especially the Enneagram series (which isn't finished btw!), I've started to realize that Yuchi was written and set up almost as well as Kyoru, and the only reason it's harder to see is because Yuki's arc is distinctly non-romantic.

I'm currently working on an analysis of his arc over the course of the story, and romance just isn't really a factor in his arc beyond him rejecting compulsory romance with Tohru. In fact, the people who share the biggest emotional and plot beats with him are Tohru, Kyo, Akito, Haru, and Kakeru (in no particular order). I'll come back to this in a bit.

So if Yuki doesn't really have a romance arc, what makes him and Machi such a good match?

Well, going back to my Enneagram posts about them, Yuki is a SP 4w3, and Machi is a SP 3w4. They're mirrors of each other.

In my intro to the Enneagram post, I shared each type's core fear and core desire. Here are 3 and 4:

Core desire (3): to be loved for who they are, to be valuable and worthwhile

Core fear (3): being worthless, insignificant; failure

Core desire (4): to be seen and loved for who they are

Core fear (4): having no personal identity or significance, being flawed and missing out on some basic aspect of happiness that other people have access to

What Yuki and Machi each want most is for someone to love them for who they truly are. Yuki (largely due to Akito's abuse, but also the erasure of his friends' memories, Ayame's indifference, his mother's coldness, and Kyo's hatred of him) believes people wouldn't want to know him if he showed his true self because of his perceived defects. And Machi (due to the successorship battle, her mother's insults and demands of perfection, and her parents' bad faith reading of her actions) believes she's failed at the role laid out for her and lacks any value or significance.

Because Yuki is a bit further on in his personal growth than Machi when they meet, he sees her struggle and recognizes it, giving Machi the thing she most needs as an achievement-oriented 3 when he praises her simply for being who she is ("You've worked hard to become the Machi you are today.").

And because that moment was so transformative for Machi, she sees and recognizes Yuki's inner kindness, giving him the thing he most needs as an identity-concerned 4 when she tells him it took someone like him to notice someone like her.

I often see people argue that Yuki's relationship with Machi isn't mutual; that he gives and she takes. I also see people argue that Yuki's relationships with Tohru, Haru, and Kakeru aren't mutual; that they give and Yuki takes. I firmly disagree with both of these assessments, but I think Yuki himself would only disagree with the first.

Beginning with Machi, there are the obvious ways she contributes to their relationship, like when she rescued him from the storage room, and there are the moderately obvious ways, like when he overheard her saying that he's not like a prince and he seems lonely (thus showing that she understands him). But Yuki also needed to feel significant to someone the way he felt to Machi. He needed someone to figure out.

This makes sense for him as a 4. Since being seen and loved for himself is the thing Yuki wants most deeply, it's also what he thinks "giving" means in a relationship. Kyo could read Tohru in a way Yuki never could, and that made him feel inferior. He tried "competing" with Kyo for Tohru, because he thought that was what he was expected to do, but it wasn't what he truly wanted. Kakeru and Haru have already been through their most relevant growth by the time the series starts, so Yuki doesn't feel like he has anything to contribute to their relationships (even though he was the impetus for Haru's growth many years ago).

But Yuki did help his friends, and often. He was the one who offered Tohru a room in the house he shared with Shigure. He helped Tohru study. He checked on Haru after he was suspended and independently decided to try and talk to Rin on his behalf. He helped Kakeru be more empathetic and experienced alongside him some of the things they missed out on in their childhoods.

And it needs to be said that his friendship with Tohru, Haru, and Kakeru mattered at least as much to them as it did to him. Tohru was so lonely, and Yuki was the first close friend she made after her mother died. Haru was angry all the time until Yuki challenged some of the family's prejudice about him. Kakeru, like Yuki, didn't really get to have a normal childhood, including the silly shenanigans that kids get up to with their friends.

So, going back to the statement I made above, that Yuki shares his most significant story beats with Kakeru, Akito, Tohru, Kyo, and Haru, this is part of what makes Yukeru and YukiKyo such rich pairings to explore.

You could argue that Yuki has 3 "coming out" scenes in Fruits Basket. There's the one where he tells Kakeru how he really feels about Tohru, taking place at the third plot point. There's the one where he tells Kyo how he really feels about him, which occurs at the climax. And there's the one where he tells Tohru how he really feels about her, in the resolution.

Some of it has to do with the content of these scenes. In Kakeru's and Tohru's, he's admitting he doesn't see Tohru romantically, even though he initially felt like he should.

It's touching that Kakeru is the first person he opens up to about this. It speaks to their closeness and the fact that they're on similar journeys reclaiming some of the childhood that was stolen from them. And it certainly has a gay subtext (is it even subtext if he literally comes out of a closet in this scene?).

And as for Kyo, Yuki's admiration could easily be read as infatuation. The fact that they've been misunderstanding each other this whole time when they really have this huge thing in common would be a great basis for the start of a relationship.

In contrast, Yuki doesn't really have much of an arc with Machi. He's responsible for many (all?) of her most emotional story beats, but the parts of Yuki's actual arc that shine are moments like the ones I mentioned above, or when Haru talks to him at his story midpoint after he finds Rin near the house, or when he and Tohru see the shooting stars and he begins to internally accept his feelings toward her.

So, each of these characters plays a role in Yuki's arc. Tohru is the catalyst, Haru the mentor, Akito the shadow, Kyo the antagonist, Kakeru the sidekick, and Machi the love interest.

Machi sort of exists within Yuki's story as a vehicle for him to show his growth. As he gets more comfortable with himself, he takes her by the hand so she can walk the same path as him.

I've said before that I think his arc would've been satisfying without him ending up in a relationship at the end, and I still think that's true. Romance is not really a part of his trajectory beyond rejecting it with Tohru.

But I really, really love him with Machi, and it was satisfying in a different way to see how all the growing he did throughout the story allowed him to be just who she needed, and how she, in turn, was exactly who he needed, too.

Here are some sweet Yuchi posts, just because I love them so much!

the chalk scene

more chalk

more chalk

cool fanart

more cool fanart!

mangacaps

more mangacaps

Machi learning how to person

anime screencaps

Honda Tohru - The Maiden;

Maidens are tend to be innocent, they give that ‘take care of me’ vibe. They are innocent and creative, sometimes naive and positive. They tend to be a little more sensitive. They have that youtfull energy, and childish curiosity. Maidens are also explore their sexuality very slowly. And their weakness is sometimes they can lack commitment, direction or they can be codependent.

I think all those traits fits really well to Tohru. Since she is very sweet, ‘take care of me’ type of character and positive and naive too. She also tend to be very codependent.

Sohma Akito - The Queen;

Just like any typical queen, Akito has that royalty energy. She is natural noble, elegant, she has confidence and natural leader, she has manners. Queens’s weakness are that they tend to struggle when they dont have partner. They are also very loyal and expect loyalty from them to the point they justify their partner’s toxic behavours. I know pre-redemption Akito is toxic but this is what actual Akito would be, if she actually had life and she deserves very good, loyal guy. Also, queens tend to easiely erase their female friends which is one of the biggest flaws they have.

Sohma Kagura - The Maiden;

Just like Tohru, Kagura also tend to be very naive, she has very youthfull energy. She is also very childish.

Uotani Arisa - The Huntress;

Huntress are adventreous type, they are passionate and competitive, though they sometimes might emotionally dumb. All those traits fits well to Arisa.

Hanajima Saki - The Mystic;

Mystics are asocial, they live in their small world, and they are fine with that. They have very cozy, comfortable energy. Which also fits very well to Hanajima.

Sohma Kisa - The Maiden;

Kisa is definitely ‘take care of me’ type of character, she is also very sweet, naive and innocent.

Sohma Rin - The Huntress;

Huntress are more adventerous type, they desire freedom and one of the biggest of flaw of them that they sometimes might be emotionally distant. Riin always give me that ‘adventreous’ type of energy.

Kuragi Machi - The Sage;

This one was hard for me to find out but i think sage fits better for Machi since she is succesfull woman and tend to act with her logic. At least, it fits better compared to other types.

Extras;

Tohru’s mother is huntress. Sohma Kana is maiden. Shiraki Mayu is huntress. Sohma ren is very ‘toxic’ lover type. Minagawa Motoko might be maiden. Toudou Kimi might be lover type. I dont remember others. Mother type character doesnt fit to any characters. I write the type what those girls fit the most, they all great though, they all are different which is what makes it fun to analyze.

my two cents (warning: dramatic post and analysis coming thru...) *I reread the manga for the 4th time and I still have feels to share.

I know how overrated this post is but this is the only manga wherein the trio: Tohru, Kyo and Yuki are absolute favorites of mine (when I read shoujo, I always have this habit of liking the secondary characters more than the mcs coz they can be annoying sometimes) but not once have I felt annoyed or bored by this three. (this is also one of the rare mangas wherein I love almost all the characters except ren and the abusive parents in this series and im forever neutral with akito).

One of the reasons that made me drawn to the manga is how Ms. Takaya gave us these ensemble of characters suffering and trying to cope the trauma that had developed (whether the inhumane and disturbing living experiences of the Sohmas; being bullied by classmates; losing a parent; abusive households; etc.) . Focusing on the two zodiac mcs, Yuki never experienced love from anyone before. He was isolated, abused, and tortured multiple times. The thing that gave him hope was when he helped Tohru on her way home. And even though he somehow lived away from the main house, the isolation caused him the scare to reveal his real self and has the tendency to mingle with others coz he’s ashamed so he put on this princely act. Similar to that, Kyo was given the false kind of love from his mother (whom I also felt sorry for because she was also a victim of abuse) and was estranged from his father. While he began to experience love from kazuma and briefly from kyoko, he was still isolated and treated poorly by others. To add fuel to the fire, the guilt he experienced when he saw an old companion of his died before his eyes became too much for him. Because of these, both guys hold a tremendous amount of self-hatred. I applaud the mangaka for putting two characters who hated each other but share a similar burden despite the different root of their suffering. Maybe that’s why I kinda get sad when some compare kyo and yuki. No, I’m not pertaining to who is their favorite character or who they relate more or who’s the best boi etc. coz that’s completely fine and normal. What I’m disappointed is when they compare the two to the extent of downgrading the other’s problems (I remember a post years ago that he hates Kyo coz he was a contributer to yuki’s trauma during childhood and the recent one was when my friend thinks that yuki’s too cagey considering that kyo experienced suffering a lot more so he thinks that yuki’s a bit of a drama queen...in which I happen to find incredulous and quite shallow tbh. Both of these characters have such brilliant and realistic character development with the help of their support systems.

Now, Tohru. For me, she’s a hit or miss character to many readers/viewers (she's not particularly a favorite by many) coz when I read posts on her character analysis, the majority loved her but some say she’s flat or too selfless to the point of being unrealistic, boring or too weak to stand up for herself and the infamous “Mary Sue”. I know everyone has opinions but I really felt the need to defend her coz I really have strong opinions about her. It takes a tremendous amount of bravery and courage to be able to smile like that and be positive when the most important person in your life is gone. Yes, you may look at her like she’s too much of those kind airheaded chicks you commonly see in shoujo manga but some fail to realize how much of a broken character she is. I feel like we're so used to a character with a tragic past to be represented as angsty or dark that will take a few chapter or arcs to thaw the ice but it's so refreshing to see a protagonist who chose a different approach and always looks at the bright side of things, which can be both inspiring and destructive. Behind that smile hides a deep sadness. She has that deep obsession with her mother to the point of copying her father’s language and antagonizing him because she thinks he will take away his mom (which hit me so hard). So while some think how unrealistic Tohru moved on with such a carefree and positive outlook, if you look at the entire manga, Tohru’s development is not just a “girl who has fallen in love”, or like her kindness came out of nowhere like some deredere characters. She, too is still dealing with a lot of grief and pain to the extent of having developed her fear of abandonment and after losing her mother, she made a vow to always keep her as a priority to avoid losing her in her memories. Her grieving process did not end at the start of the manga, in fact, you can see how she still hasn’t moved on from her mother (she’s still treated her like someone who is alive despite acknowledging that she died) Her kindness was due to her upbringing and not just she was designed that way. Tohru's approach of bringing hope to the Sohmas is because of the way she grew up in a loving environment and has so much love to give. It's also a way to keep the memory of her mother alive (some subtle hints that were overlooked was when she advises them with the wisdom kyoko taught her). Tohru's high emotional intelligence is her best asset and something that I applaud for throughout the whole manga. There was never a time wherein I thought that Tohru being the light to others was overdramatic and unrealistic. It speaks how she was raised with so much love and she spreads this unconditional love to them. So yeah, she’s not your typical shojo girl who is automatically an angel sent from above, she is just as broken as the Sohmas and other characters and the way how she developed to be more confident and sure of herself while remaining that shining tohru that we all love made her earn the spot as best shojo girl for me. I'm really emotional when I talk about Tohru or even other characters coz they speak such a personal level to me.

I also might do analysis on some characters but for now these three deserve love. Words won’t suffice how these three and fruits basket made an impact to me and I always re-read this during the lowest points of my life.