Rolling Review – Fruits Basket 2019 (21)

Episode Synopsis:

The Prince Yuki Fan Club has seen the way things are going between Tohru and Yuki, and they’ve decided to take action.  Their first step – to find a weakness in Tohru’s most powerful ally: Hana, the Wave Girl.  Using a flimsy excuse, they get invited to her house, and proceed to search it and look for information.  What they find instead is a lecture on not letting their jealousy control them… and a curse from Hana’s brother Megumi.  By the end of the episode they haven’t learned anything besides a healthy fear of Hana, but we have learned more about Tohru’s more enigmatic friend.

 

Episode Review:

It’s nice, in a drama/romance-focused show like Fruits Basket, to occasionally have an episode that is basically just comedy.  Granted, it’s not traditional comedy…

…but it’s still great fun to watch.  I’d been hoping for the Prince Yuki Fan Club to have a little more screen time, and for Hana to get a lot more screen time, so this episode was basically my dream.  The planning session for the Fan Club got me laughing, between their view of Yuki:

And their view of Tohru:

I’ll give the Fan Club this, though – they’ve got some courage.  As everyone knows,

so their decision to step into the lair of the Demon Queen in search of weaknesses is very brave.  Stupid, but brave.

Once the Fan Club is inside, we learn a few new things about Hana…

…but we also get to meet her brother, Megumi, a scarily mature and straight-up just scary middle schooler.

Between him and Hana, the air is thick with dread for the team of wildly unprepared heroes invading the Demon Queen’s castle.  Fortunately for them, they’re so little of a threat that they’re allowed to leave with only a lecture on not projecting their jealousy and love onto Yuki without considering his feelings.  It’s actually pretty good advice for the whole Fan Club, but they don’t seem to have gotten the message.  Only time will tell if anything comes of it, but even if it doesn’t it was plenty of fun to watch.

I appreciate that even in an episode that’s probably entirely fluff, we did get a short look into and development of Hana’s character.  The increased time that Tohru is spending with the Soma family hasn’t gone unnoticed, and Hana realizes that she needs to check her own feelings of jealousy towards them for the good of her best friend, ending the episode on a touching note.

Fight on bravely, Prince Yuki Fan Club!  For my amusement, if nothing else!

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