By Natsuki Takaya. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Sheldon Drzka.

I’ve discussed before how much Fruits Basket deals with abuse, and it also deals just as much with family. And while the two obviously intersect, especially in this volume, they aren’t always meant to coincide. Not everyone is the same, and no one can go through quite the same situation as someone else. This has shown up most obviously in Yuki and Kyo each being deeply envious of what the other has. In this volume we see Momiji, whose sister has been spying on him and seems to have a sense that they’re related even if she doesn’t know it for sure, choosing to remain apart from her to save his family, even though it hurts him. We also see Yuki, who has mostly repaired his relationship with Ayame (who gets the best entrance in the book here) dealing with the repressive control of his mother, and fighting back against it quite a bit. Yuki is finally growing up.

And then there’s Rin, who’s life is so tragic she doesn’t even manage to get a front cover on the omnibus she most features in. Furuba does a good job, as I said, of showing how abuse affects everyone differently, and I won’t say Rin’s is worse than the others, but it’s certainly more explicit than the others, as we see her family, which had been putting on the facade of happy cheer, break apart with just one innocent question from her. If nothing else, it shows how fragile that facade was – even if she hadn’t asked, I doubt it would have lasted much longer. Rin’s flashback is heartbreaking, as she doesn’t even begin to understand where everything went wrong, and assumes it’s her fault – something her parents and Akito are happy to tell her is the case. Luckily, she has Haru, but she’s not in a headspace right now where she can accept her need for Haru, and so drives him away as well. Basically, Rin is fascinating and makes you want to hug her, except she’d run away.

Rin’s interaction with Tohru is also interesting. Like Hiro, she’s reluctant to accept Tohru as this sort of magical healing waif, which the start of the series may have led you to believe she was. Tohru has issues, though, and it’s in dealing with Rin, who’s actively asking her why, specifically, she wants to remove the curse, that Tohru begins to crack a bit. Rin so far is the only one who’s noticed Tohru is “quietly falling apart”, and the minimalistic look at Tohru’s flashbacks suggest it’s due to her mother and her burgeoning love for Kyo (she also reacts badly when he again implies he’s going to let her move on from him). Tohru has been an all-loving heroine, but not all love is the same, and I think Tohru needs a lesson in that before she can start to genuinely help to break the curse.

This being an omnibus, there’s so much more to talk about. Shigure’s self-analysis of his character, which is wonderful – Rin may hate Shigure, but no one hates Shigure the way Shigure hates Shigure. Akito pushing Rin out the window is the most startlingly violent the series has been to date, and the fact that Hiro saw it explains quite a bit from previous volumes. The student council actually do start to have a major impact on the story here, though they’re still somewhat hermetically sealed off from the rest of the cast, and we learn some of why Kakeru is the way he is – though there’s still his connection with Tohru, which remains mysterious. And then there’s Machi, who’s mostly a cypher, albeit a violent cypher. The joy of Fruits Basket is that the omnibus gives you endless time to reread the series and linger over your favorite parts. Also, Kimi is gloriously awful and I love her.

And next month, we get Sorta Cinderella!

By Natsuki Takaya. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Sheldon Drzka.

The end of this omnibus is the halfway point in the Fruits Basket re-release, and you definitely get the sense that we have turned a corner. While I’m not sure that Takaya-san had worked out exactly how long she was going to make the series, I think here is where the ending she wanted firmed up in her mind and she began to take steps towards achieving it. And that means that Tohru, who had been suffering a bit from drifting through life after the death of her mother, acquires a new purpose, and becomes surprisingly driven to achieve it. Or perhaps it’s not so surprising, given that Akito is the one who sets her in motion with a violent rejection of her very self.

The first half of the book is still set in the summer vacation beachhouse, as Akito works hard to ruin everyone’s vacation. But we find that success is not as easy as it once was. Kazuma explains to Tohru later on that Akito has an effect on the other zodiac, that words that could be brushed off if someone else said them affect them to their very core. But we actually begin to see a bit of that unraveling here. Haru seems to be so worried about Rin that he doesn’t react as much to Akito’s jibes about being stupid. Momiji is willing to defy Akito to avoid getting Tohru hurt. Even Kyo, whose self-loathing reaches another peak here, finds that a rare meeting with Akito doesn’t have the pull that it once did. The curse is explained in mroe detail than it’s ever been here, but we’re starting to see the start of it breaking.

And Tohru wants to be the one to do it. Akito’s little speech, which is long and violent (her cheek is scratched hard enough to draw blood) basically amounts to “Fuck off”, actually does the opposite of what it intends – mostly because it reveals what Kyo’s eventual fate will be. The Furuba fandom had been somewhat equally divided between Tohru/Yuki and Tohru/Kyo, but I think this book is where people began to realize that the triangle was already being broken up. Partly due to Yuki continuing his own separate, non-Sohma subplot (which still hasn’t quite gotten off the ground, though we did meet the always wonderful Kimi, who I will be praising more as the serious goes on, because she’s hilarious), but also due to the fact that it’s clearly Kyo’s fate that makes Tohru want to push to find out about how to break the curse more than anything. Seeds are being sown.

Speaking of seeds, we also meet Rin here for the first time properly, though she’s still something of an enigma, and notably does not receive the same treatment as the other Sohmas to date – meet, reveal their emotional trauma, get bathed in Tohru’s healing waves. Rin is a massive ball of rage, and will not be the sort to simply wilt under Tohru’s good cheer. I suspect a collision in the next book, particularly as Rin has discovered what Tohru is looking for. And some seeds have ended up not flowering after all, as Kagura discovers when she admits to herself that Kyo is never going to accept her affection, and manages to pour her heart out to him in an actual, real date free from her usual over the top violence. Her broken confession that she felt better being around Kyo because of the cat’s scapegoat nature is heartwrenching, but Kyo’s sympathetic, lukewarm response may be even more so.

As always with an omnibus, I feel I’m leaving more out. I never did talk about the mysterious Ren, who is mentioned here and seems to be the one that finally sets Akito off to go attack Tohru. And then there’s the school counseling sessions, when the parents arrive to discuss their children’s futures. Tohru’s grandfather is laid up with a bad back, so Shigure goes in his place, which leads to as much hilarity as you’d expect when he clashes with Mayu. (Also note his fantastic expression when she tells him he’s not even nice to the people he loves.) But overall, an excellent omnibus, possibly the high point of the entire series, and certainly a sign that we are going to start tying up our loose ends soon, even if some of them are going to resist that for a long time to come.

Oh yes, Tohru and Uo’s faces when Hanajima mentions that Kazuma is hot. Those are also a big highlight. See? I can go on and on.

By Natsuki Takaya. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Yen Press. Translated by Sheldon Drzka.

Fruits Basket is, in large part, about a family and its cycles of abuse, and how it makes everyone suffer and endure. That’s why it’s so nice to see, in this omnibus, that there are at least one or two of the main characters whose families are not torn apart by physical abuse, hatred, neglect, suicide, or death. Hanajima during her childhood is, unlike what I talked about with Hiro last time, going through something that the reader is not going to understand, and she really needs to have someone that’s in her corner besides her little brother. I love the fact that immediately after Hana decides to be friends with Tohru and Uo, despite the fact that she may hurt them, she gains control over her powers, as if a switch is flipped. And then there’s Hiro’s mother, who is not only the one Sohma who unreservedly loves her child, but is also pregnant again, which makes everyone happy because the kid can’t be cursed, as all the Zodiac exist already. (More on this later.)

There’s actually quite a lot of setup for future plots and pairings here, as clearly Takaya has been told that this is a big enough hit that she can take as much time as she wants. (Ironically, this is also where she hurt her hand, so a long hiatus came between the last volume and this one. The art style will eventually be greatly affected by this, but not just yet.) We meet another Sohma, but not via Tohru and her all-loving heart – this time it’s Uotani, who runs into a handsome yet absentminded young man in her part-time job and seems to fall for him immediately. (The fact that she says he reminds her of Tohru does not help Furuba’s yuri fans at all.) But Kureno seems to be more attached to Akito than the other Sohmas are, and therefore nothing really happens with it.

And then there’s Mayu, who we’ve met as the teacher of Tohru’s class, and were also told was close friends with Kana, Hatori’s lost love. Here we learn that she was in love with Hatori herself, but was so determined not to get in the way that she ended up dating Shigure, even though they’re clearly toxic for each other. (I suspect Shigure enjoyed this more… he seems to love toxic relationships.) Hatori is the stoic type who’s unable to grieve, and so Mayu is the one that grieves for him, for the life that he was never able to live. And Shigure is the manipulator who enjoys both messing with people for the lulz and also giving hem a push whether they want it or not. It’s quite interesting that this arc ends with a flashforward that shows Hatori and Mayu, many years later, together – things will change soon.

There is, of course, drama here as well, most of it stemming from the trip to the beachhouse the Sohmas take during their vacation. (We do meet Kyo’s father, and it is important to Kyo’s character, but he’s so unpleasant and awful I’d rather just not talk about him.) Hiro continues to lash out at things he finds annoying, and Tohru, who is effortlessly close to Kisa in a way he can’t seem to manage, is the biggest thing. It’s quite telling that Hiro is upset at Tohru’s obsession with her late mother – he’s the only one in the entire group who’s always had a warm and loving mother, and so he can’t possibly understand why she would be like this. Kyo, whose mother, it is heavily hinted, killed herself, gets Tohru far better, and immediately figures out that a) Tohru isn’t her usual self, and b) it’s probably because Hiro was rude. He’s maturing rapidly.

The book ends on an ominous note: Akito has followed the Sohmas and is at a neighboring beachhouse, and they all have to go visit – bar Tohru, who is thankfully not invited, and Kyo, who’s always excluded. Kisa being thankful Tohru won’t be there as she worries that Akito will abuse her is one of the saddest moments in the entire book, and will carry over directly into the next omnibus, where Akito decides to pay Tohru a visit after all. Again, if you haven’t read Furuba before, do so, and if you have, these omnibuses are a good opportunity for a reread.