Title: Fruits Basket Volume(s): 14+ Creator(s): Natsuki Takaya Format: Unflipped; Right-to-Left Publisher: Tokyopop MSRP: $9.95 Genre(s): Romance/Comedy Rated: Teen (13+)

As manga continues to gain more and more attention from the general public, and more and more shounen titles like "Rurouni Kenshin" and "Dragon Ball" make it to the "Top 100 Best Selling Books of The Month" list, you may be shocked to discover that shoujo, the genre that is basically responsible for creating an interest in manga in the first place, is severely lacking in any major hits. Oh sure, "Kare Kano" and "Boys Over Flowers" have become cult favorites and have sold a fair amount of copies at the bookstores, but aside from these fan favorite series, very few of them have actually been enough of a success that would make them actually stand out to the general public. In fact, as of this writing the only shoujo series that is getting any kind of real attention in terms of sales and general interest is "Fruits Basket," a quirky romantic comedy about a girl and a family who is under the spell of the twelve Chinese Zodiacs...but maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here.

The story for "Fruits Basket" revolves around a high school girl named Tohru Honda, who is the star of this series as well as the only real optimistic person in the whole series. When Tohru was a little girl, her mother passed away, and since then Tohru has lived by herself in a tent next to a big mountain (long story behind that). Tohru is cheerful, friendly, and extremely cute, the perfect kind of girl that you would be hard pressed to find in the real world these days. One day while on her way to school, Tohru comes across the house of the Sohma family. Who is the Sohma family? They are a family who have more or less kept to themselves as the years have gone by, and no one really knows too much about them. However, upon meeting a couple of the members of the Sohma family, Tohru discovers that they are actually a very nice family...they just like their privacy, is all. On the way home from school, two members of the Sohma family (Shigure and Yuki) follow Tohru home, and when they discover that Tohru lives in a tent, they decide to let her live with them in their house. However, one of the family members (named Sohma) is strongly against Tohru living with them, warning them that if a girl lived with them, then their "family secret" may accidently be revealed to Tohru, and that she might spill the beans about their secret to the world if she were to find out about it.

Well, everyone else agrees that that is a possibility, but everyone thinks that Tohru is trustworthy enough that if the secret about them were to be revealed, then Tohru would keep their secret (this is after they've known the girl for a good four and a half hours, mind you). They also point out that Tohru should stay for at least one night since she was coming down with a fever, and that a storm was brewing that night that would make sleeping in the tent more dangerous then usual. Well, turns out there WAS a storm that night, and not only that, but there was a mudslide on the mountain Tohru's tent was near, and Tohru's tent and all her belongings were buried in the mudslide. Because of this (and because Tohru doesn't really want to go back to her family's house), Tohru now has no choice but to stay with the Sohma at their house. At first, this arrangement works out pretty good (as no one complains), but then one day Tohru accidentally makes the mistake of (conveniently) touching all three of the family members, and to her horror (or is that surprise -- I can't tell with the sloppy facial expressions drawn in this series), she finds that they have all turned into animals. This is (obviously) not a coincidence. It turns out that the reason the Sohma have enjoyed their privacy all these years is because the family has been cursed for generations. What is this curse? Well, the curse is that whenever a member of the Sohma family is touched by a member of the opposite sex, he or she is turned into one of the animals of the 12 Chinese Zodiac... and the cat.

Having discovered this, Tohru vows to keep their secret. And so the real fun begins... I think. As I mentioned earlier, "Fruits Basket" has become a huge hit with the mainstream market (even though FUNimation have so far unsuccessfully convinced any TV stations to air the cartoon), and when most manga fans make a top 10 favorites list for themselves, you usually find this series somewhere between 3 & 8 (and some even claim this to be their favorite series ever). Looking at "Fruits Basket"'s success and popularity, it would be safe to assume that this series is some kind of masterpiece that is waiting to be picked up, but in reality, "Fruits Basket" is a bad manga, a really, really bad manga. Just how bad are we talking? Not severely bad, but bad enough that you'll wonder what all the hoopla is about. The first thing I need to tackle is the premise of the story. Now the idea of a family with a curse where they turn into one of the animals of the Chinese Zodiac when touched by a member of the opposite sex is an original idea, I'll give you that, but once you get past the fact that this is an original idea you slowly start to realize what a boring original idea this also is. I mean really, people, can you explain to me why this idea is good enough to dedicate a series to? A mini-series maybe, but a year-long running series? So these guys can't be hugged by members of the opposite sex - what's the big deal about that? I'm guessing the big deal is that if any of these guys fall in love, then heartbreak is unavoidable since there can be no physical contact with the person you love, but the problem is, not only are there no romances in this series, but the romances that ARE suggested as existing barely get any time devoted to them to make them worth caring about, so that emotional story twist hasn't been seen yet (in the four books I've read so far).

Another problem is that the characters personalities are all boring and stereotyped. You've got the cool calm owner of the house, you have the two guys with egos big enough for five people...each (and unsurprisingly, these two people don't get along), you've got the naive foreigner (who is thankfully not American for once), and of course you've got Tohru, the perfect in EVERY possible way girl, the one of a kind girl that you will NEVER in your lifetime EVER meet (although I'm sure you can most likely find similar girls in other shoujo manga if you picked up a random shoujo book in the bookstore)!! These characters aren't just cut-outs, they're cut-outs of cut-outs. Not a SINGLE person's personality stands out, and if you replaced this cast with the cast in a series like "Girl Got Game," then I doubt you'd notice much of a difference. Another problem is the artwork in this series. The artwork is standard shoujo fluff, which includes flowers that pop up in the weirdest of places, guys with perfect bodies and hair, and the insectoid eyes. I'm going to take a moment of this review to personally complain about the eyes of the characters in this series. The eyes are big (no surprise there), but so are their pupils. The characters' pupils take up approximately 97% of the space in their eyes, making the characters' facial expressions in this series extremely limited. After all, what's the point of making big eyes if they can't be very expressive?

And of course the character designs also don't stand out in the overcrowded shoujo genre, and I bet you will discover that Tohru, Tuki, and all the other characters look like 20 other characters in another shoujo manga (or even like other characters in THIS series for that matter), so why is everyone claiming that this series has great art? But the real crime with this series is the story. To be blunt, this series HAS no story... or at least none that I've come across so far! See, the thing is, after we get introduced to the premise of this story, nothing happens. I've read four books of this series so far, and like Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" (where I kept wondering when the movie was going to start) I kept reading "Fruits Basket" wondering when the series would actually begin. Oh sure, we meet new characters over the course of time, and we learn a little bit about their pasts (emphasis on "little"), but overall, a good chunk of time is spent doing absolutely nothing. No relationships get started, no twists in the story, you don't learn ANYTHING new about Tohru as far as I've read, and even the author seems to forget about the whole story with the Chinese Zodiac curse midway through the story, to the point that when the curse is brought up, you realize that you'd forgotten there even WAS a curse to begin with! That's just sad.

To some credit, near the beginning of the book the author hints that there is a darker secret that the Sohma family is hiding, but (like the relationships, story ideas, and characters) this development is quickly forgotten and nothing is done with it. When you hear people talking about this series, the word you will hear people use to describe this series the most will be "cute." And this series is cute. In fact, this series is EXTREMELY cute! However, it's also extremely boring, extremely basic, there is no character development, and the story goes absolutely nowhere after the first book. And THIS is one of the better shoujo out there?! THIS is the shoujo that is actually considered worthy of making the "Top 100 Best Sellers Book" list?! If THIS is the only shoujo series that has been deemed worthy of being critically and financially successful, then I must say that I am crying for the shoujo genre! Surely there has to be better stuff worthy of everyone's attention than this.

- -Review By Kevin T. Rodriguez- -

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