Curses...Part 3. | Fruits Basket, Volume 3: Puddles of Memories (Episodes 13-19)

Family Ties | Fruits Basket, Volume 3: Puddles of Memories (Episodes 13-19) | Laura Bailey, Eric Vale

DVDs:


	• Fruits Basket, Volume 3: Puddles of Memories (Episodes 13-19) Laura Bailey, Eric Vale Funimation Prod, 2003 average customer review:based on 22 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Anime Therapy

Fruits Basket is like a healing balm for all your troubles and worries. All the unusual characters, their interactions, and the dialouge are so funny and also deeply moving. With Fruits Basket, you will laugh and you will cry, and you will feel better about your fears, doubts, and concerns. You will also feel better about yourself.

Volume Three, Puddles of Memories, has an astounding SEVEN eps (#13-#19). What a value for your money! In this DVD, we meet three new Sohmas. Two of them are little kids. They are so adorable, and their stories are so heartwrenching. The first kid, Momiji, appears three times, in episodes 13, 15, and 19. Thirteen is just comedy, but prepare yourself with a box of tissue for episode fifteen. His story is haunting, and will always stay with you. I almost fell out of my chair crying.

The other little Sohma is a girl named Kisa. She is a tiger! And the tiger is so CUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Her story is in episode eighteen.

My favorite new character in this DVD is Ayame, the Snake. Ayame is flamboyant, drop-dead gorgeous, and just total eye candy. Gorge on him. My friend said yesterday that he looks like Sesshoumaru from Inuyasha. He does! Ayame and Shigure may or may not have a hot thing going on, which provides lots of comic relief. In fact, Ayame is one of my favorite characters in anime, period.

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Curses...Part 3.

The third DVD of the first season of Fruits basket begins with a new school year for Tohru, Yuki, and Kyo. It's been about 6 months since Tohru has lived with the Sohma's, and all is going along swimmingly. Kyo and Yuki still fight like cats and dogs (or, in this case, cats and rats), and there is an intimacy forming between Tohru with each of them. All seems to be going well, Momitchi and Haru are starting at the school as well and both cause quite a stir with their physical appearances when the arrive. What really stirs everyone up is some information that they have for Yuki and Kyo... Akito, head of the Sohma house hold, has come to the opening day of school to check in on them, and he actually encounters Tohru independent of the others. Yuki becomes distressed by this news and wanders off, only to find Akito and Tohru together. There is much animosity, and a large part of Yuki and Akito's dynamic and past is divulged to Tohru for the first time.

A visit from another member of the zodiac proves to be too much for Yuki. This time it is his older brother Ayami (Aaya), born in 1977. This makes him take on the form of the snake. Ayami is tall, good looking, vivacious, and a huge flirt. HE flirts with everyone, no matter who it is... Tohru, Kyo, Shigure... even Yuki to a degree. He's such an oddball, his personality is the polar opposite of Yuki, which I suspect is due to Yuki's angst and attempt to be a little like his brother as humanly possible. Ayami reveals to Tohru how much he cares about Yuki, and she encourages them both to try to be friendly to each other, for their familial tie if nothing else.

Tohru visit's the grave of her mother on the anniversary of her death with all of her friends and Sohma's in tow. Soon after Momitchi reveals something terrible about his mother, and Tohru cannot believe that this young man has had to deal with such pain. She bonds with him over his loss and tries to empathize as well as she is capable of doing. Not long later she develops a cold, and it happens to be the exact time that her mid term retests are. Kyo insists that she stay in bed and acts as a proper nurse maid to her... even so far as to listen to her grief about retaking the tests and what that means to her promise to her mother that she made before her death. Also in the disc a new member of the zodiac, Kisa Sohma is introduced. This mute girl was born the year of the tiger, 1986. She bonds with Tohru fairly quickly.

Of course there is more, but I can't give it all away, you'll just have to pick it up and watch it for yourself. Again, the art is spectacular, the story is absorbing, and all that jazz. One thing I found hilarious about this was the character Ayami...more appropriately the voice acting for him in the English dubbing. By this point I am reading the manga (because I can get it faster than the DVD's through work, and I find I need a Fruits Basket fix in between discs). When Ayami was introduced I imagined his voice to be high, yet soft, like a woman's I suppose. He is the token sexual deviant, and his sexuality is ambiguous at best... is he gay, is he not, he's flamboyant like a gay boy, a huge flirt, and pretty much aids in perpetuating every negative homosexual male stereotype there is. However, when they hired a voice actor they chose to get someone who could speak with a booming tenor, yet fluctuate the tones from high to low constantly, and put strange emphasis` on bizarre words and syllables ... it reminds me vividly of a cross between the deep tones of Sher Khan's voice (drool, George Sanders) and Kaa's intonations from Disney's "The Jungle Book". I originally would have just said they were copying it from Kaa's voice (seeing as Kaa was a snake), however when I though about it I remembered that the voice it reminded me of more was George Sanders rather than Sterling Holloway. I'm guessing they went with a deeper voice to amp up the hilarity of having that voice come out of that character's mouth. All that aside though, do see this one. That was just something odd that I noticed while watching it, but that is not a reason to miss this wonderful series.

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Family Ties

Tohru meets two more Sohmas as Fruits Basket continues.

The volume begins with an episode both humorous and creepy. Momiji and Haru's hilarious first day at high school turns sinister as Yuki is scared witless by a sudden appearance by Akito, and we find out through flashbacks exactly why Yuki was so desperate to flee to Shigure.

Tohru gets her own more innocent scare when she meets Ayame the Snake, Shigure's favorite cousin - and Yuki's big brother - in the garden. There are reasons Yuki hasn't mentioned him. They're not exactly close because of a ten year age gap and the fact that our Aya just happens to be a very loud, hypersensual, presumably bisexual, crossdressing drama queen - which of course mortifies spotlight hating Yuki. How bad is he? The man has his own bagpipe theme that plays whenever he shows up. Of course, Tohru thinks he's the greatest thing since sliced bread once she gets over her initial shock, and Shigure's no help considering that his mentality degenerates to that of a five year old whenever he's anywhere near Aya. The only one who also wants Aya's visit to be as short as possible is Kyo.

Ayame did not show up to cause problems, though. He's actually come because he heard about Yuki's scare and wanted to make sure he was o.k. He also knows that being the older brother he dropped the ball by not making sure that he stayed in Yuki's life, and he wants to make things right and be there for him if things get bad with Akito.

Later, Tohru also meets Kisa the Tiger, who isn't speaking to anyone - including her mother and Haru, with whom she's very close - after suffering trauma in elementary school.

The volume also covers the one year anniversary of the death of Tohru's mother, on which Tohru further bonds with Momiji, who she finds out bears a terrible burden of his own behind his seemingly perpetual smile. Haru shows surprisingly tactful sensitivity in quietly helping Yuki out with his Ayame problem and has some very moving moments with Kisa.

There's also a weak episode built around the Yuki Fan Club notable only for the appearance of Hana's equally strange brother, but all in all this is a worthy follow up to the first two volumes.

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Cool Gift

This was a gift for my 14 year old niece who loves "anime". She hasn't had a chance to watch this DVD, but did enjoy Volume's 1 and 2.

Je t'aime, mon amour, bon voyage!

The second volume of the "Fruits Basket" anime ended with the revelation that Hatsuharu and Momiji would soon be attending high school with the others.

So it's not surprising that the high school hijinks ensue once these weird teenagers join the student body. And though there's plenty of goofiness from Yuki's fangirls and his long-estranged brother in "Fruits Baske Vol. 3 - Puddles of Memories," it has some very bittersweet themes in many of the episodes. For a series with such a sparkly happy heroine, it's remarkably dark.

The first day of school gets off to a rocky start, with Momiji dressing like a girl and Haru getting into a "black" bustup with the pompous class president. But then the news arrives that Akito is about to visit the school -- and Tohru bumps into the mysterious head of the Sohma family. And though he's pleasant and warm toward her, she catches a glimpse of the true, malevolent personality behind the mask.

And more members of the zodiac pop out of the woodwork -- a snake slithers up Tohru's dress, and is revealed to be the flamboyant, eccentric Ayame Sohma, Yuki's estranged big brother, who is now trying to make amends for his past behavior. And then Haru introduces Tohru to a very bitey little tiger cub, Kisa Sohma. Kisa has been ignored and tormented by her peers until she stopped talking, and now only Tohru's love and Yuki's understanding can draw her out of her shell.

And in other news: Tohru contracts the flu right before a big test, Shigure sweeps his friends off to a weekend at a lake house, the gang visits the grave of Tohru's mother, and Tohru learns of the cheerful Momiji's tragic past. And in one hilarious episode, Yuki's fangirls scheme to infiltrate Hanajima's house so they can take out the "witch" Tohru. But Hana and her little brother have some surprises in store...

"Fruits Basket" has always been a series that is rather bright and sunny in its overall outlook, but the short-term stories always have some darker, sadder dimensions. In particular, the third volume delves into Yuki's past abuse at Akito's hands, a parent who abandoned their cursed child, and some closure to Hatori's story of his tragic lost love. And there are hints of a dark connection between Tohru's late mother and Kyo.

And the writers successfully transport Natsuki Takaya's bittersweet scenes into anime, such as an adorable scene where Tohru hugs Momiji after he proclaims that he wants to believe that every memory is important, even the painful ones. Even Ayame -- crazy, flamboyant, and utterly self-absorbed -- gets a few poignant moments as he reflects on his own past selfishness.

But fear not -- these episodes are still saturated in silliness, ranging from Kyo and Yuki's inevitable fights ("You didn't even know that Jason isn't really a bear. He's a character in a horror film." "Yeah? So what if I didn't? Like I'd waste my time watching some movie about a bear!") to Shigure's constant torture of his editor. And there are some truly adorable scenes, such as Kisa following Tohru around the house, resulting in Tohru shrieking, "I love you" and hugging the little girl. Aww.

These episodes also introduce us to the most priceless character in all of "Fruits Basket" -- Ayame the crazy, flamboyant, self-absorbed, lecherous, hyperdramatic seamster. Not only is it completely surreal whenever he's onscreen ("They may direct their desire towards ME!"), but he has his own brand of poignancy -- he tries so hard to connect with Yuki, but fails so hilariously. Kisa is a little sweetie, but she's understandably overshadowed by her older cousin.

Yuki and Kyo also experience some growth in these episodes -- Yuki freezes when confronted by his former tormentor, and struggles just to be in the same room as his brother. Yet we also see him trying to be stronger despite his flaws. And Kyo's klutzy attempts to help Tohru -- including making the hated leek soup -- show his growing feelings. And poor Momiji, a character even sunnier than Tohru, is revealed to have a past even more horrible than hers.

The third volume of the "Fruits Basket" anime is fun and sometimes outright loopy, but laced with tragedy and old scars for all the characters. Definitely a must-see.

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