49 Fun Facts About Fruits Basket

Who wrote and illustrated the Fruits Basket manga?

Natsuki Takaya, the pen name of Naka Hatsumi, wrote and drew Fruits Basket; the series won the 2001 Kodansha Manga Award in the shōjo category.

In which shōjo magazine was Fruits Basket serialised from 1998 to 2006?

Fruits Basket ran in Hana to Yume, Hakusensha's semi-monthly shōjo magazine, from 1998 to 2006 and was collected into 23 tankōbon volumes.

The series' title comes from what?

A Japanese schoolyard game called Fruits Basket gives the series its title: each child is named after a fruit and scrambles for a seat when that fruit is called.

What did Tohru's kindergarten classmates nickname her instead of a fruit?

They named her Onigiri, a rice ball, which is not a fruit, so she was never called and only realised afterwards that she had been left out.

How does Tohru's mother die shortly before the story begins?

In a car accident shortly before the story opens, Tohru's mother is struck and killed; a cursed Sohma who saw it hesitated to pull her clear for fear of exposing the curse.

Where is Tohru living when she first discovers the Sohma house?

In a tent in the woods on Sohma land, Tohru camps alone while her grandfather's house is remodelled, unwilling to impose on her friends Arisa and Saki.

What destroys Tohru's tent, leading the Sohmas to take her in?

A landslide buries Tohru's tent and belongings, so Shigure and Yuki invite her to live in their house, where she takes over the cooking and housekeeping.

How does Kyo make his entrance into the Sohma house in the first chapter?

He crashes through the ceiling of Shigure's house and at once challenges Yuki to a fight; when Tohru tries to stop him she falls against him and the curse is exposed.

What triggers a cursed Sohma's transformation into their zodiac animal?

A hug from the opposite sex, or stress, makes a cursed Sohma transform; a hug from someone of the same sex, or from another cursed Sohma, is safe.

Which zodiac animal is Yuki?

As the rat, he is the object of Kyo's lifelong hatred, even though the two secretly envy each other.

Which zodiac animal is Shigure, the owner of the house?

The dog is Shigure's zodiac animal; outside the family he is a novelist who writes literary fiction under his own name and racy romances under the pen name Noa Kiritani.

What role in the zodiac legend does Akito occupy?

Akito is the God of the zodiac, the figure the animals of the legend were bound to; that bond compels the cursed Sohmas to obey Akito and holds the family together.

What is revealed in chapter 97 of the manga but never in the 2001 anime?

The family head is biologically female: Akito was raised as a boy at the insistence of Akito's mother Ren, a secret kept from the younger zodiac members and from Tohru until late in the manga.

What bet does Kyo make with Akito shortly ahead of the series' start?

The bet was "Beat Yuki by graduation or be confined for life": Akito promised him a place among the zodiac if he won, but he never defeats Yuki and escapes confinement only when the curse ends.

What happens when Kyo's bead bracelet is removed?

He becomes a grotesque, stinking monster, the true form that his bead bracelet normally suppresses; Tohru follows him into the woods in that form and begs him to come home.

Who took Kyo in and raised him after his mother's death?

Kazuma Sohma, the family's karate master addressed as Shishō, took the orphaned boy in and raised him as a foster father, later training him for four months in the mountains.

Why did the family's karate master feel compelled to take in the cursed cat?

Guilt over being cruel to his cursed grandfather drove him: the old man was the previous cat, and as a boy he refused the sweet his grandfather offered, a memory that haunted him into adulthood.

Which animal is Hatori, the family doctor, and what form does he actually take?

The dragon, as a seahorse, is Hatori's form: the dragon spirit has dwindled so far that he turns into a small seahorse, which Shigure reads as a sign the curse is weakening.

What special ability does Hatori use on outsiders who learn the family secret?

He erases their memories with a hypnosis-like technique handed down in the Sohma family; he used it on Yuki's childhood playmates and on Momiji's mother.

How did Hatori become nearly blind in his left eye?

Akito attacked him when he asked to marry his assistant Kana, striking his left eye; Akito then blamed Kana for the injury, and her guilt-stricken breakdown ended the engagement.

Which animal is Momiji, and which European country is his mother from?

Momiji is "The rabbit; Germany": he turns into a rabbit, and his mother, a German woman, was so repelled by the curse that she rejected him; he grew up on the Sohma estate apart from her and his sister Momo.

What do the Sohmas call Hatsuharu's calm and enraged personalities?

White and Black are the names for his calm and his violent sides; he is the ox, with white hair over black roots, and as a child he blamed Yuki for the ox's reputation for stupidity.

What does Ayame, the snake and Yuki's older brother, sell in his shop?

Custom romantic costumes, from frilly dresses to maid and nurse outfits, are what his shop makes to order, with the help of his devoted seamstress Mine Kuramae.

Which zodiac animal is the shy Kisa, who stops speaking after being bullied?

The tiger is Kisa's animal; her tawny hair and golden eyes are marks of the curse, and she grows close to Tohru, calling her onee-chan, after Tohru coaxes her to speak again.

Which zodiac animal is the anxious, constantly apologising Ritsu?

The monkey is Ritsu's animal; he wears women's kimono because it eases his anxiety, and his parents run the Sohma family's hot-spring inn.

Kagura, the boar, insists she is engaged to which character?

Kyo is the one Kagura claims as her fiancé: as a child she bullied him into promising to marry her, and she greets him with violent affection whenever they meet.

What is unusual about the rooster's curse when the series begins?

It broke roughly ten years earlier, when he was in his teens, yet Akito keeps him confined to the estate to hide it, so he is 26 before he first sets foot in a convenience store.

Which bird did the family's former rooster actually turn into?

A sparrow, not a rooster, was his animal form; Takaya explained that the character disliked anyone seeing him transformed, and the form is never drawn in the manga.

Why did Takaya make Rin's hair long after first designing her with short hair?

To mimic a horse's mane blowing in the wind, Takaya lengthened Rin's hair from her original short-haired design, since Rin is the horse of the zodiac.

What was Tohru's mother Kyoko before she married?

Leader of an all-girl biker gang in her teens, she was nicknamed the Red Butterfly because her bike's tail-light looked like a red butterfly as she rode at night.

What were Kyoko's last words actually meant to say, as revealed in chapter 135?

Her full thought was "I'll never forgive you if you don't keep your promise to protect Tohru", but the boy she had made promise heard only "I'll never forgive you" and carried the guilt for years.

What special ability does Tohru's friend Saki Hanajima have?

She senses and sends out "waves", an electric-signal power she can also use to attack, and her reputation for poison waves keeps the Prince Yuki Fan Club away from Tohru.

Which Sohma does Tohru's brash friend Arisa Uotani fall for at a convenience store?

Kureno is the Sohma she meets at a convenience store; she frets over their nine-year age gap, and in the final chapter prepares to move in with him.

How did Takaya name most of the cursed Sohmas?

After old lunar-calendar months matching their animal is how Takaya named the cursed Sohmas, a scheme she admitted she broke by accidentally swapping the rooster's and the rabbit's names.

Why did Takaya give Tohru a name normally used for men?

Other characters also call her "Tohru-kun", an honorific usually used for boys.

Which company produced the 2001 anime adaptation?

Studio Deen produced the 26-episode 2001 series, directed by Akitaro Daichi, which covered roughly the first six volumes of the manga.

Which studio produced the 2019–2021 anime, made with a new cast at Takaya's request?

TMS Entertainment produced the 2019–2021 reboot, directed by Yoshihide Ibata across three seasons, the last titled Fruits Basket: The Final.

Who sang the opening and ending themes of the 2001 anime?

Ritsuko Okazaki sang both the opening "For Fruits Basket" and the ending "Chiisana Inori" of the 2001 anime; she died in 2004.

What is the first opening theme of the 2019 anime?

The first opening was "Again" by Beverly; "Chime" by Ai Otsuka took over from episode 14, and the final season opened with "Pleasure" by WARPs UP.

Which English voice actress plays Tohru in both the 2001 and 2019 dubs?

Laura Bailey voiced Tohru in Funimation's 2001 dub and reprised the role in the 2019 reboot, alongside several other returning members of the original English cast.

Who voices Kyo in English in both anime series?

Jerry Jewell voices him in both the 2001 dub and the 2019 reboot, alongside Eric Vale as Yuki and John Burgmeier as Shigure, who also returned.

Who voiced Tohru in Japanese in the 2019 anime?

Manaka Iwami voiced Tohru in the 2019 reboot, taking over from Yui Horie, who had played her in 2001; Maaya Sakamoto voiced Akito in the new series.

Which award did the 2019 anime win at the 5th Crunchyroll Anime Awards?

Best Drama went to the show's second season at the 5th Crunchyroll Anime Awards, announced online in February 2021.

Roughly how many copies of the manga were in circulation by December 2018?

Over 30 million copies were in circulation worldwide, more than 18 million of them in Japan, making it one of the best-selling shōjo manga and Tokyopop's top-selling series in English.

Which English publisher re-licensed the manga after Tokyopop stopped publishing?

Yen Press picked up the licence after Tokyopop's collapse and reissued the series as twelve omnibus Collector's Editions beginning in June 2016.

What is the title of the sequel manga Takaya began in 2015?

Fruits Basket Another, serialised from 2015, follows high-schooler Sawa Mitoma as she is drawn into the next generation of the Sohma family.

What does the 2022 film Fruits Basket: Prelude add to its recap of the series?

A prequel episode about Tohru's parents, titled Kyoko to Katsuya no Monogatari, is added to the recap, showing how student teacher Katsuya Honda fell for the delinquent Kyoko.

Which franchise did Fruits Basket collaborate with in August 2022?

Hello Kitty was the partner: Crunchyroll announced a Fruits Basket × Hello Kitty crossover, pairing Tohru and the cast with the Sanrio character, at Anime Expo 2022.

What do the final pages of the manga show about Tohru and Kyo?

They had a son and a granddaughter: the final pages jump forward to the elderly couple walking hand in hand as their granddaughter runs ahead of them.