All the Relationships in Fruits Basket Ranked

06 Tuesday Jul 2021

Posted by Jessica Wood in adaptation, anime, Blog, fandom, romance, shojo

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anime relationships, fruits basket, fruits basket 2019, fruits basket anime, fruits basket manga, relationships

Now that the Fruits Basket anime has come to an end, I’d like to indulge in it a little longer by ranking all of the relationships in the series from my most to least favourite. Remember that this is all my personal opinion, so don’t complain if I rank your favourite ship low on the list, or your least favourite near the top.

Major spoilers for Fruits Basket, obviously.

Yuki and Machi

Yes, I’m putting them even ahead of the main couple. Personally, I love this relationship dynamic just a little bit more and how it provides some of my favourite romantic moments. The two understand each other so well long before they officially get together, such as Machi breaking down a door to prevent Yuki from having a panic attack and Yuki later breaking a piece of chalk to prevent Machi from having an anxiety attack. It wasn’t so much that Yuki helped Machi gain a personality but more he let her realise parts of herself that she didn’t know were there. And Yuki was finally able to break free of the confines of the Sohma family thanks to Machi, who was practically the only girl at school who didn’t idolise him but saw him as he truly was.

2. Tohru and Kyo

Of course I couldn’t put them too low. Their love literally broke a generations-long curse! Watching Kyo change from an angry hot-head to a caring boyfriend all thanks to Tohru really shows how much he deserves such a special girl. It isn’t just Tohru; thanks to her influence he is gentler and more sociable with everyone. Even outside of romantic scenes, they interact so naturally and can’t get enough of each other’s company.

3. Hatsuharu and Isuzu

Not only do I adore their matching goth aesthetic (even their accessories match, now that is relationship goals) but I adore how Hatsuharu helped Rin through her trauma, and she in turn helped him transform from a punk kid to a responsible adult. Come to think of it, Rin seemed to pick up a few things from Tohru. Haru did realise that not all of his actions were right and he hurt Rin in some ways, yet he still vowed to do the right thing for her, while Rin realised it was ok to rely upon his support. It’s also kind of hilarious that after years of having a crush on her, Haru just came straight out and said ‘Wanna kiss?’ one day completely out of the blue.

4. Ayame and Mine

They’re both a little nuts, but that’s what makes them so perfect for each other. Even before the curse was broken, the two of them were completely overjoyed just being in each other’s presence and complement each other’s overwhelming confidence and sense of style. Mine probably knew about the curse for a long time and not only hid it from Akito but was perfectly happy being with Ayame, even if it meant she couldn’t hug him. Thank God the two can be all over each other now. Keeping with the theme of personal improvement, Mine also helped Ayame realise how cruelly he had treated Yuki in the past and was fully supportive when he tried to mend their relationship.

5. Ritsu and Mitsuru

It’s a shame we don’t see much of this couple, as they are another completely adorable pair. Not only do they fully relate to each other’s anxiety disorders but in a bonus manga, Mitsuru had no idea whether Ritsu was a man or a woman but didn’t care either way. I imagine she might not even find out until their wedding night! I’m glad we got to see a little more of their blossoming relationship in the anime and how they are a calming influence on each other.

6. Kisa and Hiro

Yes, they’re still too young and probably haven’t started a proper relationship yet, but it is easy to imagine they will eventually get together. Hiro recognised how he hurt Kisa, both intentionally and unintentionally, and realised he had to change for the better, even if it meant getting over his jealousy over Tohru. He became the knight who can protect Kisa.

7. Kakeru and Komaki

I’ll never forgive the anime for cutting out Komaki. She was such an integral part of Kakeru’s character arc. She helped him realise that ‘white knighting’ for her wasn’t right when it involved shooting other people down. That and it’s hilarious how he both plays pranks on her and finds even her smallest traits adorable. She truly is his ‘meat angel’.

8. Hatori and Mayuko

It’s not that I particularly dislike this couple, more it’s not one of my favourite side-plots. But it is a nice change of pace amidst so much high school drama to read a story about two mature adults who have already faced relationship issues and finally found peace with each other.

9. Kureno and Arisa

Even ignoring the age difference, there are a lot of red flags in this relationship. Kureno only seemed to fall for Arisa because she was one of the first people he met outside the Sohma family, they have little in common (not exactly Kureno’s fault since the confines of the Sohmas haven’t left him much room to develop a personality), and they are completely head-over-heels in love after interacting twice. I suppose the implication was supposed to be that their relationship was over before it even began thanks to the curse, but they still essentially decide to live happily-ever-after as soon as it’s broken rather than get to know each other naturally.

10. Ren and Akira

They are a perfect example of how some relationships can bring out the worst in a person. Akira certainly loved Ren, but only because his isolation left him with few options other than arranged brides. Ren was so jealous and possessive over Akira that she projected it onto their child, and Akira did little to stop this behaviour. Plus for all her talk of loving Akira, she was quick to jump into bed with Shigure just to spite Akito.

11. Kyoko and Katsuya

Yes, they did create the miracle that is Tohru Honda, but that doesn’t make their relationship much better if you really think about it. First of all, when they met Katsuya was an adult and Kyoko was only around fourteen. Secondly, they have little in common apart from both being lonely. Thirdly, Kyoko only married Katsuya because she had just been kicked out of her parent’s house and was dependant on him. The Honda family were a little right to be wary of her because she had a recent history of gang violence, and anger issues don’t go away just because you get married. Thankfully Kyoko matured and became a responsible mother after Katsuya died and realised she didn’t need to depend upon him her entire life.

12. Shigure and Akito

These two and their relationship dynamic are actually one of the most fascinating parts of the series for me. But that’s not the same as being healthy. Akito is a victim of abuse carrying on the cycle of abuse and is severely mentally ill. Shigure is cruel, manipulative, and willing to throw anyone under the bus to get what he wants, and justifies it by claiming it’s all for Akito’s sake. If some of the relationships above weren’t questionable enough, Shigure fell for Akito the night she was conceived and has retained that toxic hold over her ever since. He even slept with Akito’s mother just to make her jealous. And they still got married and had a son. The sequel manga did go some way to rectify this unhealthy relationship, but I still don’t see a bright future for the two of them.

What are your favourite and least favourite relationships in Fruits Basket? Let me know in the comments!

Book Review – Sherwood by Meagan Spooner

17 Monday May 2021

Posted by Jessica Wood in adaptation, Blog, book review, books, story

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book review, historical fiction, Robin Hood, robin hood book, ya, young adult book

This re-telling of the Robin Hood legend puts a modern feminist twist on a centuries old story.

When the hero Robin of Locksley dies in a crusade to the Holy Land, Nottingham is plunged into poverty and turmoil. His betrothed Maid Marion is left to pick up the pieces when the Sheriff raises taxes and King Richard is nowhere around to help his own people. Putting on her beloved’s cloak, she disguises herself as Nottingham’s hero and rounds up a team of Merry Men to bring justice to the land. But with Guy of Gisborne both out to catch ‘Robin Hood’ and win Marion’s broken heart, she’ll have to use every ounce of cunning she has.

There seem to be quite a few feminist re-tellings of Robin Hood and similar legends lately. This one has a lot that will appeal to modern women without sacrificing any historical accuracy. In fact, many of the issues brought up are as painfully relevant to the modern day as they were in medieval times. For example, when Marion is disguised as Robin, the Merry Men follow her plans without hesitation. But when she is presenting as herself, they talk over her, question her ideas, and treat her like a fragile flower in need of protection. Although the men are portrayed as heroic, likeable characters, it says a lot how even they are conditioned to treat men and women differently.

Guy of Gisborne was another great surprise in this book. At first, I assumed that following most adaptations, he would be a standard villain and unwanted suitor to Marion, sort of like Gaston. But the number of twists and turns for his character threw me back and made me change my entire perspective on his character.

The only real downside to this novel is that the first half drags in comparison to the action-packed second half and risks putting off some readers. Although this does leave plenty of time to set up Marion’s position of Robin Hood and portray her grieving with heart-breaking accuracy.

Any young adult readers or those looking for a relatable, strong female protagonist will find this book a sharp-shooting adventure.

My rating – 5 out of 5.

Writing update – Janurary 2021

18 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by Jessica Wood in adaptation, author, Blog, Editing, indie, pirate, self publishing, steampunk, story, writing update

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am writing, creative writing, dieselpunk, steampunk, writing, writing update

I haven’t posted many actual updates since the first book in my series came out. Rest assured, I’m already in the swing of the next two books in the series.

Book 2 – Stealing From Thieves: I got feedback from beta readers which was mostly positive, but did point out some things to correct, which I have done. The book is almost ready to begin the editing phase. I did plan to have this book finished by the end of 2020, but the feedback took longer than I anticipated. Now I’m planning to have it published by Midsummer this year, and hopefully to have the paperback ready to publish at the same time as the e-book.

Book 3 – Outcast’s Alliance: I’m looking over the first draft which I wrote at the end of last year. I expected it to be full of plot holes and errors, which it is, but not nearly as many as I feared. Dare I say it, it’s actually pretty good. Or at least it will be once it’s edited. Once I’ve finished making notes, I’ll be starting the second draft. I plan to have this book finished and ready to publish by the end of 2021.

Other books: I just can’t help myself. Even with these other two books to write and one to promote, I’m still developing ideas for future books in the series, and other series. I just don’t know which one I will work on immedietly after I’ve finished this current trilogy. I’ll probably leave it up to whatever the readers want the most. I’m already planning two one-off sequels to the first Tales From Undersea trilogy focusing on some of the secondary characters who have already proved popular with readers (and with me!). I’m also planning a dieselpunk trilogy set in the same world but moved ahead to the 1920s and set in an underwater version of New York City. A non-related series I’m also developing ideas for is a series based upon the Jules Verne books (can you tell yet that I like Jules Verne?). But that is still in the very early stages of development, so I can’t say anything else about the plot or characters.

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Top Five Amazing Pirate Facts I Discovered During my Research

15 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by Jessica Wood in adaptation, Blog, culture, pirate, villain

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history facts, pirate, pirate facts, privateer, research

My debut novel Traitor’s Revenge, a pirate steampunk adventure, came out the other week and I’m very proud of all the hard work I put into it. One of the best parts of writing the book was all the weird facts I discovered about pirates during my research, many of which I’ve managed to work into the series. These are some of my favourites:

Pirates practised gay marriage

Well, not exactly marriage in the way we understand it today. Pirates did have a practise called ‘matelotage’ between two male pirates, which worked as a sort of life insurance policy. Piracy was incredibly dangerous so in the very likely chance that you would be blown to pieces during a fight, your friend could inherit all of your money and possessions, and would have a financial safety net when you were gone. Sexual relationships between pirates in matelotage has been recorded, so it’s likely that some of these relationships were romantic in nature, too. Homosexuality was so common amongst pirates that prostitutes were sent to the island of Tortuga to try and put a stop to it. All it did was turn them into polyamorous, bisexual pirates.

Pirates played mock trial

With long, tedious stretches of time between fights and nothing much for entertainment (most pirates were illiterate), one of the most common forms of entertainment for pirates was to put on mock piracy trials and pretend to condemn one another to death. No doubt this was at least partially to mock the authorities who were out to get them, too.

There were government sanctioned pirates

It may seem hypocritical, and it was, but the same governments which worked so hard to put a stop to piracy encouraged the practise themselves. Privateers were essentially legal pirates with pieces of paper known as ‘letters of marque’ which said that they could attack and loot other ships as much as they wanted, even taking slaves. Because of course, anything is fine if the government says you can do it.

The ‘pirate accent’ is just a regional dialect

When we think of ‘pirate talk’, we imagine a lot of ‘argh mateys’. Truthfully, this is just the West Country accent common around the British port city of Bristol. Pirates came from all over and had a range of different accents, languages, and dialects. We only associated the West Country accent because of actor Robert Newton, who played Long John Silver in the 1950 version adaptation of Treasure Island and appeared in many other pirate films. He exaggerated his south-west accent and the association stuck. However, being a major port city at the time, some famous pirates such as Blackbeard did come from Bristol, so it’s likely that at least some of them did speak in the ‘pirate accent’.

Pirates mostly stole essentials

Another common association with pirates is stealing hefty chests full of gold and treasure. They probably wouldn’t have said no to it, but such valuables would have been difficult to sell, and wouldn’t have sustained them during long sea voyages. If your ship was held up by pirates, they would be much more likely to steal food, fresh water, building material, spices, and most valuable of all; medicine. Not only could they use these, they were much easier to sell in the next port.

If you like pirate stories, my novel Traitor’s Revenge is out now.

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This is unrelated to anything else, but I just have to draw attention to this amazing stock image I found when looking for images for this post:

Clearly I’m writing in the wrong genre…

Manga review – Strawberry Panic volume 1.

14 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by Jessica Wood in adaptation, anime, manga review, musings, random, series review, shojo, story, writing

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adaptation, anime, Aoi Nagisa, character development, dialogue, fanfiction, girl love, Hanazono Shizuma, light novel, manga, manga review, mary sue, review, romance, strawberry panic, sub plot, writing, yuri

It’s been a very long time since I’ve done a review on this blog, but after seeing this manga at the library in my new town, I knew I had to tear it to shreds. I’m just evil like that sometimes.

Strawberry Panic is a yuri series about the various romantic relationships of a group of students attending three affiliated catholic all girl’s schools. It started life as a series of short stories in Dengeki G’s Magazine with couples decided by reader polls. Their success was followed up by light novel, visual novel, and a manga adaptations and then an anime series. It seemingly wasn’t until the anime adaptation that the series developed any plot, character development or charm. (I haven’t read the light novels but they sound fairly good too.) This volume of the manga reads like a terrible fanfiction; just a bunch of gooey, pointless romantic scenes all squashed together with only the barest hint of a plot holding them all together. The characters are even described as typical Mary Sues with ‘ivory hair’ ‘porcelain skin’ and ‘goddess like beauty’.

The first volume starts the same as the anime with new student Aoi Nagisa getting lost on her first day at St Miator academy and becoming instantly enamoured when she runs into the beautiful and mysterious Hanazono Shizuma. She is the ‘Etoile’ who is basically like the royalty of the three schools. The story then quickly cuts to a week later when Nagisa has to accompany Shizuma on their assigned duty to collect holy water for the Easter celebration. The nuns must have been waiting for that holy water until Christmas because almost half of the book is the two of them wandering around to various places along the way and getting into random ‘romantic’ scenarios. They even have one in the middle of a crowded classroom, during class! Was the sister just sitting at the back playing Angry Birds while this was going on?

The catholic school setting of this series has always confused me. I think it might have been for the ‘forbidden love’ angle but considering that virtually every character in this series is a lesbian and the staff never seem too bothered with the various lesbian couples, possibly even encouraging them to get together, their relationships hardly seem forbidden. The sister in the manga even says ‘the student going with you today will have an “eventful” time, won’t she?’.

‘Now girls, no lesbian sex while class is in session. Save that for mass this evening.’

Yes, the sisters of this school are fully aware of all the lesbian sex that is happening all the time and don’t even care! Maybe this is set in a world where Catholicism is more lax on these things, but then why include the catholic school setting in the first place then?

All this stupidity distracted me from the story, what little there is. Nagisa and Shizuma seemingly forget all about their classes or the holy water and go to the library, where the students all meet up for ‘liaisons’. There’s a really weird scene between two supporting characters, Hikari and Yaya, who are there to spy on Hikari’s crush, a popular girl named Amane, who is so popular she is nicknamed ‘The Prince’. Yaya has a crush on Hikari and randomly starts touching her up. And then we go back to Nagisa and Shizuma and the scene is never mentioned again! This will happen a lot in this manga, in fact the whole thing is basically random seduction scenes that are dropped and never brought up for the rest of the story.

About half way through the manga suddenly remembers it has a plot and there’s a long tedious dialogue about the upcoming Etoile elections, but it’s still nothing more than a bunch of random scenes spliced together that go nowhere.

Meanwhile, Nagisa’s best friend and room mate Tamao has come to find Nagisa and Shizuma. I assume they spent so long fetching the holy water that everyone thought they had died. Tamao and Nagisa’s relationship is basically an expy of Sakura and Tomoyo from Cardcaptor Sakura, minus all likability. Tamao has a huge crush on Nagisa, who remains oblivious despite Tamao’s rather…disturbing attachment to her. While this was mostly played for laughs in the anime and you could still admire the close friendship between the two, in the manga it’s downright creepy. If you thought Tomoyo dressing up Sakura and video taping her was weird, then stay away from this manga.

Tamao stumbles upon Nagisa with Shizuma and assumes that they’ve already done it, and with the amount of time they’ve been away it’s understandable that she’d make that assumption. But Nagisa cheers her up with a cheesy ‘we’re such good friends yay!’ scene that still sounds like it came out of a poorly written love confession.

To halt Tamao’s advances towards Nagisa, Shizuma announces that she’s going to enter the Etoile competition with Nagisa and then just leaves, so Nagisa doesn’t really have any choice in the matter despite being the supposed main character.

While in the anime Nagisa was naïve and clumsy, she was also kind, cheerful and actually called Shizuma out on her actions. In the manga she feels like nothing more than a Barbie doll who cares more about how pretty her uniform is than anything else, with dialogue like ‘Hymns sound kinda cool!’. She just drifts from scene to scene and lets things happen to her rather than have any actual say in them. ‘Nagisa, you’re my lover now.’ ‘Nagisa, we’re entering the Etoile competition now.’ ‘Nagisa, we’re going to fight an army of orcs now.’

After all that, I’m not sure they even delivered the holy water…

The last chapter switches focus to Hikari and Amane, who were by far my favourite couple in the anime. Too bad their sweet, emotional story is a copy of Nagisa and Shizuma’s, except with more whining and George Lucas esque dialogue.

Bleurgh….

The Etoile entrants are announced and Amane isn’t happy with who she’s been paired with. The book ends on a sort of cliffhanger, teasing the identity of who Amane’s partner is, but since this hasn’t been foreshadowed at all I’m sure it’s not that exciting anyway.

I feel bad comparing this manga to a fanfic because there are tonnes of fanfics that are much better written than this manga. It’s just fluffy spank material with no substance to it at all and barely any effort put into the writing. I found the second and final volume in the library as well so I’ll be reviewing that next week. I just really want to know if they finally deliver the holy water…