For many, Fruits Basket and the story of Tohru Honda and her interactions with the Sohma
family and their Zodiac curse was their earliest experience with anime and manga.
Since its debut, it’s gained countless fans and spawned all sorts of merchandise, a spin-off
sequel, its own themed cafe, and is responsible for at least a third of AMVs on Youtube.
And now Fruits Basket is back, courtesy of a new anime series.
So whether you’re an old or new fan, here are 5 things you need to know about Fruits
Basket.
The main character, Tohru Honda was the first character Natsuki Takaya created for the series.
When envisioning her personality Takaya knew she needed something to somewhat offset the
character’s trademark optimism and always-cheerful and helpful attitude, so she gave her the
personality trait of constantly addressing everyone in formal language, but doing so
incorrectly.
After figuring out this detail, the rest of her characterisation came easily.
Takaya later added a reason for her habits, in that they were picked up in order to cope
with her tragic past.
It can’t all be fun, right?
Many of the Sohmas are named after the traditional Japanese Lunar-Solar calendar relative to
their respective animal.
For instance, Shigure Sohma takes his name from shigurezuki, the tenth month.
In an issue of Fruits Basket, Takaya admitted that she accidentally swapped the names of
two of the characters, Momiji and Kureno Sohma.
Momiji’s animal form is a rabbit, and his name comes from momijitsuki, the ninth month
of the calendar, which is actually the month of the rooster.
According to Takaya, by the time she realized the mistake, it was too late and the chapter
had already been published.
The original Fruits Basket anime notoriously only ran for one 26-episode season starting
in 2001.
In 2005, in order to raise support for a second season of Fruits Basket, Funimation appeared
at conventions asking fans to fold paper cranes, the idea being that if 1,000 cranes were folded
fans would get their wish of a second season.
This is a popular Japanese legend that says whoever folds 1,000 paper cranes will earn
a wish and by the end of the 2005 convention season fans had reached the 1,000 crane goal,
and they were sent to Studio Deen, who had produced the first season, and Hakusensha,
the publishing company.
Funnily enough, neither of these companies were responsible for funding the original
season, but it was a nice gesture anyways.
And even if it’s not directly correlated, Fruits Basket did get a new anime in the end.
The remake itself came as a surprise to Takaya.
For the 20th anniversary, she’d asked for a voice-comic of the final chapter so that
she could finally get some closure on the series and feel like it was truly finished.
That was until it suddenly came back as a brand new anime.
While she was surprised, she wasn’t particularly against it, but she had some requests.
Firstly, it needed to be an entirely new staff and cast.
And secondly, the art needed to look different from the manga, the reason for this was that
she felt her art was not only outdated, but not something she’s proud of.
But the reason for replacing the staff is likely due to a reported conflict she had
with director Akitaro Daichi.
Since then, Daichi has also been accused of forcing voice actors to bathe naked with him
to get roles.
Thankfully Takaya got her wish and Daichi is nowhere near this remake.
At one point a Fruits Basket live-action screenplay was being shopped around by screenwriter and
producer Joshua Long.
On a podcast with Anime News Network in 2010, Long was discussing, among other things, his
plans to produce a live-action Cowboy Bebop feature film.
His experience with the script for a live-action Fruits Basket adaptation was also brought
up, where he described his affinity for the series, but fans noted that his interpretation
of the merits of the story was kind of off, especially when it came to what he considered
too weird to fit into a live-action version.
Thankfully, it never got made, or it likely would have been yet another disappointing
live-action anime adaptation.