English Dub Review: Fruits Basket “Let’s Start the Watermelon Splitting Contest!”

 

Overview(Spoilers Below)


Tohru and the Sohma family begin to have a Beach party which at first goes smoothly, at least until Akito who’s the head of the Sohma family and the source of so much negative drama and abusive bullshit makes an unwanted entrance…


Our Take

What I find most fascinating is the subtle rivalry between Tohru and Akito, unintentional it may be in the former’s case and the possible denial in the latter’s case. Akito represents everything wrong with the Sohma family and the abusive cycle informed by past personal insecurities of previous generations, while Tohru represents the hope, maturity, and independence everyone deserves to have regardless of how screwed up Zodiac families lives were growing up. I think one of the main reasons Akito seems to despise Tohru so much is how her good-natured character is throwing a proverbial wrench at all of the reviled work of causing as much suffering as she can to her Zodiac family members, And the laugh Akito makes kinda creeps me out which shows the extent of Coleen Clickenbeard’s performance.

I’m sure there’s a lot more depth to the character that the show is deliberately withholding for the moment, but this soap-opera presentation makes them feel indistinguishable from your typical one-dimensional anime villain (minus the subtle uncomfortable touchy-feely undertones to emphasize the creepiness), Also unless this is later touched upon in future episodes, I can’t easily accept that no one’s telling Akito to go fuck off. More, to the point of my grievances, why does no one do anything to dethrone this twisted Individual? Akito has a slim tiny build and doesn’t seem experienced in any sort of hand-to-hand combat. So what the fuck is keeping everyone from giving Akito a well-deserved curb-stomp? Why are any of the Sohma family members unable to rebel for some reason? I’m hoping this will actually get answered at some point…

Aside from a cute moment between Tohru & Yuki near the end, we also delve into some Mommy-issues going on with some of the other characters, but much of it is spotlighted with Tohru as we get to know a bit about her past with her mom once again with an incident involving a Watermelon as the title implies. Also, I think one of the major recurring themes within this show/season seems to be family love so it’s not surprising there’s more of those scenes.