At far too late at night (an admittedly subjective time), I finished Fruits Basket with my friend. We started Season 2 a few weeks ago, but got caught up in it as the second season came to a close and wound up watching the last season of it in about a week as we crammed it all in before she and her husband would be entirely unavaiable due to traveling for a wedding. I was desperate to finish watching it, swept up in the story as I was, and she was willing to sacrifice sleep to share one of her favorite stories with me, so we burned the candle at both ends and now I’m at a loss for what to do with myself once again. Less so than with Final Fantasy 14, but, unlike Final Fantasy 14, I still find myself thinking “I can’t wait to watch more Fruits Basket” and then remembering that there’s no more for me to watch and getting utterly devastated as a result. I wouldn’t really compare the two since one is a video game that took me 1100 hours to get to the end of the first major story arc that has completely reshaped the way I spend my free time every single day and the other was a 60-some episode anime that took a few months to watch only because we took a bunch of time away after my friends went to Japan for their honeymoon and I got super caught up in Final Fantasy 14’s story line (which didn’t leave much room for anything else, especially during a period when I was so emotionally exhausted even before dealing with the emotional complexity of Final Fantasy’s story). Feeling at a loss after Final Fantasy 14’s story is a result of not just storytelling but the end of something I’ve been doing for half a year, but the feeling following Fruits Basket is entirely due to the strength of the storytelling, the memorability of the characters, and the uncompromising manner in which the truth of the characters is laid out by the end of the show.

Anyway, I find myself looking for an opportunity to watch more Fruits Basket only to remember that I’ve finished the show. It’s a strange feeling since, as I’ve mentioned before, media tends not to hold a sway over me for very long after I’ve finished it. Maybe that’s a reflection on the books I’ve been reading and the movies I’ve been watching, but it’ true of pretty much everything. There’s enough exceptions in just about every media format that this isn’t exactly a bulletproof rule, but it’s always fun to find another thing that sticks with me like this story has (and likely will, though it’s only been a couple days since I finished watching it [and a week now, as of editing this]). I kind of wish I’d managed to defy my parents gendered expectations about my reading material as a kid and picked up this series alongside Dragon Ball at my local library when the two appeared side-by-side, but it’s difficult to really regret something like that from just over two decades ago. While I probably would have appreciate finding a story covering toxic family situations when I was still mired in mine, I’m not sure that it would have been super healthy for me since I mostly survived during that period of my life by repressing everything. Unsurfacing it when I was still in the middle of it… Well, I don’t know what would have happened but I can’t imagine any version of my past that would have been improved by that. Not that it’s a one-to-one comparison or anything, but the metaphor of it all would have clicked for me eventually, like it did in my sophomore year of college for different reasons.

It’s interesting to watch a show that hits me so close to home at this point in my life. As much as I can relate to some of what Fruits Basket depicted, none of it is a terribly close match for my experiences so it mostly just hits me in the empathy and brings to mind the (mostly tangential) points of similarity. My reaction is not one of processesing my own feelings through the catharsis provided by this show so much as it was encapsulated by something my friend pointed out basically became a catch-phrase for me while we watched the anime: those poor kids. Because that’s how I feel about it. I know what it’s like to be trapped in the non-metaphorical version of that kind of familial situation, to be trapped by the connections I have to the people also trapped in situations of their own as I slowly work my way out from under the weight of generational trauma that has already crushed so many people before me, and I can’t help but feel bad for all those kids (and adults, even) who are, for the most part, trying to escape a terrible situation. I’ve been there and it sucks. I’m not there anymore and while I’m still dealing with the ramifications, I’m not longer dealing with the direct application of the trauma itself anymore.

It’s such a good show. So many of the characters ring true, the central tensions aren’t what you expect but are so clearly telegraphed by the story’s progression that none of them are ever really surprising when they play out in front of you. Despite that, I couldn’t help but hang on every single second of the show that I watched, regardless of whether or not I knew what was going on or what was coming up. It’s a rare story that can so clearly foreshadow itself and still keep you engaged every step of the way. It’s exactly the kind of story I wish I could tell in a broad, appealing way like this, through a good metaphorical lens. It’s inspiring, frankly, and while I’m still spending time contemplating my own creative future, this is exactly the kind of story that makes me want to get back to the stories I’ve set most recently aside and keep working on them regardless of the outcome. And find more stories like this to read and enjoy every emotional and excruciating minute. Just… What a show. What a story. Those poor kids.