Fruits Basket Season 2 03
フルーツバスケット S2 03
Furuba (2019) S2 episode 03

Story Summary/Synopsis

Aya comes by Shigure’s home to visit Yuki and to bring peaches. After Aya’s usual shenanigans, Yuki asks to see Aya’s shop. Aya is pleased and wants to tell the world. They set up a time for the upcoming Sunday. Further, Aya wants Tohru to come, but Kyo is not invited.

Sunday comes and Yuki is worried about the visit. When they enter Aya’s shop, Yuki is horrified to see his brother wearing a wedding dress. Aya’s assistant, Mine, comes and serves tea in a maid outfit. Aya explains that he makes women’s clothing that appeal to a male fantasy. Mine decides to dress Tohru up, so she gets her out of the main room. However, she has an ulterior motive, namely giving Yuki and Aya time to talk.

Aya and Yuki discuss a wide range of things, including Aya going to the parent-teacher conference instead of their parents. Mine emerges with Tohru in a fancy dress. Yuki likes it and tells Tohru as much. This leads Aya to loudly tell Yuki that what Yuki is feeling is the male romance fantasy.

Thoughts/Review

I was wondering when TMS would finally get around to adapting the last chapter in volume 6. After all, they’ve been jumping all over the place ’cause “reasons”. However, for Fruits Basket Season 2 03, that chapter finally got adapted. Unfortunately, I didn’t care for how the source material was restructured.

Changes to the Source Manga

To adapt Fruits Basket Season 2 03, most of chapters 47 & 36 were used.

• Aya wasn’t sewing during his visit in the manga.
• In the manga, Aya didn’t make the shirt for Yuki until the end of chapter 47. Also, Aya proposes a shirt for Tohru and one for Kyo in the manga. That was cut.
• Of course, rewriting everything the way TMS did meant no scene where Aya bursts in on Shigure as he relaxes in the bath.
• Aya’s shop was a proper store (two glass doors on the entry vs a solid, wooden door) in the manga. In the anime, it was apparently a converted apartment or two.
• Because TMS tried to mesh chapter 47 and 37 together, we lose the scene in chapter 47 where Aya and Yuki are talking outside in the heat. Thus Aya transforms and Yuki has to help Aya’s snake form.
• There’s no longer a flashback of Shigure and Hatori as teenagers, scolding Aya for treating Yuki poorly. Also, there’s no longer a flashback showing how Aya survived going to school.
• And also missing is another revelation by Yuki about needing others.

Needless to say, I was not happy about these changes to the manga’s story. Yes, we got all of the relevant information, but at a cost.

Bummed About the Changes

I gotta say, the way Fruits Basket Season 2 03 was Frankensteined together really depressed me. Had TMS done chapter 36 first, then chapter 47, I would have been fine on the whole. However, the natural growth that occurred in the manga between Yuuki and Aya is removed in the anime.

In the manga, Aya and Yuki are trying to understand each other in chapter 36. Aya starts this by talking about Yuki becoming Student Council President. And by the chapter’s end, they are beginning to have that understanding. So that by Aya comes by for another visit in chapter 47, there’s a foundation in place for their relationship. And because of this foundation, Aya feels confident enough to broach the subject of going to the student-teacher conference instead of Aya and Yuki’s parents.

Unfortunately, the way the anime episode does things, Aya just comes off like a dithering idiot. To be fair, there were those elements in the manga. But that was overshadowed by Aya getting an inch from Yuki and desperately wanting to go the whole mile. And so Aya’s actions didn’t play so much as the dithering idiot as they do for me in the anime.

Further, the episode’s story flow gave us no reason for Yuki to just open up about their parents to his brother. This happened in chapter 47 of the manga, where as I earlier stated, Yuki and Aya already had a foundation for their relationship built. Not only that, but the heat had caused Aya to transform into his snake form. Thus Yuki needed to take care of Aya, which is when he started opening up about their parents and Aya going to the parent-teacher conference.

If you never read the manga, what did you think of the flow?

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

OK, time to wrap up my review of Fruits Basket Season 2 03 as I’ve got to get back to work. While I’m glad this episode did relay the needed information, I’m highly disappointed at the rewrite to make chapters 36 and 47 seem like a single story. It kills the natural character progression of Yuki and Aya. And it cut several nice scenes in the process.

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