Fruits Basket (2019) 09
フルーツバスケット 09
Furuba episode 09

Story Summary/Synopsis

Tohru comes out of the grocery store to see Yuki and Kyo in a verbal fight. This lasts the entire walk home. That evening, Yuki is coming down with a cold. Tohru wants him to stay home from school. However, Kyo’s demand to challenge Yuki in tomorrow’s endurance run prevents that.

The following day at school, Tohru and the girls start their run first. Yuki and Kyo take off in a sprint when the boy’s get to run. Tohru encounters what she initially thinks is an old man. It turns out to be a teen boy and a member of the Sohma family (Haru). He sets up a line trap across the road so that when Kyo hits it, he trips and falls. Kyo is angry, but isn’t in the mood to fight.

Haru transforms into Black Haru and attacks Kyo physically and verbally. As they fight, Yuki has a coughing fit. Haru stops and gives his coat to Yuki. They decide to play it safe and walk home. Haru hugs Tohru and transforms into an ox for Yuki to lay on. Once at Shigure’s residence, Yuki is sent to bed. Kyo wants to fight Haru, but Haru has had enough since Kyo is stronger.

Haru tells Tohru of how he met Yuki. Initially he resented Yuki as the rat due to the zodiac story and adults calling the ox dumb. However, after meeting Yuki, they became friends. Haru tells Tohru that Yuki will be thrilled if she addresses him as such. So instead of calling him Sohma-kun, she calls him Yuki-kun when he wakes up. This causes him to transform.

Thoughts/Review

For Fruits Basket (2019) 09, TMS does a very good job of adapting the source manga chapters 13 and 14.

Minor Modifications

As best as I could tell, Fruits Basket (2019) 09 has the least number of alterations to the source manga material than any other episode to date.

The only change of any significance would be the fight between Kyo and Haru. The anime gives the fight more of a sense of scale. Further, it gives the implication that the two have almost superhuman fighting abilities, which is not the case in the manga. What I mean by this is that there were a couple of instances where the two are defying gravity. The fights looks cool though, but is wrong.

What was cut from the fight was some of Haru’s taunts, such as not feeling Kyo’s punch, or mentioning Yuki to piss Kyo off.

Beyond that, everything else that could be cited as a modification was rather small. But one last change I wanted to note. Minami was the only antagonist against Tohru in the manga. The anime brought in Mio as well. So it was funnier seeing both of them pay for this by a psychic attack from Hana-chan.

Highlighting Small Things

I’ve read the Fruits Basket manga quite a number of times, starting from when TokyoPop was first releasing it. So I was rather surprised when Fruits Basket (2019) 09 highlighted a couple of minor things I’d never noticed before.

First was Tohru carrying a box Nepicco toilet paper. (I’m told by someone in Japan that this is a parody of the Nepia brand.) In the manga, she was carrying a nondescriptive rectangular item of some kind. But for some whacked reason, I never noticed it in the manga. 😅

The next thing that Fruits Basket (2019) 09 brought to my attention was that Kyo ran the race with Yuki in bare feet. So when I saw Kyo running with his shoes in his hands, I thought, “What kind of nonsense is this?” But its there in the manga. 😅

English Adaptation

I’m always weary of changes made to what characters say just for localization purposes. (“‘Cause making the subtitles accurate but readable is for losers and rewriting things for localization is awesomeness beyond awesome!”) The issue that cropped up in Fruits Basket (2019) 09 could be a localization BS thing, but I tend to suspect it was a fear (a true phobia in this instance) of raising the wrath of (white) woke SJWs.

Haru has two sides–White Haru, which is his kind, normal self, and Black Haru, which is his twisted, violent side. And yes, the Japanese use the English words “black” and “white.” And to emphasize this, Haru’s ox form is…<drum roll>…black and white. But our wonderful English subtitles went with “dark” and “light” instead. 🙄😑

On the positive front, the adaptation did keep Haru’s catchphrase of “mystery” in the subtitles. (Technically, they used “a mystery,” but that’s fine because the Japanese are dropping the “a”.) I think the first anime adaptation used “mysterious.” For the manga, the Twins used it in one instance, but did something else in the second instance.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

In the end, Fruits Basket (2019) 09 is a very good adaptation of the source manga material. Also, Hana-chan has some great, humorous side-moments.