Bingo row 4 – family
Dostoevsky’s the Idiot is a novel about someone who is so kind and good that everyone assumes he’s an idiot. Prince Lev is a “modern” day Jesus, unappreciated and destroyed by the times.
This review isn’t about that book, but I thought about it a lot as I read Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya. (I had previously watched its anime adaptation, so The Idiot connection was brewing and boiling when I started reading. It’s also not a unique comparison.)
Tohru Honda is an orphaned homeless girl who moves in with the Sohma family, some of whom turn into Chinese zodiac animals when hugged by someone of the opposite sex. It sounds zany, but it’s not (usually). Something like that would actually be incredibly traumatic for a normal healthy family. The Sohmas are not healthy or normal. They are toxic, abusive, abused, and traumatized.
And this is where Tohru meets 19th century Russian literature. She is so good she’s the Idiot. She’s Jesus. She doesn’t fix the Sohmas, but her goodness gets them to a point where they can start to heal and recover from the zodiac curse and all the trauma that the curse baked into the family. Just like the real Jesus would do? (I don’t know, I flunked confirmation.)
It’s not all trauma and child abuse though. It’s a coming of age, romance, comedy, family drama manga and it does all those things well.
A few other points:
- Akito, the head of the family and main villain is a great/horrible villain because of how immature she is. Her violence is childish. She scratches, she slaps, she pushes, she cries and whines. And because her abuse is so immaturity-based, she fairly easily turns her behavior around the second she does any considers taking responsibility for her actions. And that somehow makes her and the damage she did even worse.
- It also has the best culture notes I’ve seen at the end of a manga volume. Things like food, traditions, and when you call someone big brother/sister were explained simply and concisely.
- The author had health issues that affected her drawing and she discussed hate mail over the drop in quality at the end of the volumes a few times (I didn’t notice any quality changes, but I also wouldn’t). That was definitely the saddest part of the entire series for me.