Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
9 questions No timer
49 free Fruits Basket trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Fruits Basket takes its name from a Japanese playground game in which every child is a fruit except the one told she is a rice ball. Natsuki Takaya's story of an orphan who moves in with a cursed family ran for 136 chapters in Hana to Yume, sold more than 30 million copies, and was adapted twice, by Studio Deen in 2001 and TMS Entertainment from 2019 to 2021. This quiz covers the plot (the tent in the woods, the landslide, the bet between Kyo and Akito, the curse that finally lifts), the Sohma zodiac members and the animals they become (including a dragon who turns into a seahorse), Takaya's hidden naming scheme based on the old lunar calendar, the voice casts of both anime, the theme songs, the spin-off Fruits Basket Another and the 2022 film Prelude. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so it works for anime clubs, shōjo fans and anyone who has ever cried at a manga.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote and illustrated the Fruits Basket manga?
Natsuki Takaya
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.
Q 02In which shōjo magazine was Fruits Basket serialised from 1998 to 2006?
Hana to Yume
Fruits Basket ran in Hana to Yume, Hakusensha's semi-monthly shōjo magazine, from 1998 to 2006 and was collected into 23 tankōbon volumes.
Q 03The series' title comes from what?
A Japanese schoolyard game
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.
Q 04What did Tohru's kindergarten classmates nickname her instead of a fruit?
Onigiri
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.
Q 05How does Tohru's mother die shortly before the story begins?
In a car accident
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.
Q 06Where is Tohru living when she first discovers the Sohma house?
In a tent in the woods
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.
Q 07What destroys Tohru's tent, leading the Sohmas to take her in?
A landslide
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.
Q 08How does Kyo make his entrance into the Sohma house in the first chapter?
He crashes through the ceiling
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.
Q 09What triggers a cursed Sohma's transformation into their zodiac animal?
A hug from the opposite sex, or stress
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.
Q 10Which zodiac animal is Yuki?
The rat
As the rat, he is the object of Kyo's lifelong hatred, even though the two secretly envy each other.
Q 11Which zodiac animal is Shigure, the owner of the house?
The dog
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.
Q 12What role in the zodiac legend does Akito occupy?
God
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.
Q 13What is revealed in chapter 97 of the manga but never in the 2001 anime?
The family head is biologically female
Q 21Which animal is Momiji, and which European country is his mother from?
The rabbit; Germany
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.
Q 22What do the Sohmas call Hatsuharu's calm and enraged personalities?
White and Black
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.
Q 23What does Ayame, the snake and Yuki's older brother, sell in his shop?
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.
Q 14What bet does Kyo make with Akito shortly ahead of the series' start?
Beat Yuki by graduation or be confined for life
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.
Q 15What happens when Kyo's bead bracelet is removed?
He becomes a grotesque, stinking monster
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.
Q 16Who took Kyo in and raised him after his mother's death?
Kazuma Sohma
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.
Q 17Why did the family's karate master feel compelled to take in the cursed cat?
Guilt over being cruel to his cursed grandfather
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.
Q 18Which animal is Hatori, the family doctor, and what form does he actually take?
The dragon, as a seahorse
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.
Q 19What special ability does Hatori use on outsiders who learn the family secret?
He erases their memories
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.
Q 20How did Hatori become nearly blind in his left eye?
Akito attacked him when he asked to marry
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.
Custom romantic costumes
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.
Q 24Which zodiac animal is the shy Kisa, who stops speaking after being bullied?
The tiger
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.
Q 25Which zodiac animal is the anxious, constantly apologising Ritsu?
The monkey
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.
Q 26Kagura, the boar, insists she is engaged to which character?
Kyo
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.
Q 27What is unusual about the rooster's curse when the series begins?
It broke roughly ten years earlier
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.
Q 28Which bird did the family's former rooster actually turn into?
A sparrow
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.
Q 29Why did Takaya make Rin's hair long after first designing her with short hair?
To mimic a horse's mane blowing in the wind
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.
Q 30What was Tohru's mother Kyoko before she married?
Leader of an all-girl biker gang
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.