Fruits Basket (2019) 04
フルーツバスケット 04
Furuba episode 04

Story Summary/Synopsis

SOHMA Kagura arrives at Shigure’s house, happy to learn that Kyo has returned. She then begins to beat him to a pulp. Shigure reveals that Kagura is a member of the zodiac. She also learns that the female zodiac members can hug male zodiac members and not trigger a transformation. Because Kagura’s earlier rampage destroyed the shouji doors in Shigure’s home, repairs have to be made. Kagura then empties Shigure’s fridge to make a feast. When she goes upstairs to fetch Kyo, she becomes enraged when he doesn’t want to eat. As such, she sends him through the floor, destroying the table and meal.

Although it is late, Kagura heads to the store to buy food. Tohru goes after her since Kagura forgot her money. The two girls walk back home where they talk. Kagura mentions when she me Kyo as a child, he was drawing fried eggs in the dirt. Kagura makes hamburgers with Tohru helping. When the meal is ready, Tohru finds Kyo on the roof. They have a chat before Kyo agrees to come down. Kagura has made Kyo’s hamburger patty with a fried egg on top. The next morning, Kagura is about to leave and accidentally bumps into the paper boy. Yuki covers for her transformation, where Tohru sees that Kagura is the boar. Later at school, Tohru gets a call from her grandfather.

Thoughts/Review

With Fruits Basket (2019) 04, TMS pulls tiny elements from well into the source manga’s story, then adds to Kagura’s story. However, more Kagura was a good thing.

Kagura

While the bulk of Fruits Basket (2019) 04‘s content comes from chapter 5 of the manga, some small elements were pulled from future chapters. For example, Kagura’s story about meeting Kyo and seeing him drawing fried eggs in the dirt happens in the later part of the manga. And if I recall correctly, she’s talking with Kyo when that came up. (I didn’t have time to look up the specific chapter since I’m drowning in work and on the road.) So it is interesting that TMS had Kagura mention it to Tohru.

For the life of me, I seem to remember Kagura creating a cat patch for the shouji door in the manga. But if true, I don’t know where that was. Further to that, Kagura’s solo shopping trip might be a borrow from a later chapter when she goes shopping with Kyo.

Finally, there was a lot of additional, anime-original material in the episode. And to be honest, I liked it. Kagura made such a massive impact when she showed up in the manga, I didn’t realize how little she’s actually involved in the manga story. So as far as I was concerned, more Kagura is good stuff.

TMS caused Kagura’s slapstick beatings of Kyo even funnier than they were in the manga. I nearly busted a gut at Kagura using Kyo like a helicopter propeller to lift her from the ground. 😂

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Well, I need to wrap up my review of Fruits Basket (2019) 04 due to time constraints.

• I wish Crunchyroll had used the “Shishou” title in the subtitles.
• This episode reminded me about why I feel moving the preliminary story stuff about the school festival the episode 3 was a mistake. The festival is forthcoming in the previous episode, but in Fruits Basket (2019) 04, it isn’t even a thought. And considering what the next episode should cover, it will have been a bit since the festival was brought up.
• I liked the scene with Kyo and Tohru on the roof.

In the end, Fruits Basket (2019) 04 is a very enjoyable, funny episode that introduced the volatile Kagura to the mix. The additional materials added by TMS to fill out the episode’s run time did not feel out of place, nor slow down the pacing.

Note: I’m on the road at the moment and won’t be home until June. So these reviews may be delayed as this one was.