My Favorite Fall 2021 Anime will possibly be my favorite anime of the year, even though its not among those bloody action adventure stories I love so well. Especially since I got a little spoiler on tomorrow morning's episode. Netflix is airing this anime and let me say that it is groundbreaking in a lot of ways. It is a slice of life anime, which takes their characters a bit more serious...but I have never seen a transsexual character treated seriously before in an anime. Usually, in shonen (boys adventure) anime, they are the comical characters. Blue Period is different. It's different in a lot of ways. Leveling up in this anime isn't learning a new fight move or a new supernatural ability. Leveling up, for main character Yaguchi Yatora, means learning about stuff like stippling, using a roller. impasto (he hasn't learned this yet in the anime), proportion, perspective, and style. Yaguchi has decided, rather abruptly, that rather than drifting into adulthood in a dead end job and continuing to be a delinquent (although a delinquent with good grades) he is inspired by his friend Ryuji (trans girl character) and another classmate to do art. So he joins the art club in his 3rd year with the overwhelming goal of getting into one of Tokyo's most prestigious art colleges. The stress art students endure is highlighted (Yaguchi breaks out in hives he is yet to recover from, one classmate is hospitalized, and Ryuji walks out of the college first exam). It also highlights Ryuji's stress of being a trans person in a country that doesn't accept them well in very realistic fashion. I knew in the first episode that Ryuji was probably trans due to the name. People refer to them as Ryuji (almost always, 99% of the time a male name in Japanese...it kind of means dragon child, by the way). We see them going on a date with another student in epsiode 2...but in episode 3, the young man breaks up with them and we see just how close of a friend Yaguchu is to Ryuji. This is a heart-rending scene, and I found it on YouTube. I thought then that this anime was doing something different. Probably even the manga, when it came out in Japan in 2017. I'd never seen a anime devoted to art before. Stylistically, it's gorgeous. The painting scenes and the insight into the art world (even from the perspective of students visiting art shows and museums for inspiration) is fascinating. Their teachers are inspiring and the other students are quirky as hell...as you'd expect from creatives. We creative types are wacky. Some of us are proud of it! I'm looking forward to Episode 9 (Wandering Knife) tomorrow morning but from the spoiler I received online, I may need a pack of tissues by my side, as Ryuji will have some heavy-hearted issues to work through and hopefully a good friend will be there for them. I'll leave you with this. Another thing that makes an anime for me are the opening and closing songs and animations. The opening and closing sequences of this debut season of Blue Period are f*$%ing awesome! I found them on YT also, and will post as my wrap up, consecutively. I highly recommend this show...even for people who are new to anime and wonder if they would like it. Realistic, entertaining, emotional and with believable characters you can grow to empathize with and love.
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The final "free" Crunchyroll sponsored episode. I'm seriously debating putting up episode's 6 and 7 that are on here as well, though they are on personal accounts. That always makes me feel weird and awkward and bad, but here's the thing...if there episodes considered most important and most ground-breaking in this anime, it would be episodes 6 and 7, especially episode 7. But episode 6 leads to the groundbreakingness of episode 7, so let me wrestle with my conscience a bit more before deciding... Episode 5 is on YT also, under a user's account, and it is a cute episode showing that Yuri K. already has somebody on the Japanese skating circuit, a younger talented skater named Minami, who is also has the hots for him. I will at least make a post of clips of 6 and 7 and other eps that show the continuation of this dramatic and powerful change in anime direction in anime in Japan (and the dramatic and powerful evolution of "eros" in the character Yuri Katsuki as he awakens to the sexuality within him and the love he has for Victor). This Eros Evolution is only shown on the ice and in one censored moment on the ice in that groundbreaking episode 7...a moment that caused fujoshi and fudanshi yaoi fans (women and men fans of male gay anime and manga, respectively) to scream everywhere when it happened. I refer to this as the "Fan-Squeeing Heard 'Round theWorld." Just search for any review of this episode. You'll see). So we have the face-off at Yu-Topia. Yuri Katsuki versus Yuri Plisetsky. On the line, Victor's unwavering attention for training (perhaps love as well...I always thought that Yuri P. was a bit smitten with Victor too, who the hell isn't in this series? But Yuri P. meets someone later who is more his type of partner...no spoiler, but...it's just perfect all around and leaves open a chance for the Yuri's to become better friends than rivals). Here in this episode, we see something I HAVE NEVER BEFORE SEEN in anime or real life. In real life and in anime, we often we male and female characters in sports trying to become stronger, more masculine, to complete with rivals in their sports. Here in this episode (and in later episodes with Yuri P. when his coach's ex-wife gets involved in his training) we see male characters aiming to become more graceful and feminine with their approaches to their ice skating. That was something altogether new and different for Japanese sports anime and it was a breath of fresh air to see male characters (especially later on a hothead like Yuri P.) embracing the feminine side of their natures. If you know and believe in the philosophy of yin and yang, we all apparently have the masculine and feminine natures within us. This episode shows it well. Yuri K's getting in touch with his divine feminine performing the beginning of the Eros skate causes the Japanese announcer to stutter in a future episode. Same, dude. Same. The older, self-conscious Yuri Katsuki faces his rival: the younger, swaggering, arrogant edge-lord Yuri Plisetsky in a battle for Victor's attention and one-on-one training at stake. Which Yuri will win? Will Victor be able to change the two Yuri's with the wildly different pieces of music he has chosen for each of them, music that contrasts their personalities? On Love: Agape, (charitable, unconditional love) for hot-tempered Russian Yuri, and On Love: Eros, (erotic, passionate, sexual love) for the shy and demure Japanese Yuri? Is Yuri Katsuki Victor's Pygmalion? Can he turn a little Japanese piggy into a prince? Watch it and see. My only regret is that Crunchyroll has only one more free episode of this up on YouTube. But you can always watch the rest with ads on Crunchyroll if you don't want to be a paying member. There are bootleg vids on YT of some of the other episodes but I don't roll like that. I will try and find some of the best scenes after the third episode...to show in continuing posts. And there are some really great scenes, especially of the Grand Prix final and other skaters, and Victor and Yuri's growing relationship. Someone pointed out to me that Funimation also has the English voiced version of this (dubbed) . I am not generally a fan of dubbed anime, preferring to watch most of my shows in the original language with subtitles. I have exceptions to this...anime that I consider so great in English voice that I prefer to watch them that way (Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Soul Eater, xxxHolic, Black Butler) but they are the exceptions to the rule. A fun fact...the English voice actor for Victor is NOT the character who voices Gru in Despicable Me, though fans will often meme that shit and it pisses me off. They sound remarkably similar though, and maybe that is why they do it. Fans are funny like that. Now, episode two of Yuri on Ice!!!: Two Yuri's?! Drama at Yu-topia! I am generally not a manga reader, but I do read a few of them. I haven't read this one, but I know it must be good going on how heavily hyped this anime was before it was released in 2019 by fans of the manga. They weren't wrong. Itadori Yuji is a high school student who excels at sports but he doesn't want to be an athlete. The sports clubs at his new high school would keep him attending too late to visit his grandfather (his only family) in th hospital, and his grandfather is very ill. So the only club he wants to be a part of is the Occult Club which lets him come and go as he pleases...because he keeps their club going, being the member they need to make the final number cut. He likes the other two members, though. Enough so that he got the school's cursed object for them...and that was probably not a good idea. It sets into motion the events that changes Yuji's life and gets him transferred to sorcerer's school. Because now he has a curse living inside of him...one of the most evil curses imaginable. Following this episode is the best gold-darn ending song I've heard in awhile. "Lost in Paradise" performed by ALI—a multinational Hip Hop/funk outfit from Shibuya (Tokyo), featuring AKLO on vocals. Honest to goddess, it's all I can do to stop myself from getting up and dancing (very badly) to this song every time it comes on. My girlfriend laughs at me enough as it is. Also...whenever someone in anime has their eyes closed via bandages or blindfolds, etcetera, it's a dead damn giveaway that that person is 1) EXTREMELY OVERPOWERED, and 2) has weird-ass, freaky-ass looking eyes. Well, in Gojo's case, it's one out of two. When I first saw Gojo's eyes, I almost forgot how gay I am, and fell once again in love with an anime character. If you're curious, watch the rest of the damn show. It's not too long (episode five maybe) before they're revealed. Or just search on YouTube for the opening song with Gojo's blindfold off. There are two opening songs: one where he teases taking the blindfold off, and then after the episode where he does do it, they start showing the second opening song. Anime openings are (sometimes) pretty good about not giving too many spoilers. They give enough as it is. Anyway, this anime is one of my favorite new anime and I'm trying to get caught up with season one right now, because season 2 will be airing soon. This has themes of blood and gore and violence. Probably not for little kids. There's also the occasional dirty joke. Enjoy. AND... I forgot the ending song doesn't appear in the first episode. My bad. Here ya go: Comfession: I like professional and Olympic ice-skating, gymnastics, all that kind of stuff...as well as gay anime and manga. Gay anime and manga is called yaoi, for for characters that are male and queer and yuri for female characters that are queer. There are a few transgender series out there and honestly, Japan is kind of backwards and awkward about this stuff, even though they are more open about creating comics and animation that are gay. So I'm not sure what the names of those are yet...I have one on my to-watch list and I'll let ya'll know when I watch it what the Japanese word for the genre is, if they have one. I like both yaoi and yuri depending on the subject matter and how the couples get together. I'm not a big fan of "non-con' yaoi or yuri. That's fan slang for "non-consent" and you know what that entails. Though it seems a lot of Japanese gay anime has it, even the less erotic stuff. I've read several literary essays about how it began to be a thing ("non-con" yaoi) because Japanese woman (in a repressed society, yaoi has been around awhile now) enjoyed the idea of a man being...well...raped. Disturbing...and so not cool. IMO. Well. Enough of that cringy talk. I will cover more "consensual" anime in the future. That doesn't happen in THIS anime. In fact, you only get teasers of relationships going on, basically because this anime is a SPORTS anime, first and foremost. Yuri Katsuki is a complicated character. The first episode sees him as a 23 year old, down-on-his-luck, seemingly washed up skater, while his idol, a bit older, Russian superstar Viktor Nikiforov is still winning gold medals. He returns home to Japan from the US after losing the nationals and finishing college and dismissing his coach, only to have is former ballet teacher reprimand him. He escapes to the skating rink rather than watch ice skating with her, where he meets with his old friends (a girl he used to crush on) and skates a famous routine by Viktor (gorgeous overlay scenes of Viktor skating the same routine at Grand Championship Finals on television as Yuri's mentor watches at Yuri's family's business—a hot springs/inn). Wait! You say? A girl he used to crush on? Yes. Yuri is a character that not only seems to be gay later on, but also seems to be "demisexual." People who identify as demisexual only feel sexual attraction to another person if they form a strong emotional bond or connection with them first. He confesses to Viktor in a later episode that he had a girl come on to him in Detroit but he didn't know how to deal with it, because he did not feel that way toward her and he was awkward. As the show progresses, even within the first three episodes, you will see that Yuri Katsuki begins to develop feelings for Viktor. And while Viktor is at first teasing...eventually he returns those feelings...even beginning to by episode three. As luck would have it...Crumchyroll has uploaded the first three entire episodes of this wonderful series on its YouTube site. And I don't call it ground-breaking lightly. This is the first time ever, in the history of Japanese anime, that an anime mainly labeled as a sports anime, features characters that even hint at queerness. Unfortunately, due to Japan's strict censorship guidelines, hint is all they really can do. But...they push that envelope to the very extremity. And queer anime fans all over the world loved it. I can only imagine what joy Japanese queer kids and young adults (and adults) felt with such representation, albeit not completely "open" representation. I will upload all three of the videos in due time. In the meantime, enjoy episode one. With a bit of..ahem.."fan service" at the end for you ladies, if you enjoy that. I know I do. Here's Yuri on Ice!!! Ep 1: Easy as Pirozhki!! The Grand Prix Final of Tears. As a member of Crunchyroll, I get to watch some really cool anime Really, really cool. Like this one. Yeah, it's another romantic one like Fruits Basket but like Fruits Basket its also a fantasy that's got some dark moments. I'm telling you...wayyy darker than Fruits Basket. In FruBa, the main character falls for a boy whose cute cat form may become a monster under certain circumstances. In TAMB, Chise Hatori sells herself to be the bride of an actual monster. A possible man-eating monster, a magus named Elias Ainsworth (nicknames: Pilum Muralis (lit. "Wall Spear"), the Child of Thorns, and the Thorn Mage, and other less pleasant names others in the series call him). His head is a skull with horns, eerily reminding one of the Wendigo of American legend. A half-man/half beast that was once human, the Wendigo is cursed because as a human it resorted to cannibalism. And there's cannibalism hinted at in Elias' past. Yes, this anime has some disturbing moments. But it has some remarkable moments as well. It is an anime with a theme of struggling to overcome your inner demons. Elias struggles to overcome his beastly nature. Chise struggles to overcome her depression, the fact that she is cursed to see monsters, and that her mother committed suicide because of that same curse. Both Elias and Chise struggle to learn to love and live with one another while trying to find a way to keep Chise from dying from her condition at a young age. She is a Sleigh Beggy, a human mage that can draw magic from her surroundings. Sleigh Beggies are worth a lot of money, so there's always a subplot of someone trying to get to her, but they also die young. This is a great anime. It has some of my favorite Japanese voice actors in it, coupled with the rich animation of English countrysides and English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish mythologies. And there are dragons. And the cryptid Wendigo mystery behind who Elias really is. The Ancient Magus' Bride is another anime that ranks very high on my recommended anime list. There are two seasons, so far...and some OVAs. Fans of The Ancient Magus' Bride or Mahoutsukai no Yome, as it is called in Japanese, are eagerly awaiting the 3rd season...when Chise attends the Magus Academy in London. I don't imagine it will be anything at all like Harry Potter. Some people don't seem to fit in anywhere. At home, at school, on the job. Outcasts. Black sheep. Bullied and shunned. This was the first episode going in this early that broke me. This soon. Realizing that Torhu, as beautiful and sweet as she is, has people in her life who actually cannot see how beautiful and sweet and kind she is. Her kind grandfather is the only remnant of her father's side of the family who treats her well. The rest of them treat her like a pile of dog crap they stepped in with their best Sunday shoes on. It's painful to watch. Her father died when she was a tiny girl, and since her mother died the previous year, she puts up with these other assholes (aunt, uncle and shitty cousins) to be around her kind grandpa. So she leaves the Sohma house when the renovations are done to move back in and these jerks have also moved back in and are treating Torhu as if she's not welcome there. The whole story when she is packing up to leave the Sohma's of the childhood game "Fruits Basket" and the children naming her the "Rice Ball" so that she never gets picked to go play with them and her saying it figures since she doesn't belong, is heartbreaking. This is also the episode where one comes to the realization that Tohru and Kyo have a whole helluva lot in common. They are both "black sheep of their families." Well, in Kyo's case an orange cat (and something terrifyingly more, as we find out in a later episode) and in Torhu's case, a "Rice Ball in a Fruits Basket." Being accepted into a family and feeling family love or romantic love is probably the apex of human happiness, and Torhu begins to feel both here: family love probably with Yuki and Shigure and probably the stirrings of romantic love for Kyo. I swear, the first time I watched this, back in 2009 (the old anime) and the boys came and got her from the asshole place with Yuki telling them off for being mean to her, and they walk away, and the scene from childhood pops in her head with the kids shouting "RICE BALL!" I fucking lost it...and sat bawling at least for thirty solid minutes. I think anyone who has been through similar situations in childhood (I was shunned for a whole school term in high school, except for two close friends) and to this day I do not know why) would seriously relate to this episode. The review below is from the 2009 series, but the episodes are pretty much the same for the first season. I like the 2019 series better, but I could not find a really good review on it that showed the emotions it provokes. This reviewer captures it well. Exceptions to the Forms of the Curse and Manifestations:Fruits Basket ended this past week, but I'm still going to post about it, and as soon as the box set comes out on BluRay, I'll be signing up for early purchase. The Sohma Clan is a family cursed for generations to turn into the Chinese zodiac animals when hugged by the opposite sex or when their bodies are weakened by cold or illness. There are a few exceptions to the curse forms and their manifestations (some members have different forms and abilities than what you'd anticipate). This particular generation is the first time that all of the zodiac forms have been living at the same time, which is why Hatsuharu Sohma speculated in one episode that the curse will break in this generation. Affection Between Two Zodiac Members: While a zodiac member will transform if hugged by a non-cursed member of the opposite sex. male and female members of the zodiac can hug one another without transforming. No one knows why this is. These may be why a a couple of the Sohma cousins fall in love and have relationships (despite the violent protests of the God of the curse). Memory Erasure: This is a special ability manifested in the Dragon (seahorse) form, currently residing in Sohma Hatori. He can put his hand over someone's eyes and cause them to lose certain memories of events or people. He used this on Yuki's classmates when at a party on the Sohma compound, a girl grabbed him and he changed into rat and they saw it. He used it on Momiji's mother when she wanted to forget him (and giving birth to him--more on him later) and most tragic of all, he used it on his own girlfriend after Akito Sohma flew into a rage and injured Hatori's eye, then blamed the girlfriend for it. Kana, the girlfriend was filled with so much sorrow and depression, she couldn't eat, so Hatori, regardless of how much he loved her, erased her memories of him. The seahorse is the form the curse takes in the dragon zodiac member. I believe the manga said it because dragons do not exist in the human world. The "God" Form of the Curse: As int he original myth (see the last post on plot), there is a person who bears the curse of the God form. That person currently is Akito Sohma. Whew! What can I say about Akito? FruBa fans feel either one of two ways about Akito...either Akito is the biggest asshole or is the most psychotic messed-up tragic character of the whole damn series. I lean toward a little of both. In Akito's mind, the Zodiac's are born for her to dominate and control, and she tries to do just that. Akito wants to possess (mentally and sexually) all of the male family members (except the young ones, though they are still jealous over them), except for Kyo. She used to cling to Shigure, until Shigure moved out. Now she clings to Kureno and won't let him near the other Zodiacs, for fear they might discover he is now different (more on him later). All of the previous Zodiac Gods had been male, so her mother forced her to grow up as a male, with her true gender hidden, which made her even more psychotic and crazy. She ruthlessly attacks any of the female members who get too close to a male member (Kagura was the only one to escape this, because she liked Kyou, the outcast Cat). The Cat Form as a Shunned Figure for the Other Zodiacs to Feel Relief from their Own Curse: Kyou has it bad, no doubt about it. As the Cat of the Zodiac, he's not even one of the celebrated yearly members who gets invited to the banquet every New Years that commemorates the first banquet between God and the animals...the first banquet that turned into the Curse. Kyou gets treated with disgust by Akito (the current God incarnation) and she torments him with the fact that like the preceding Cat-possessed Sohma's before him, he'll be imprisoned on the Sohma compound in a special cell once he graduates high school. He has a second, foul-smelling, ugly and monstrous form that he transforms into once his sealing bead bracelet is removed. He feels shunned by some of the other members of the Zodiac, but mostly he misreads it awkward pity. The end-point one takes from the message of the original scene with the God on the Hill, the message that everyone forgot over generations, was that the cat was originally the first animal God loved. The Cat Monster (Baki-Neko) Form of the Cat Form:If all of the above isn't enough, Kyou's curse comes with an extra next-level fucked-up level of fucked-up not-fair-bullshit. So you can begin to understand that the boy is not an unruly asshole with a tendency toward violence, but a tragic, shunned, black sheep, loner, guilt-ridden about his mother's suicide (and made to feel the blame for it by others simply for being the Cat form). The only person in his life who has treated him warmly is his martial arts trainer, Kazuma Sohma. This is because of Kazuma's own guilt at having treated his grandfather, the previous bearer of the Cat curse, with disdain and fear, even though he remembered his grandfather as being a kindhearted man, locked away in the Sohma prison cell. He wanted something better for Kyou, so he took him in. In episode 24, we see him watching Kyou and Tohru walking together from a distance and Kyou smiling at Torhtu. Later, when he is introduced to Torhu, Kyou is seated on the floor and he covers his bead bracelet with his hand, hiding it. A suspicious move, and one that the viewer doesn't realize will suddenly turn the show from a story about a family who turn into cute zodiac animals into something infinitely more terrifying. Kagura had hinted about Kyou's "true form" in an earlier episode... in this one, we see it. Kazuma tells Kyou he can't continue to run from it and they need to see if he really doesn't have a life after revealing it to Tohru...the one person who he doesn't want to see him as a monster. Once again, the only good YT I could find were other people's reviews of the episode, so I watched a bunch and picked a really good one. I think it gives you a good idea of how this anime springs the dark side of this story on its viewers. The Current Sohma Zodiac Members: (see the video below for all of their transformations, with the exception of Kureno, whose curse was broken before his character was introduced). Kyou - Cat Yuki - Rat Shigure - Dog Momiji - Rabbit Hatori - Dragon (Seahorse) Hatsuharu (Haru) - Ox (Cow) Ayame - Snake Ritsu - Monkey Kisa - Tiger Hiro - Ram (Sheep) Isuzu - Horse Kureno - Rooster (Bird) Fruits Basket is a shoujo (girls adventure) anime. That means it has a romance element. It aldo has a paranormal element in that it involves a family cursed through several generations. When the first episode begins, the first scene you see is a Japanese-style house on a giant hill. Inside a human male figure is seated in the middle of a circle, and the circle is made by what appear to be the animals of the Chinese zodiac surrounding the man. A male voice says: "I'll hold another banquet. I'll hold banquet after banquet, forever unchanging." Then it ends the opening scene with the words "The original memory...forgotten by everyone," as a tear slides down the face of the cat sitting on the lap of the white-haired man. Then Fruits Basket begins. The story follows the main character of Honda Torhu (in English it would be Torhu Honda, but Japanese people do Last Name First, First Name Last). She is recently homeless and living in a tent in a seemingly uninhabited area in the woods after her mother passed away a year before and her grandfather was getting his house remodeled. She is walking to school when she sees a house down below and is curious, so she investigates. On the porch of the house are miniature figures of the twelve animals of the zodiac. She ponders them and says "I thought so...there's no cat." She is overheard by an man who appears to be in his thirties. He asks her what she means and she tells him the story of the zodiac as told by her mother. This is a popular myth in Japan (probably due to their historic love for cats). Torhru relates: "Long ago, God told all the animals he was throwing a banquet tomorrow, and not to be late. The mischievous rat told his neighbor, the cat, that the banquet was the day after tomorrow. So, the next day, all the animals lined up for the banquet, and the rat rode there all the way on the ox's back. All the animals had fun, except for the cat, who was at home sleeping and dreaming for a banquet that would never come." Tohru remembers crying and saying she wanted to exchange her year of the Dog for the year of the Cat. The man says "Hmmmm.... I wonder what he would think if he heard that?" Then around the corner pops her classmate, the good-looking prince of her high school, Yuki Sohma who lives in this house with this man, his uncle, Shigure Sohma. Yuki walks with Torhu to school that morning, and that's that. Except it isn't. Later in the evening, Shigure and Yuki are taking a walk on the property where they live when they spot the tent where Tohru has been living (illegally on their land, unknowingly, of course) and they see Tohru who is tired after working part-time as a cleaner in an office building go in the tent. She is startled when she emerges with a washcloth and towel to go to the creek to wash up and sees them. Shigure bursts out laughing, but Yuki has nothing but compassion for his poor classmate. They take her to their home where she tells the story of her being recently orphaned with her mom getting killed by a car and being temporarily homeless because she did not want to put her relatives out (we later find out what assholes they are) because they apparently barely had enough room for Tohru's sweet grandpa while the house was being renovated (later the asshole family all move in with grandpa, leaving nowhere for Torhu, but we'll do that episode at a later time as it is an important one). Torhu insists she must return to the tent and asks for them to please let her stay there on the land until the house is finished being renovated, but then we see Shigure cock his head and listens and in the distance, a wolf howls. He says it's not a good idea as the area has had a landslide. Tohru asks how he knows, and Shigure responds with some mumbling about animal instinct, which captures Yuki's attention. Tohru, worried about her mother's picture, tried to get up, but collapses from an exhausted fever. Yuki brings an ice pack (because the kitchen is too nasty for Shigure), walking in on Tohru telling Shigure that she regrets not telling her mother "See you later, take care (Itterasshai)" an indication that she is blaming herself for her mother's death. Yuki comments as he begins to leave the house that she is always like that, only thinking of others. Shigure asks if he is going to go and try and dig Torhu's things out by himself. As he opens the door and is framed by the dark doorway, we see his eyes glowing and behind him are hundreds, maybe thousands of rats, as he says "Who me? Alone? Who do you think you're talking to?" Then he says "I'm leaving now (Ittekimasu)" and Shigure replies "Itterasshai." When Tohrhu comes to all of her belongings are there (including her mom's picture) and Shigure and Yuki offer her a place to live in exchange for housekeeping and cooking (it turns out the two men are terrible at it, as evidenced by the filthy, fly-infested kitchen). Later, after Yuki shows Torhu her new room, we hear a commotion on the roof and it caves in. When the dust clears, an orange-haired boy is standing in front of Torhu pumping his fists at Yuki and calling him "rat boy." When he charges at Yuki to attack him, he slips and Torhru reaches out to keep him from falling...she puts her arms around him... AND POOF! There's a flash of orange cloud and Torhu comes up sitting... Holding a brightly colored, and very angry, orange cat. That is the first meeting of Honda Torhu and and Kyo Sohma. It doesn't get off to a good start, but it does get better, with lots and LOTS of tears. This is the first part of my explanation of the curse of the Sohmas, and the plot of Fruits Basket. The second one will be coming in a few days, where I will tell about each Sohma member's curse. Yesterday, Crunchyroll's news blog reported that 100 taxicabs in Tokyo will feature panels from the wildly popular pirate anime One Piece to commemorate the upcoming milestone of 100 manga volumes published. And it doesn't look like the manga will end very soon, but there isn't much left of the story, according to creator Eiichiro Oda. The anime is currently in the Wano Country arc.
Crunchyroll reports: "While some of the famous panels may bring up some tearful memories for some fans of the series, I'm sure seeing panels of One Piece whizz by on the streets of Shibuya or Akihabara more than makes up for reliving those moments in the Straw Hat's journey." Makes me think there will be a Going Merry (the Straw Hat's first ship, the little ship with a soul) panel or two, and perhaps some of Luffy's adopted brother, Ace. Both of these beloved characters died in tearjerking scenes. Read the Crunchyroll post here: https://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2021/05/24-1/one-piece-dons-100-tokyo-taxis-in-celebration-of-100-manga-volumes |
anime n' mangaI blog about a lot of regular, harmless sci-fi and fantasy anime n' manga, but I'll throw the occasional yaoi n' yuri (gay) posts in here. 'Cus I like that shit too. archives
December 2021
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