the end of furuba

I'm on the verge of polishing off Fruits Basket, or furuba as it's known.

I've kinda not read furuba for a very long time, but now that it's finished publication I've gotten around to finishing it. That should reflect badly on the manga, btw - I really enjoy it, it's just, I dunno, I kinda stopped reading.

There are a variety of reasons for that.

First and foremost is probably that I found it very emotionally draining. I'm a bit of a soft-touch when it comes to drama and I cry all the time, like some sort of big girl's blouse, but that's how I am. Furuba is/was a veritable blub-fest for me, and not always in a sad way. A lot of it's crying for joy.

There's also quite strong emotional connection in there for me - my mum died of cancer and there's a lot of lost parents stuff in Furuba (not always through death - it's more of a general theme).

So yeah, it got to the stage that I was blubbing a lot and while I enjoyed it I wanted to take a break.

Another issue was that it doesn't really work broken up. No, that's the wrong way of saying it - it's more like it works far better read continuously. I was experiencing a heck of a lot of frustration with the 6-month wait between volumes, so it seemed sensible to build them up.

I then discovered that the series ended with volume 23 and it then seemed sensible to wait until I had them all before reading again. What I didn't really think about was that meant, with 6-month gaps, it would be around 4 years before I would start again :/.

A problem I've always had with furuba is the sheer number of characters. I mean, it's based on Chinese zodiac, so you've got at least 12 main characters for starters. When you add in the other main characters and the secondary characters, and the occasional/incidental characters, there must be 30 characters you need to keep on top of.

That's a heck of a lot for my meagre brain. Especially when they all have unusual (to me as a westerner) names. When two characters are discussing an off-screen third is when I struggle the most. I'm often referring back to the front of the book where some fo the main characters are listed out, though it's a long way from being comprehensive.

The above may all read like criticism, but a lot of it isn't really.

I mean, lots of characters has made for lots of interesting plotlines, for example. And my rubbishness with names is my own problem, not the fault of the manga.

So yeah, I've been really reading it with some gusto and remembering why I liked it so much too.