Fruits Basket

Episode 36

Slapstick comic-relief Kagura is perhaps the aspect of Fruits Basket that has aged the most poorly. A female character's violent bullying of the boy she supposedly loves was a common trope in the '90s, but it now feels uncomfortably abusive and out of touch. So the question I had coming into “All Mine” was this: would Kagura's redemption episode still manage to make a modern audience feel sympathy for her? My verdict is that while it fails to fully redeem Kagura, it provides valuable insight into the mental programming the Sohma children are subjected to. It's difficult not to compare Kagura with Tohru, who spends this episode in a contrastingly selfless manner wasting no time attempting to break the curse. The thread connecting these two young women is Kyo, who plays a quiet but significant role in both arcs. He doesn't say much, but the episode uses visual storytelling to convey how much he's grown since the beginning.

Tohru's been home from the beach for a hot minute before she embarks on her mission to break the curse. This single-minded pursuit is clearly going to define Tohru's actions for the duration of the show. It makes sense that the first person she reaches out to is Kazuma, a rare responsible adult role model in the Sohma kids' lives (amidst creepy Shigure, irresponsible Ayame, emotionally-distant Hatori, and the ensemble of absent parents). Kazuma tells Tohru that she's done enough simply by being herself: "When you smile, the world feels a little gentler." Kazuma doesn't have any leads, but he does raise the stakes with a grim potential future—it's chilling to hear him talk positively about his grandfather, the former Cat, being buried far away from the family grave because it's the only freedom he'll ever know. Contrasting Kyo's still-unfolding life with the done-deal tragedy of Kazuma's grandfather makes it feel like Tohru has no time to lose.

Tohru's not the only one with Kyo on her mind. Kagura has something important to tell him, but she insists she has to be on a date with him to share it. What ensues is a surprising departure from Kagura's trademark physical comedy for an afternoon of emotional vulnerability. It turns out Kagura's boisterous attitude around Kyo isn't a result of her status as the Zodiac boar, but an overcompensation for feelings she'd rather ignore. Kagura felt she was unlucky for being born a member of the Zodiac, so she projected all of her self-hatred onto Kyo who, in her view, was in an even more pitiable predicament. This doesn't make Kagura look very good… until you realize that she's the one who has matured enough to recognize her own flawed thinking. It's hard to like Kagura after seeing her carelessly break Kyo's rosary, leading to the transformation that directly caused his mom to forbid him from going out after that. I can applaud her decision to address her mistakes and improve, but it's awful that she makes her apology all about her. In the end, after she's barely given Kyo time to respond, she breaks down in tears while he has to be the one who comforts her.

There's another Sohma making moves this episode: Rin. Her aggression toward Tohru is out of a misplaced kindness: she thinks breaking the curse is a family problem and should have a solution from inside the family, too. Kagura and Rin aren't all that unalike: they're both trauma victims projecting their feelings onto others. It makes me think that if Kagura had been subjected to the kind of suffering that landed Rin in the hospital, she might also have tried to break out of the system rather than self-comforting from within. Despite the magical trappings of animal transformations, it's easy to see that a major part of the Sohma curse is unhealthy codependency. The Zodiac members project the hurt they receive from Akito on one another even as they rely on each other to assuage their loneliness. They form bonds through shared misery, like Kagura did with Kyo. This is where Tohru comes in: it's going to take somebody who isn't subjected to this mental torment to see clearly enough to break the curse.

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Fruits Basket is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.

Lauren writes about geek careers at Otaku Journalist and model kits at Gunpla 101.