How Fruits Basket Embraces Shojo Clichés

Though Fruits Basket has familiar shojo cliches like mean girls and clumsy protagonists, it's still a delightful romantic adventure worth watching.

Author Natsuki Takaya's hit shojo manga Fruits Basket was first adapted in 2001, then again in 2019, and the reboot anime is the one that helped maintain Fruits Basket's dominant position in the Japanese anime industry. Fans new and old alike adore Fruits Basket as a must-watch romantic tale about forgiveness, second chances, and accepting oneself.

There's plenty to love about Fruits Basket, even if this shojo mainstay admittedly has plenty of clichés and overused tropes. Not even an imaginative and breathtaking love story like this one can dodge all the shojo clichés, but at least Fruits Basket found meaningful ways to lean into them. Sometimes, these tropes are actually used to deepen a character's psychological profile, and others are simply harmless fun that never bothered fans.

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It's amusingly common for female leads in both Japanese and Western fiction to be physically clumsy. That lets the girl cutely fall right into her lover's arms when she trips or stumbles, and it's a completely innocent personal flaw, too. It's the kind of flaw that never makes a character unlikable, since it doesn't involve her personality.

Tohru Honda is like that too, though at least she doesn't turn it into slapstick pratfalls. Also, Tohru unwittingly tries to counteract this clichéd flaw by working manual labor jobs to support herself, as though she's reclaiming the idea that her body is useful, not a goofy liability.

Shojo anime series tend to include one or more "mean girl" types to act as a foil for the gentle, kind heroine, and Fruits Basket's 2019 anime quickly obliged. While Tohru is selfless and sweet, her classmates like Motoko Minagawa are antagonistic. Motoko will harshly intimidate any girl who violates the rules of the Yuki Fan Club.

Motoko is a total shojo cliché, but her character arc still has some substance. She is a mean girl for Yuki's sake, and she genuinely wants to protect his happiness, even if she overdoes it. Motoko also tones down her behavior and forms a more meaningful and fair relationship with Yuki shortly before she graduated.

Shojo anime series often use drama and grief to add dark emotional weight to the narrative, which isn't a cliché in its own right. However, shojo tends to overuse the idea of killing off the heroine's parents, and that may often involve a car accident in particular. Sure enough, Tohru Honda lost her mother Kyoko in a traffic accident.

Though this narrative is overused, Fruits Basket made it count. For one thing, Tohru couldn't easily afford a loss like that, and she ended up homeless because of it. Also, that sudden loss symbolically put Tohru in the same situation that Kyoko herself had once been in when Kyoko's husband, Katsuya, died early in Tohru's life.

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The same way shonen anime tend to have a beautiful girl for fans to enjoy, shojo anime series never fail to have a dazzlingly handsome boy on hand, or a bishonen. These bishonen characters have it all: perfect hair, stylish outfits, a charming personality, and shojo-style sparkles in the background anytime they show up.

It's a transparent cliché and a G-rated form of fan service that's generally harmless. In Fruits Basket's case, that bishonen is Yuki Sohma the kuudere, but he's just a pretty face. He has serious impostor syndrome and other personal baggage, and he'll need more than a fan club to solve the personal problems his admirers can't even see.

While shonen leads are brash and overconfident youths, shojo heroines trend toward total humility, to the point they will contract any compliments their friends give them. This cliche is clearly meant to make the heroine a likable self-insert, rather than being a haughty queen bee whom viewers might find annoying.

Tohru Honda is one of those humble shojo leads who's slow to talk up her own accomplishments, while heaping praise on everyone else. She may remind fans of other humble leads like Sawako Kuronuma in Kimi no Todoke, except Tohru doesn't share Sawako's genuine self-esteem issues.

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Romance anime series usually heat up the conflict and challenge the characters with some competition for a lover's heart. If a full-blown harem doesn't take shape, then a love triangle will likely appear instead, and Fruits Basket did exactly that with Tohru, Kyo, and Yuki.

The three of them became the unofficial main trio of Fruits Basket, with Kyo and Yuki fighting over Tohru with their words and fists alike. There was also a triangle between Tohru, Kagura, and Kyo, with Kagura viewing Tohru as a romantic rival who was about to steal Kyo away from her.

Age gap romances are remarkably common in shojo anime, and they can potentially be highly problematic. This cliché may come from the desire to see what happens if the two lovers have radically different attitudes or lifestyles due to their respective ages. Fortunately, Fruits Basket indulges in this tastefully.

Arisa Uotani is Tohru's friend, and she had a romantic subplot Kureno Sohma, who was about 10 years her senior. The story kept their romance G-rated, and interestingly, the main difference between them derived not from the age gap, but from Kureno's sheltered lifestyle.

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Shojo and shonen anime series often use the familiar "beach episode" cliche, even the likes of My Hero Academia and Darling in the Franxx. Beach episodes can be an excuse for PG-13 fan service, though they can also be a delightful excuse for the characters to have fun far away from the grind of everyday life.

Fruits Basket leaned into its beach episode well, using it as a reminder that even during a vacation of fun in the sun, no one can escape Akito Sohma. Tohru had fun on the beach by day, but at night, she met her nemesis Akito, and things got tense, wiping away the cliché happiness of the beach.

In shojo anime series, the lovers will be determined to stay together, even if it means putting up with things they shouldn't. Often, a female character will forgive anything that her possessive, verbally abusive, or mistrustful boyfriend will say or do, but it goes the other way too, such as in Fruits Basket.

Hatsuharu Sohma was romantically linked with Isuzu Sohma, a girl with serious baggage that leads her to verbally lash out at him. They resolved their differences in the end, but even so, Hatsuharu knew he was putting up with an awful lot to remain committed to Isuzu. Then there's Kyo, who put up with the violent and jealous Kagura despite his half-hearted attempts to push her away.

The "opposites attract" trope can easily appear in any shojo anime, since it's an abstract and general concept that can take any form for any reason. Fruits Basket did exactly that with Tohru and her eventual lover, the tsundere Kyo Sohma. Tohru began the story homeless, while Kyo lived in Shigure's cozy house.

Tohru is a gentle and selfless person, while Kyo is a brash and hot-tempered boy who is self-absorbed much of the time. At first, this made them incompatible, but then they met in the middle, with Tohru healing Kyo's wounded heart and giving him hope. In that way, Fruits Basket made this commonplace plot point feel meaningful.

Louis Kemner has been a fan of Japanese animation since 1997, when he discovered Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z in elementary school. Now he's a bigger anime/manga fan than ever, and is ready to share what he knows with readers worldwide. He graduated high school in 2009 and received his Bachelor's in creative writing from UMKC in 2013, then put his skills to work in 2019 with CBR.com. He's always looking for a wonderful new anime to watch or manga series to read.