Rolling Review – Fruits Basket 2019 – S2 (15)

Episode Synopsis:

The time has come for parent-teacher meetings as our main cast reaches (I think) the halfway point of their high school career. With her grandfather out of commission, Shigure accompanies Tohru for her meeting, though he spends half the time bantering with Mayu-sensei.

Yuki’s mother requests a metaphorical rain check, and ironically arrives in actual rain. She commences an attempt to reassert the level of control over her younger son to which she had become accustomed, but this effort is interrupted by her older son, over whom she does not exert any appreciable control. Yuki takes the opportunity to assert himself successfully for the first time.

Review:

As much time as I’ve had since this episode dropped (and I apologize for the post being this late), I’m not sure how much discussion I can wring out of it. Progress is being made, at least – Yuki’s relationship with his mother makes a dramatic—if mostly one-sided—shift once Ayame shows up, and the only thing that I have that I could call a complaint is that I thought it happened really fast. I wish I understood Japanese well enough to pick up on the intonation/inflection/emphasis in the exchange between Ayame and their mother – I think it might have helped smooth the transition. At any rate, it’s good to see Yuki coming into his own – I also like the little realization that he’s grown larger than his mother, and the way that seems to demystify the sway she held over him since he was a child. Kinda poignant.

In contrast, the first half of the episode – spent watching several other characters bounce in and out of the “what do you wanna do” discussion – doesn’t seem to have had anything substantial happen. Mostly it feels like an opportunity for a little character humor and laying some groundwork for future drama. Kyo’s meeting in particular is pretty heavily abridged – we don’t even get to see his Career Planning printout, although the implication may be that he didn’t bother to fill it in. Notably, (segue!) Tohru’s only marking on the form was that she wanted to get [further] into the workforce as soon as possible, which prompted Mayu-sensei to make a reminder that she gets shown lining out after Tohru doubles down in her spoken answer to the interview’s central question.

Unfortunately, I haven’t yet found the time to try my hand at amateur translation, so I’ll be curious for a while yet about what it was that the author thought the audience needed to know that Mayu thought needed to be written down. Something that might sound like the name of an appropriate college to suggest, perhaps?

I think the only other sheet we got to see was Saki’s:

At the risk of alienating any younger readers by appropriating their slang, I believe this merits a “big mood”

Summary:

A solid if oddly-paced episode

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