Fruits Basket, by Natsuki Takaya

Fruits Basket Ultimate Edition Volume 12 by Natsuki Takaya
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Despite some imperfections, Fruits Basket deserves to be considered (by me) a masterpiece.
What could appear to be a trivial romantic scholastic comedy, turned out to be a very deep story, that touches many interesting levels. Or at least, I have interpreted the different themes in a specific way: the constant sensation of being imperfect and never appreciated by the parents, the fear of being alone and not being accepted and the courage required to connect with other people and on the other hand, also positive subjects as friendship, forgiveness, acceptance and growing up.
Possibly, the way I am describing doesn't make justice of the whole story as such, but all the characters are very interesting and unique and it is incredibly easy to think that it'd be great to find a "Toru" in your life.
The story mixes a lot of drammatic moments, with some that are incredibly hilarious to instead others that are just carrying the story on.
The tempo is always quite high and, despite the 12 volumes of this edition, it doesn't get neither boring nor repetitive.
There are though few confusing things: a little bit too many characters which sometimes are drawn very similarly to each other - hence it becomes quite hard to recognize one or the other; the insertion of the school commitee element, which is very confusing at the beginning and gets away quite a lot from the main plot: this introduces a bit too many elements that are possibly not fully related and makes things a bit too complicated (although it is clear that the whole part is used as an excuse to introduce a couple of characters), and definitely the finale, where something about Toru's mother's death is revealed, but it is nothing that I was considering worthy to write, at that point.
Finally, I think it is very nice to notice how beautiful the drawings in the final chapters are, a real evolution from the beginning, although some strips are a bit confusing in the whole story and they need to be read with extra attention.
In general, this is a manga that just needs to be read (indipendently from your gender) and that transmits a lot of feelings and emotions. It is very nice to see that also today it is possible to find great stories like this one.

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