As my review of the Fruits Basket manga series yesterday obviously demonstrates, I’ve finished reading that series (after getting the final 2 volumes not too long ago, and trying to get through the entire series again, including marathoning the last 16 or so volumes over the weekend).

Finishing the manga series reminded me of something that I had thought about for quite a while since reading the manga when it got well beyond where the anime went: what about a 2nd season?  I think there is so much good material there that, in a perfect and just world, I think it should definitely get a second season, if not a remake. (I actually think they may be better off doing an FMA style remake where they go ahead and do a 52 episode series from the beginning.)

I won’t necessarily go over all the details about why or why not a second season may or may not occur.  AstroNerdBoy already did that way back two and half years ago in his post on the topic.  I guess the only thing I could really add is that, the prospects of a sequel, or a remake are even bleaker now than they were then because it’s been something like 8 years since the first season came out, and it’s been 2 years since the last manga volume was published in Japan.  There seems little reason to actually make a new series unless someone just suddenly gets the urge to.

However, this also made me wonder about other series that should get a sequel or a remake done of them.  So I decided to go through the list of shows that I’ve seen and see which ones I thought were worthy of a remake or sequel, and this is what I came up with:

• Bokura ga Ita: It’s been a while since I’ve seen this series, but from my memory (and reading my review of it), I was furstrated by the fact that it had a wide open ending that drove me crazy.  Of course, I’m not sure I particularly liked the show anyway, but I suppose I’ll still include it on my list.
• Cardcaptor Sakura: OK, guilty pleasure for me.  The only real reason I’d like to see this remade is to see it with top-of-the-line current animation (though the new HD releases go a long way in satisfying my improved animation wishes).  My only fear is that they’d muck up the story and ruin it if they ever redid it.
• His and Her Circumstances: Really? Is there any greater crime than ending a series, mid-story arc?  I haven’t read the manga, but I’m sure this is one series where the manga goes far beyond where the anime went, and it could sure use a continuation.
• Kannagi: This series really needs a sequel.  I think there were just too many loose ends left and it could really use another season.  Really.
• Video Girl Ai: A 6 episode, 17 year old OVA series just doesn’t give a 15 volume manga series justice.  I think this would be one of my prime candidates for a remake.  I does a sort of sufficient job of telling the story to the point in the manga that it reaches (which, if I recall, wasn’t very far) but there is so much more to tell.

What other shows do people think are badly in need of a sequel due to a an insufficient or left-wide-open ending, or do you think should be remake because it either flat out sucked and could be done better, could use an FMA-style reboot, or is old and could do with some updating? (I intentionally left out series which I might like seeing more of, but it was pretty much concluded in the episodes that aired).

The Essentials

Name: Fruits Basket
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
Tankoubon: 23
Serialized In: Hana to Yume
Released: July 1998 – November 2006
Story & Art: Natsuki Takaya
Published By (Japan): Hakusensha
Published By (US): TokyoPop

Scores

Story: 9/10 (x 3 = 27 pts)
Art: 8/10 (x 3 = 24 pts)
Gut Score: 10/10 (x 4 = 40 pts)

Total: 91/100 (91%)

Review

Fruits Basket is about a girl, Tohru Honda, who happens to be living in a tent after her mother died.  However, 2 members of the Sohma family, Yuki and Shigure, find Tohru one afternoon (she’s was camping on Sohma family property), and they end up having her live in their house after Tohru’s tent is buried in a landslide.  Soon after, another boy, Kyo Sohma, suddenly busts through the roof to challenge Yuki to a fight.  However, as Tohru tries to stop Kyo, she accidentally bumps into Kyo, Yuki, and Shigure, turning them into a cat, rat, and dog, respectively.  The three has to explain that certain members of the Sohma family are afflicted with a curse where they are possessed by a spirit of one of the animals of the Chinese zodiac (plus the cat), an they transform into their respective animals if they hug or bump into someone of the opposite sex or get weak.  However, Kyo, being possessed by the cat, who was tricked by the rat out of attending the zodiac banquet in the zodiac origin story, hates Yuki, who is possessed by the rat and continuously vows to eventually defeat him someday.

However, Tohru also sometimes has problems of her own, but she is often able to work through them with the aid of her two unusual, overprotective, but very good friends at school: Arisa Uotani, an ex-gang member who was “saved” from her gang life by Tohru and her mother, and Saki Hanajima, who was easily accepted by Tohru despite her ability to sense and send out psychic waves.

At first, Tohru is just living with Kyo, Yuki, and Shigure, as well as meeting other members of the zodiac, with the curse being more of a curiosity more than anything else.  However, over time, Tohru slowly uncovers the disturbing tale of what the curse of the zodiac actually is, as well as what will eventually happen to those who are cursed, in particular Kyo the cat, whom Tohru takes an immediate liking to (even if she doesn’t realize it herself).  Despite not knowing how, Tohru vows that she wants to break the zodiac curse once and for all.

Fruits Basket can probably be described as a romance comedy to start with, which slowly progresses more into a darker and mysterious story as the series progresses as Tohru learns more about the Sohma family and the curse, though the story continues a certain level of humor all the way through.  The reader is also always reminded about the curse which, even if it isn’t the topic of the story at any particular moment, is always festering just beneath the surface.

The story is also largely character driven, which many of the characters having quite a bit of depth.  With each layer that is exposed about each character, another layer always seemed to lie underneath it.  If there is one thing I didn’t necessarily like about the character background stories, it’s that many of them were so similar.  For the family background stories for the Sohma family members, that wasn’t necessarily a problem, but many of the other characters also seemed to have somewhat similar family problems as well, to the point that it made one wonder whether anyone but Tohru actually was raised in a non-dysfunctional home.  However, this problem isn’t really something that harms the story too much, I don’t think.

The art seemed to be pretty much OK to me.  I haven’t read enough manga to really know what I should consider to be “good” or “bad” art quality necessarily, but I thought it did a sufficient job at helping portray the attitude of a particular scene.  The main complaint I have here is that many of the later character designs often either looked similar to each other or similar to earlier characters.  The early characters didn’t really have this problem.  It should be noted that the mangaka did have surgery on her drawing hand and arm in the middle of making this manga, so whether that had anything to do with it, I’m not sure.  However, there were times when I wasn’t exactly sure what character I was looking at.  Also, and I’m not sure whether this is a problem with the dialouge bubbles or with how the translation was handled, but I think it was occasionally difficult to figure out who exactly was saying what, though that was more of a minor problem.

Overall, Fruits Basket was a very entertaining and satisfying manga series to read (if not rather dense, in the sense that it typically took me a full hour to read one volume, which is unusually long for me).  It is somewhat long at 23 volumes, but if you’re not intimidated by the length, and you aren’t put off by a shojo series, then I would definitely recommend giving Fruits Basket a try.

First Read: December 2005 – August 2009
Do I Own: Yes
Do I Recommend: Yes