After a family tragedy turns her life upside down, plucky high schooler Tohru Honda takes matters into her own hands and moves out…into a tent! Unfortunately for her, she pitches her new home on private land belonging to the mysterious Sohma clan, and it isn’t long before the owners discover her secret. But, as Tohru quickly finds out when the family offers to take her in, the Sohmas have a secret of their own–when embraced by the opposite sex, they turn into the animals of the Chinese Zodiac!
A perennial favorite of fans and librarians alike, Natsuki Takaya’s beloved bestselling Fruits Basket series returns to print in gorgeous deluxe English-language omnibus editions with beautiful full-color illustrations that are not to be missed!
My Review
Fruits Basket was my first Manga I read and I decided to try it because of Hannah over at The Rainy Reader, you can check out her YouTube channel here. The Fruits Basket story is super fun and cute. I read the first volume of the Collectors Edition and although it took me a bit to get used to the way you read a manga. Read right to left and you flip the pages from back to front.
The story was what initially intrigued me to try reading it. The story is based around a young girl name Tohru Honda. Her mother has recently died and as a result she ends up living in a tent on the private land of the Sohma clan. The owners of the land discover her and Tohru quickly realizes the most popular guy in her school, Yuki Sohma, lives in a house on this land. The family decides to take Tohru in and she discovers their secret… Anytime a member of the Sohma clan is hugged by someone of the opposite gender they turn into the animals of the Chinese Zodiac.
I love all the characters Tohru, Yuki, and Kyo are my favorites so far. Toward the end of this volume you start to meet other members of the clan, and I’m super excited for that! The characters are easy to relate to and I find myself so engrossed in the story that I’m often turning pages without enjoying the art work so I often must go back and check it out. The art work in this story is stunning, the way the emotions jump off the page is brilliant.
My goal this year was to start reading different types of books and break out of my comfort zone a bit. Fruits Basket allowed me to do that! I hope you’ll give it a try.
Where the Bookends 