Review: FRUITS BASKET ANOTHER

Let's wrap things up with the modern sequel to one of shojo manga's most beloved series.

FRUITS BASKET ANOTHER (Furutsu Basuketto Anaza), by Natsuki Takaya.  First published in 2015 and first published in North America in 2018.

PLOT:

Sawa can't seem to do anything right.  Everyone seems to be judging her: her teachers, her classmates, her mother, her landlord.  Her anxiety is so bad that she can barely function.  That's when Mutsumi Sohma, the handsome school council president, extends his hand in kindness to her (while also securing her a spot on the student council).  Bit by bit, Sawa's world begins to open up alongside Mutsumi, his reticent cousin Hajime, and Hajime's perky twin sister Sora.

STORY:

Following up a story as widely beloved as Fruits Basket was never going to be an easy task for Natsuki Takaya.  She's published a number of stories since that series ended, but none of them have ever hit quite as hard.  When she did finally return, she unfortunately chose the laziest possible option: follow the look-alike kids of the next generation as they basically re-enact the same story.

The big difference is in the heroine, and Sawa sure as hell is no Tohru.  There are seemingly no adults around her who cannot resist belittling her for existing, and in Sawa's mind every minor offense is magnified into justification for her isolation and abandonment.  Every social interaction, however small, leaves her on the verge of a panic attack and in the real world would be a prime candidate for mood-stabilizing medication and lots of therapy.  It's easy to sympathize with Sawa, but I found myself getting increasingly exhausted and exasperated with her as the volume when on.  It doesn't help that Takaya is playing coy about whatever past trauma caused Sawa to be this way, so as far as the reader can tell her anxieties are purely irrational.

At least she is different, though.  It's never stated as much, but it's not hard for anyone who's read Fruits Basket and has two brain cells to rub together to figure out that Mutsumi is Yuki's son (who acts like dear old dad when he was in 'prince' mode), and that Hajime and Sora are basically carbon copies of their parents Kyo and Tohru.  Hell, Mutsumi even has an obsessive fangirl who looks a lot like the one his dad did!  It seems that this latest generation of Sohmas has taken Tohru's example of compassionate selflessness to heart and are using it to try and help Sawa.  It's a sweet idea, but it just furthers the feeling that we've seen this all before.  

It really doesn't help that Sawa and Hajime have zero chemistry.  He's so gruff and terse that it's hard to tell what he's thinking when his sister isn't serving as wingman.  Sawa takes his lack of reaction at face value, which more often than not sends her into an anxiety spiral until someone else can intervene.  This goes beyond the usual teen awkwardness of your average shojo schoolroom romance - this is downright dysfunctional.  Maybe I'd be willing to play along if I felt like I had some idea of what Takaya was doing beyond delivering a big load of 'memberberries, but she's not making it easy for me.

ART:

At the very least, this series demonstrates how far Takaya has come as an artist since the original Fruits Basket started.  While all of the characters are drawn in her usual sparse style, there's much more of a sense of dimension to them.  Faces are a little less sharp, hair and clothing are a little more detailed, and she can nurse a little more emotional nuance out of those plain, spade-shaped faces.  The page compositions can be a little hectic-looking at times, but the backgrounds and screentones are minimal enough as to not make it all overbearing.  

RATING:

Fruits Basket Another is fairly inoffensive, but it's a little too similar to the original series in structure for its own good.  All of the new characters come off worse in comparison and the stakes are unclear at this point.  Maybe it picks up later, but for now I'm not completely sold.

This manga is published by Yen Press.  This series is complete in Japan with 4 volumes available.  All 4 volumes have been released and are currently in print.