Fruits Basket 2nd Season

A year has passed since Tooru Honda began living in the Souma residence, and she has since created stronger relationships with its inhabitants Shigure, Kyou, and Yuki. She has also grown closer to the rest of the Souma family and has become familiar with their ancestral secret, having helped them with many of their personal issues. The closer Tooru gets, however, the more she begins to realize that their secret holds a darker truth than she first presumed.

Summer is approaching and Tooru is invited to spend her days with the Soumas, mainly Kyou and Yuki. Tooru wishes for an easy-going vacation, but her close relationships with the two boys and the rest of the Soumas may prove to cause trouble. As they grow more intimate, their carefree time together is hindered by older hardships and feelings from the past that begin to resurface. The Eternal Banquet also dawns on the members of the zodiac, and they must tend to their duties alongside the unnerving head of the family, Akito Souma.

With the banquet approaching and a plethora of feelings to be solved, will Tooru's life with the Soumas remain peaceful, or will she find herself in a situation from which she cannot escape?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Souma, Kyou Main

Uchida, Yuuma Japanese

Honda, Tooru Main

Iwami, Manaka Japanese

Souma, Yuki Main

Shimazaki, Nobunaga Japanese

Souma, Hatsuharu Supporting

Furukawa, Makoto Japanese

Souma, Momiji Supporting

Han, Megumi Japanese

Souma, Shigure Supporting

Nakamura, Yuuichi Japanese

Souma, Ayame Supporting

Sakurai, Takahiro Japanese

Souma, Hatori Supporting

Okitsu, Kazuyuki Japanese

Hanajima, Saki Supporting

Satou, Satomi Japanese

Souma, Isuzu Supporting

Toyosaki, Aki Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Shimada, Akira Producer

Yazaki, Fumi Producer

Shimada, Akira Producer, Planning

Reviews

May 28, 2024

LuxuriousHeart

Recommended

Honestly, I really liked this season. It had a great exploration of back stories, shows the different and realistic reactions to trauma, and had a fantastic plot twist. It also managed to get fun, despite all the heavy topics.

Of course, some people called this a filler season, and I can sort of understand why. Most anime tend to have filler episodes, so to speak. You have the hot springs episode, the beach episode, the festival episode, the summer vacation to a secluded house episode, the school trip, the school play, etc. This season had all of those episodes. So I can ... see why people viewed this entire season as filler. Though even with those episodes, the plot was still moving, and as I said before, we got a massive plot reveal about the curse.

This season also explored heartbreaking romance, Yuki's backstory, Kyo and Tohru's relationship, Momoji's sister, Hatori's romance, etc. It showed the different ways that each coped with trauma. Some just isolated themselves to avoid burdening others, some put on a cheerful facade to hide their pain, some just shut down completely and became numb to everything, some lashed out in anger, etc. These are all realistic coping mechanisms that everyone can relate to.

Though it did have plot points that I could care less about, and characters I actively disliked. Kureno is such a pathetic character. I felt nothing for this creepy, boring, and spineless man.

It also had slight flanderization with one of its characters. Okay! So you know those characters that the fandom really likes? They have something in their character that's really funny. Like say, they really like chocolate, and there's a few jokes about it. Outside of their love of chocolate, they're a fully realized character with a fleshed out backstory, but the fandom mostly highlights their funny of love chocolate. This was one of the characters in this season. This character got a backstory and have a fully realized character, but in the later episodes of this season, they were reduced to just their thing of loving food and being snarky. It's like a fanfiction writer wrote that character.

But other than my gripes, this season was actually really good. I give it an 8/10.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Aug 7, 2022

Resting_Bonfire

Mixed Feelings

Funny

Fruits Basket - Season 2


A story that I initially thought was a simple tearjerker with no grounding proves to be a quality tearjerker that knows exactly what it's going for.

Despite its appearance, Fruit Basket is a series for a slightly older audience, since it appeals to a lot of adults and has more somber themes. And also revolves greatly around the sex lives of some of the characters.

Anyway, the second season picks up where the first left off. There are new everyday episodes, and new small events and you see more and more interference from Akito. What impresses me the most here again ... are the character's backgrounds and their problems. Very rarely does an anime/manga manage to address these stories properly without making it seem like melodramatic theater, and yet they've done it here. In fact, I'm almost thrilled with the backgrounds and characters.

Of course, this anime does have its serious drawbacks. For example, the pacing is mediocre, there are often unnecessary flashbacks that fortunately don't last long. Many scenes lack creativity and variety. And especially disappointing are the dialogues. I so often get the feeling that the author doesn't know exactly what he's letting the characters say, as soon as there's no topic about Akito or their backgrounds. They stand around, always looking at each other in shock, acting like goofballs. The comedy moments make up for this to some extent, but when a normal non-story dialogue takes place, you know it's going to be torture. If you don't know what the characters are supposed to say, it's better to replace it completely with another scene. These awkward silences and copy-paste interactions don't help at all.

[Story 4]

The story contributes practically nothing new, except that you see more of the character's backgrounds. Also light information regarding Akito and the Soma family.

[Characters 6]

Many characters are just blunt stereotypes, but this is balanced relatively well by their various complexes, traumas, and backgrounds. This results in the characters seeming understandable and the viewer actually cares about them. Especially since there is a healthy mix between happy and unhappy characters and not everyone is traumatized by something.
And as said, the backgrounds of the characters are relatively realistic and not exaggerated in any way. Many people react to problems differently and especially here, there are a lot of broken parents who think it's okay to ruin their children's lives. And this doesn't just happen out of thin air. Predominantly, the parents themselves are just overstressed people who blame their children for their failures. But there are also some parents who simply should never have become parents.

[Music 5 / Animations 6]

The intros in the anime really make me rethink my whole life. Especially when I'm lying in bed and can't skip this bullshit. Mediocre vocals with montages of characters walking and looking in directions. It's not a disaster, but an intro should be appealing or at least reflect something.

The outros are shockingly actually good and enjoyable.

The osts are average and nothing worth mentioning.

Regarding the animations, the budget has increased slightly as you can see, and the backgrounds have also gotten better. But nothing to talk about.


[Conclusion 6]

The second season of Fruit Basket has been more convincing than the first, also making up for some shortcomings and building more momentum. If the third season keeps this quality or even gets better, I will be more than satisfied.

[Enjoyment 7]

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Apr 21, 2022

Klabautermann

Not Recommended

Funny

Fruits Basket Season Two can brag itself to be one of the worst anime I have ever seen, which is not a small thing. In direct comparison, the first season, which I thought comfortably average, seems almost like a masterpiece - there is an actual plot, and actual characters, and actual investment you get from watching the first season play out.

Alas; Season Two decided to take a step away from all that ‘actual plot that makes me want to watch more’ and instead takes us on a metaphorical twenty-something-episode school trip through absolutely unnecessary points of… of something I can’t quite call plot, because it ... ultimately added so little to the overall Fruits Basket experience, that I couldn't help feeling tricked.

Mind you, I watched every episode of it, and I, generally speaking, remember it all. But you know how anime have those episodes where a class goes to a trip? Or the protagonists go to the beach, and it’s an entire 'thing'? I’m not kidding when I tell you nearly the entire season had felt like that. The constant, *constant* melodrama, the both pessimistic and optimistic musing of main characters, the countless inner monologues, narration after narration after narration of one’s feelings and memories and very insubstantial flashbacks - it sounds like a good way to delve into a character… but not so much when that's literally all there is. Like I said, I wouldn’t find this so bad if there was some, some payoff by the end of the episodes or at least the season. But there is quite literally none, and you know why?

Because inner monologues always stay inner monologues. No matter what inner revelations, fears, concerns or breakthroughs develop in the hearts and minds of the character the episode is focused on, hardly any of it matters because the characters refuse, for the drama’s sake, to trust each other with more than a bare minimum of their true being. I know this vulnerability is part of the plot but everything has its limits, and so does my patience. Again, ultimately, it feels as if quite literally nothing had happened.

If I'm looking for a single word to describe it, it’s boring. It is simply boring.

… The saving grace of this painful experience is that the season decided to pick up the actual plot about four episodes before it ends, and it is, almost literally, the only part worth watching, and the only reason why this isn’t rated with a ‘1’. The last few episodes reveal a lot of interesting information and propels the plot into motion - and it makes the entire experience incredibly frustrating, because if I knew that’s how it was going to be, I would simply skip the entirety of the rest of the season easily.

Which would bring is to season three and its, uh… humble way it ended things.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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