Rolling Review – Fruits Basket 2019 – S2 (23)

I had to double back to figure out that the clapping person is Saki’s mom – adorable

Episode Synopsis:

Kisa and Hiro travel to Tohru & company’s high school to watch the second-years’ class play and otherwise enjoy the festivities. The hastily-rewritten script has little in common with the original story, and teases out more emotion than was probably intended. Afterwards, Hiro puts his foot in his mouth while snapping at Haru, in front of Kisa, which seems to cause her to question Hiro’s relationship with Rin. Elsewhere, Yuki finds Machi being harassed by some members of his fan club, and learns her impression of him while vice-president Kakeru finds an indirect way to defuse the situation. Kyo and Tohru resign themselves to each other’s friend zone.

Review:

Two thirds of the way through this show (or so I’ve gathered) and we’re still seeing the seeds planted for new drama (looking at you, Hiro). I don’t know if I can keep up; I’m already having a hard time following the interactions that are going on now (mostly involving what’s going on inside Tohru’s head) – but that probably says as much about my own distractions as it does about the show. Having said that, I am definitely interested in seeing more Machi (and by the title of the next episode, I won’t have to wait long).

The play was amusingly surreal – I feel like it would have made more sense for Tohru’s outburst to have occurred during rehearsal (probably because something like that happened in my favorite anime, Figure 17 </shameless-plug>), but it’s kind of necessary for the episode pacing, and I suppose I can chalk it up to being at the end of a script that was rewritten in the middle of production. Props to the scriptwriter for adapting the parts to the cast, by the way, and even more props to the narrator, who delivers the ostensible story with the utmost professionalism, which really drives home the nonsense.

In general, the show still looks great and sounds even better. We’ve heard some of the tone-setting tracks more than a few times, by this point, but dang, they’re good. This season’s ED is great, as usual – not as much of a fan of this season’s OP, personally, but, at this point in its run, the show was feeling confident enough to drop it again and squeeze in another minute and a half of goings-on (win-win).

Summary:

Some good character humor and the evolution of more plot threads than might be necessary. Carry on, Fruits Basket.

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