Fruits Basket
Just finished watching this series. Another one of those 26 episodes pretty much straight through. Another really good one. Animation was really good. Basic idea is Toru runs into a member of the soma family, who has a family curse that she finds out about and it doesn’t phase her the least bit. Well this curse is very secret and no ‘outsiders’ like her should know about. Well she accepts them and their curse and go on to help each resulting member of the family with whatever their problems and trys to help. It’s kind of a love story, but not really. There’s not really much action. It’s just Toru trying to help out others and resulting in a lot of laughs usually. One bad thing is there are a lot of characters that get introduced and can get tricky trying to keep track of all of them.
I know it may sound dull, but this is probably one of–if not the best–anime series I’ve seen. Animation is great, plot is pretty easy to follow. A couple characters aren’t described as much as I would have liked. Another one of those that causes you to think about how you view the world. It’s really odd to get so involved with the characters in anime, or is it? It’s like after watching 12+ hours of it you can get really attached to some of the characters. I know trying to explain this to most people makes me sound weird, more weird than what some people think of me already. People at work already think I’m weird because of the way I act (anyone that knows me can probably see where they’re coming from), that I go to “raves” (yes, a couple people there do the whole air quotes and everything), I go to Canada to go to “raves”. They probably just think it’s weird that someone my age is still really into anime. I’m sure if I told them I feel more emotions watching anime than watching anything else they’d probably think I’m wacko or something. But is it really odd? I thought that was the point of watching whatever… to get wrapped into the characters and the storyline, to escape real life for a bit, to leave you thinking and wondering… No, wait, I forgot this is America. People want to be told what to do, think and see. Most movies that are ambiguous or leave things open for people to contemplate usually end up getting bad reviews from people because the movie didn’t hold their hand and explain ever little intricate detail. American’s just want to sit on their fat asses and watch shows that everyone else is watching so that at work they’ll have something to talk about it. I sure as hell don’t care about someone singing and people voting on them to become the next “american idol”. Or people trying to get a job, or any of those other reality shows. And then you have cartoons in america. Plain and simple they’re meant to keep kids occupied and to act as a ‘babysitter’ so the parents don’t have to. Animes, on the other hand, are designed to actually provoke thoughts and emotions and feelings. Perhaps that’s why I like anime so much. I watch it and don’t feel I just wasted hours of my life. Each one I watch I feel like I’ve gotten something out of it, some big life-lesson that I could apply in real life. I usually don’t just because of the way I am, or I will for a couple days and I’ll feel all warm and cheery and then I get back to my usual self.
I guess it goes without saying that I recommend this. I think anyone that generally likes anime and not just certain types will probably like this. I’ll end up buying these on dvd eventually, even though the files I watched were really good quality. Although the total for all the files is like 5.8gb, which is too much for one dvd-r (4.7gb) but it’s not really enough for two dvd-rs (9.4gb). Guess it would be a good chance to make a dual layer dvd-r, but those are still like $10 a disc, so I’ll probably just end up buring them to two dvd-rs. btw I am still working on that dvd of anime pictures. Need to find me some fruits basket ones now 