Fruits Basket (2019) 16
フルーツバスケット 16
Furuba episode 16

Story Summary/Synopsis

It is pool day at the school. Uo-chan sees Tohru arrive in a school swimsuit and laments this. However, she has an idea. She and Hana-chan decide to pay a visit to Shigure’s home, where they lay out their plan to have Shigure, Kyo, and Yuki help pay for Tohru to get a new swimsuit. Kyo and Yuki are forced to go swimsuit shopping despite their embarrassment. Tohru is touched when she learns of the gift.

The group head to a soba restaurant, unaware that they are being tailed by three yanki girls who are after Uo-chan. While at the restaurant, Uo-chan opens up about her past. She was once a yanki, like Tohru’s mom. Because her mom abandoned her and her father when she was young, Uo-chan’s dad became a drunk. This lead to Uo-chan becoming a gangster.

When the middle-school aged Uo-chan learned that her idol, the Red Butterfly, lived nearby and had the family name Honda, she started looking for the Red Butterfly’s daughter. Tohru accidentally bumps into Uo-chan, causing them to meet. Uo-chan is not happy to learn this is the infamous Kyoko-san’s daughter. However, she accompanies Tohru home to meet Kyoko in person. Uo-chan is shocked to see that Kyoko is now a doting mother, having long ago abandoned gang life.

As a result, Uo-chan angrily leaves and tells off Tohru. She rejoins her fellow gang members. However, Uo-chan’s bad mood causes her to go home. There, she’s ignored by her father. Uo-chan goes to her room and can’t shake the memory of her brief stint with Tohru and Kyoko.

Thoughts/Review

For Fruits Basket (2019) 16, TMS decided to skip chapters 27 through 38. Because the episode actually starts well into chapter 40 before jumping back to chapter 39, I wasn’t sure if I had missed episodes or what. That said, this episode covers all of chapter 39 and about a third of chapter 40.

Leaping Forward

I’m a little puzzled as to why TMS felt the need to skip over so much material to get to Uo-chan’s story. I kinda suspect that they may be shuffling things a bit so that the key story of volume 6 is how the current season ends.

Nevertheless, I’m a bit bummed out ’cause I was looking forward to the next manga story due to how adorable it is. But maybe TMS goes back and picks that up after Uo-chan’s story wraps up.

Changes to the Source Story

There were some changes Fruits Basket (2019) 16 made to the source manga story. Obviously, jumping into the episode with Uo-chan as a middle school girl coming home is a modification to the order of things. And it allows TMS to reuse that same scene with Uo-chan’s dialog to save money later on.

Other changes were as follows:

• For some reason, TMS didn’t have Tohru be a part of Uo-chan and Hana-chan’s swimsuit conversation. And yet when Tohru did join them, she still arrived at the same conclusion to get a swimsuit that she did in the manga. I wasn’t too keen on this change.
• The three yanki girls are given a bit more focus in the anime due to the nature of anime. And that’s not a bad thing. And one of them even got a name–Ishi-chan.
• TMS provides way more visuals for the flashback stuff that Takaya-sensei didn’t provide in the manga. This too is a positive change. We even get to see Uo-chan as a child.

I believe there were a couple of other minor things. But on the whole, TMS did a good job with the source material.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

In the end, despite the confusion on why TMS decided to skip so far ahead in the manga story, Fruits Basket (2019) 16 is a well done episode. And as usual, I’m bloody hungry after watching it. 😂