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)
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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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