About Fruits Basket
Fruits Basket is a shōjo manga written and illustrated by Natsuki Takaya. It ran in Hakusensha's magazine Hana to Yume from July 1998 to November 2006, 136 chapters collected in 23 volumes, and Yen Press publishes it in English today. It has sold more than 30 million copies, which makes it one of the best-selling manga of all time, and it won the Kodansha Manga Award for shōjo in 2001. It has been animated twice. Studio Deen's 26-episode series of 2001 covered only the early part of the story. TMS Entertainment's version, directed by Yoshihide Ibata with series composition by Taku Kishimoto, adapts the whole manga in 63 episodes over three seasons, from April 2019 to June 2021; the last season is titled Fruits Basket: The Final.
Tohru Honda is a high-school student whose mother, Kyoko, has died in a car accident. Rather than be a burden on anyone, she is living in a tent in the woods, which turns out to be on land belonging to the Sohma family. After a landslide flattens the tent, her classmate Yuki Sohma and his older cousin Shigure take her in as their housekeeper. As they show her to her new room, their cousin Kyo crashes through the ceiling to pick a fight with Yuki. In the confusion Tohru stumbles into all three, and they turn into a rat, a cat and a dog. Thirteen members of the Sohma family are possessed by the spirits of the Chinese zodiac and the cat it left out. They change into their animals when someone of the opposite sex hugs them or when they are weak or under stress. Tohru promises to keep the secret.
The first episodes play like a gentle comedy about an unusual household, but the series soon turns to what the curse costs the people who carry it. The cursed Sohmas are bound to Akito, the volatile head of the family, who holds the place of the zodiac's 'God'. Several of their parents have rejected them, and each Cat is expected to spend his life shut away on the family estate. Tohru learns their stories one by one and decides to break the curse. Critics have noted how the light first volume already hints at something darker, and how few good parents the story contains. Academic writing has read it as a story about abuse and healing passed down through generations.
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What the Fruits Basket Quiz Tests
Our Fruits Basket quiz covers Natsuki Takaya's manga and the 2019 anime, which adapts all of it. It does not ask about the 2001 anime, the film Prelude or the sequel Fruits Basket Another. Easy levels cover the premise: which Sohma is which animal of the zodiac, the rules of the curse, Tohru's tent, her friends Arisa and Saki, and who made the series. The middle levels follow the story in order: Tohru's brief move back to her grandfather's, Hatori's seahorse form and his lost fiancée Kana, New Year's Eve, Kyo's true form and his bet with Akito, the boy who once led Tohru home, the Cinderella play and Yuki's student council. The hard levels go to the details and the ending: who reveals Akito's secret, whose curse breaks first, the true legend of the zodiac, where Tohru's polite speech comes from, Machi and the box of chalk, the episode titles, and the mistake Takaya made when naming the zodiac members.
Key Characters
Tohru Honda is kind to the point of forgetting herself. She keeps smiling after losing both parents, works an after-school cleaning job so her grandfather will not have to pay her school fees, and treats every Sohma she meets as someone worth knowing, curse and all. Kyo Sohma, possessed by the Cat that the legend left out of the zodiac, is loud, quick-tempered and shunned by much of his own family. He has staked his future on beating Yuki in a fight. Yuki, the Rat, is the reverse: admired at school as 'Prince Yuki', composed and polite, and lonely after a childhood spent at Akito's side. Shigure, the Dog, owns the house they all live in and plays the idle novelist, but he is quietly steering events towards an end of his own. Around them are Momiji, the cheerful Rabbit; Hatori, the doctor who erases memories; Hatsuharu, the Ox with a furious other side; and Akito, the family head whose hold over the others is the curse's real centre. Tohru's best friends, the ex-gang member Arisa and the wave-sensing Saki, keep her grounded outside the Sohma world.
Available Quizzes
Fruits Basket Trivia
50 hand-crafted questions across 5 categories. 10 levels of increasing difficulty.
Which Fruits Basket Character Are You?
Answer 10 questions to discover which Fruits Basket character matches your personality!
Random Mix
Questions from all 40 anime including Fruits Basket. The ultimate challenge.
Characters
Tohru Honda
Yuki Sohma
Kyo Sohma
Shigure Sohma
Momiji Sohma
Fruits Basket Fun Facts
- The title comes from a children's game in which everyone is named after a fruit. When Tohru played it in kindergarten, the other children named her 'rice ball' instead, and she realised she had been left out only after every fruit had been called.
- Takaya named most of the cursed Sohmas after old month names in the Japanese lunisolar calendar that match their animal. She swapped Momiji's and Kureno's by mistake and noticed too late, after Momiji's first chapter had already been published. Yuki's name came before she settled on the scheme.
- In 2005 Funimation asked convention-goers to fold 1,000 paper cranes and sent them to Japan to campaign for more Fruits Basket anime. A new adaptation was finally announced in 2018, thirteen years later.
- Takaya was executive producer of the 2019 anime. She asked for a different team from the 2001 series and for an animation style that did not look too much like her own art.
- Much of the English dub cast of the 2001 series came back for 2019, including Laura Bailey as Tohru, Eric Vale as Yuki, Jerry Jewell as Kyo and John Burgmeier as Shigure.
- Domee Shi, director of the film Turning Red, has named Fruits Basket as one of her inspirations, especially for how it mixes magic with playfulness and looseness.
Fruits Basket Quiz — Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes of Fruits Basket are there?
The 2019 series has 63 episodes in three seasons. Season 1 has 25 episodes and aired from 6 April to 21 September 2019. Season 2 also has 25 and aired from 7 April to 22 September 2020. The third and final season, Fruits Basket: The Final, has 13 and aired from 6 April to 29 June 2021. The earlier 2001 anime is a separate series of 26 episodes.
Is Fruits Basket finished?
Yes. The manga ended in November 2006 after 136 chapters, collected in 23 volumes. The 2019 anime adapts the whole story and finished in June 2021. Takaya later wrote a sequel manga, Fruits Basket Another, about a new generation of the Sohma family. It is complete in four volumes.
What order should I watch Fruits Basket in?
Watch the 2019 series in order: Season 1, Season 2, then The Final. After that comes the film Fruits Basket: Prelude (2022), which recaps the series, adds a prequel about Tohru's parents, Kyoko and Katsuya, and ends with a new epilogue written by Takaya. The 2001 anime is a separate, earlier adaptation that covers only the first part of the manga, so you do not need it to follow the 2019 version.
Where can I watch Fruits Basket?
In North America the 2019 series is licensed by Crunchyroll. It was co-produced by Funimation, and after Sony bought Crunchyroll the series moved there entirely. In parts of Asia it was licensed by Mighty Media and streamed on Netflix and Animax Asia. Crunchyroll has also streamed Prelude since October 2022. Availability differs by country and changes over time, so check your local services.
What is Fruits Basket about?
Tohru Honda, an orphaned high-school girl living in a tent, moves in with three members of the Sohma family and learns their secret: thirteen of the Sohmas are possessed by the spirits of the Chinese zodiac and the Cat, and turn into their animals when someone of the opposite sex hugs them. What starts as a gentle comedy becomes a story about the curse's hold on the family, about the damage done by its head, Akito, and about how Tohru's kindness helps the people around her heal.
