September 3rd, 2019 
AstroNerdBoy Fruits Basket (2019) 22
フルーツバスケット 22
Furuba episode 22
Story Summary/Synopsis
Hana-chan recalls how tough her childhood was with her telepathic powers allowing her to hear the thoughts of everyone. While her family loved her dearly, she was ostracized and bullied as a witch. This causes her to snap, where her abilities nearly kill one of her bullies. Hana-chan panics over this and feels she should be punished. This incident causes her bullying to increase. Hana-chan won’t tell her parents, but her little brother Megumi knows. As such, he prays that someone will be brought into Hana-chan’s life.
Meanwhile, the bullying follows her into junior high school. As such, her parents transfer her to a new school. There, she meets Tohru, who’s serving lunch. After getting her lunch, Hana-chan finds herself snagged by Uo-chan. Tohru joins them and is happy the new student is eating with them. This is when HANAJIMA Saki is dubbed “Hana-chan” by Tohru and Uo-chan. Hana-chan tries to leave them, not wanting them to be negatively impacted by her. However, they won’t hear of it.
The following day, Hana-chan is surprised to be greeted warming by Tohru. Time passes and she befriends Tohru and Uo-chan. However, one day her past comes back to haunt her as a girl inquires about the rumors that Hana-chan nearly killed a boy. This causes Hana-chan’s powers to react and jolt the girl in question. Hana-chan tries to flee, but Tohru pursues, accepting Hana-chan for whom she is. Once Hana-chan accepts that she can be loved by others, he gains control over her powers.
In the present, Hana-chan and Megumi are out with Uo-chan and Tohru. Hana-chan and Megumi chat, were Hana-chan recalls something Kyoko told her once.
Thoughts/Review
And now it is time for Fruits Basket (2019) 22, which was adapted from chapter 51 of the source manga. And here we go with yet another massive leap forward for source material, but maybe it wasn’t a bad thing this time.
Changes to the Source Story
Here are some of the changes I noticed from the source material in Fruits Basket (2019) 22.
- The Hanajima family discussion about Hana-chan’s condition is heavily abbreviated. Likewise, another family chat is cut short.
- A lot of Hana-chan’s inner monologues are cut or abbreviated. That included her thoughts about wanting to apologize to the boy she nearly killed in elementary school.
- This isn’t a change, but the anime does make it clear that Tohru and Uo-chan were at the Hanajima residence when Hana-chan was able to block the thoughts of others and gain control over her powers. It seems obvious now, but all this time, I just figured that the two extra female characters in the scene were extended Hanajima family members. 😅
Otherwise, no other changes of significance were made.
Jumping Ahead
Initially, I was not pleased to see Fruits Basket (2019) 22 had once again leapt forward in chapters. I’m all about anime adaptations being faithful to the source manga, whereupon they bring the manga story to life. Any changes are those that fix issues in the source material.
I think TMS decided to pull Hana-chan’s story forward for story flow purposes. While some of the story shifts TMS has done haven’t made sense to me, giving us Hana-chan’s backstory immediately after the story of her confronting the Prince Yuki club actually works well. That’s not to say I had a problem with its placement in the source manga. But in this case, I think the flow is nicer seeing Hana-chan’s backstory now.
Also, because we are seeing Hana-chan’s story so early, I believe it helps establish an element for a future, major story. I’ll talk more about that when the anime finally drops said story.
A Power for Comedy
One of the things that bothered me about Hana-chan’s backstory is how negatively she viewed her powers. It is understandable, since she appears to have injured some students who were bullying here. She didn’t want to harm others no matter what they did to her. But that’s why her using her denpa (telepathic) powers to this point is kind of a disconnect.
The manga and the anime do acknowledge this point. After all, Hana-chan’s powers were mostly used in a comedic way against those coming after Tohru. But neither the anime or manga ever explained why Hana-chan would become comfortable using her telepathic powers against others.
Final Thoughts and Concusion
In the end, Fruits Basket (2019) 22 is a pretty good adaptation of the source manga material that covers Hana-chan’s backstory.
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I think because Uotani got two episodes back-to-back they wanted to give Hanajima the same treatment. This time it didn’t work so well. First, it’s not a two-parter, and second, it doesn’t feel like we “earned” this story yet, if you get what I mean.
Also, who is Hanajima narrating to? Uotani told her story to the Soma duo over lunch, but this just comes out of nowhere. It feels like parts out of a diary that has no in-story justification to be told to us viewers.
It’s a good episode, but feels disconnected.
Shisho’s gonna show up next if I got it right. Prepare for maximum drama.
Well, in the 2nd half of Uo’s story, she’s narrating to herself. She stops talking to the others, but the monologue continues as her thoughts. And that’s how Hanajima’s was. Her monologue is her inner thoughts. And that’s how it was in the manga as well. Also, in the manga, Hana-chan’s story is in volume 9 and is just out of the blue. That’s what got me to change my mind about the story flow.
As I saw it, TMS looked at the previous episode where Hana-chan admitted to being jealous, and to her using her powers against the Prince Yuki Club. Then they decided to just have the next story be about her again, where she thinks back to her power origins and to her befriending Tohru (and Uo). And so there’s a flow from one to the other, as I saw it.
Also, as I mentioned in my article, I honestly think the 3rd element is setting up the Shisho story, at least the resolution to it as depicted in volume 6 of the manga. How Tohru treated Hana paves the way to show how Tohru will act in the Shisho story resolution. (Haha. Speaking code, but you know what I mean.)
Makes sense, I guess. Still a bit unhappy, though.
And I totally understand that. Were it up to me, I would have kept it faithful to the manga exactly without shifting chapters around to the massive degree they have.