Disclaimer: Spoilers, also I'm going to use this to review the whole series, since taking the final season out of context makes no sense

Might be rushing this rewrite considering my draft literally deleted itself when I was almost done but whatever.

I watched Fruits Basket when the reboot first came out, but I ended up quitting midway through the first season. However, it is currently ranked as #1 on AniList and #4 on MAL, which completely threw me off guard. I asked around as to how the final season could’ve been such a massive improvement, but no luck. With no other option left, I decided to grind through the whole series within the course of a few days.

My best guess is that the people reviewing this are already Fruits Basket fans, given that there's 50 episodes of it to touch before you get to this. Consider this a review by a non-fan, for a different perspective.

I decided to go through with it because I’m a sucker for romantic dramas. Maybe that’s why I feel strongly enough about it to write a review. Do I like the show? Difficult to say. Was it worth it? Probably not. For those who haven’t seen it, I’ll leave it at this. At its worst, it’s so generic its actually painful, at its best it hits some of the same notes as other anime dramas like Your Lie in April and March Comes in Like a Lion, even if it feels like a lot rougher of an experience overall. The art is quite nice, the music is fine, and the dub voice-acting is actually fantastic. The characters and the pacing of the story is really where it begins to struggle.

As the show goes on, you definitely notice an improvement, even if it’s nowhere near drastic enough to warrant the hype. The first season was an endurance test for me, but I guess that’s to be expected considering that it spends the least time on serious stuff. I’ll get to why this is an issue later. Midway through the second season, you notice a definite improvement, with the moment-to-moment stuff feeling a lot more grounded. It comes to a head in the third season, where the real meat of the drama is concentrated.

From here on out I’m going to be directing this towards people who already have seen the show, because I need to get into specifics.

A drama doesn’t need to be constantly serious to be good. Light-hearted moments are important in that they help you understand the characters in a normal setting, appropriately space out key plot events, and provide stakes for you to actually care when the serious stuff comes. You don’t get that here. For one, the show is 63 episodes long, with the first 45 or so feeling like a massive waste of time. From there on out, most of the key plot events are crammed into the remaining 20 or so episodes. And there’s a lot of plot threads.

As for characterization, these moments do the exact opposite. They make the characters less relatable. Most of it is a pattern of forced gags, shouting, and over the top reactions from the characters. And it often ends up sabotaging the show when it wants you to take it seriously. Tohru thinks out loud on multiple occassions, only for someone to call her out, and then for her to start talking rapidly and getting flustered. So many times this routine completely detracts from the weight of what she’s actually saying.

Nowhere is this more clear than with Kyo. Until the scene in which his true-form is revealed, Kyo is a walking caricature. He’s constantly leaping into the air, shouting, and showing up only to make himself part of a gag. During this period, he’s at best edgy fangirl-bait, and at worst, annoying. Then he actually begins to act like a person, and it somewhat works. He’s tempermental, yet standoff-ish, confrontational, yet awkward. This’d be great if I wasn’t constantly reminded of the fact that this is the same guy who introduced himself with a kung-fu kick. Look, I get character development is a thing but this isn’t character development. A character can develop from a bad person to a good person. A badly written character becoming a well-written one doesn’t make the former any less bad. In place of a character, we get a gimmick. Kyo says “you stupid rat”, competes, then fails, rinse, repeat. If anything, it makes it harder for me to take him seriously when I’m supposed to. This is also the case for Momiji, Ayame, Tohru’s friends, and arguably Hatsuharu.

On that note, I think one of the biggest issues with this show is that the cast is way too large. The show tries to compensate for this by chucking backstories at us, but they don’t hold any weight without the characters themselves being able to carry them. We’re constantly rotating between different sub-stories to the point that none really get the time to sink in, and the ones with more potential end up getting drowned out by those with less. The whole thing feels really unfocused as a result. The show has to squeeze in time for every single member of the Zodiac to get some love-backstory, all of Tohru’s friends, Hatori and his group of friends, the student council, and also some gags from the President Yuki Fanclub. As a result it has to lean heavily on the caricatures and gags to convey stuff, which really detracts from the tone the better parts of the show has. Like ask yourself, what did Ritsu really contribute to the narrative? Do we really need Kimi?

I’ll give credit where credit is due however, some of these characters are legitimately great. Best handled one by far is Shigure. He is truly organic in that his lighter moments are a lot more subdued yet indicative of his character, and he maintains a great aura of mystery around him that’s gradually lifted. He has emotions and struggles yet makes them clear in his actions rather than requiring a backstory to try and force sympathy out of me. I have absolutely zero complaints here. Akito is good too, and probably the only character who made me feel some form of genuine emotion. The third season inverts her seeming grip on things, showing how quickly everything is crumbling and has been. This reflects in the fact that the peak of the show (in my opinion at least), Episode 9 of Season 3, gives a large amount of focus to Akito. By extent, I also like Kureno. And despite the student council feeling pointless, I actually was surprised at Manabe’s switch from gag to serious feeling rather believable.

Had this series cut out half the cast and gave more time to the characters with more potential to develop in the way Shigure did, I think it could’ve been a lot better. And to be fair, considering the direction the show was initially headed, what they managed to accomplish in the third season was legitimately impressive. The score below is for the final season alone, if I had to rate the show overall, I'd probably give it somewhere in the mid-high 60s.