- Oh, no. She's nothing so mundane. She's a demon. On dark nights when you're at your most depressed and vulnerable, she'll come to you, whispering reassurances. If you respond, if you let her comfort you, she tears your very soul away from your body and devours it. But her smile never changes, her words never cease, even when you realize they are worse than hollow.
She's excessively polite, attempts to keep the peace among her quarreling friends, and her colors (as seen in the swimsuit chapter) are red and white.
- I would like to expand this theory by suggesting that Fruits Basket takes place in the same universe as Axis Powers Hetalia
- If that's true, then I'm willing to bet that Momiji represents all three Axis Powers - He's from Germany, lives in Japan, and acts like Italy. How it's possible to be all three though, I don't know.
- Alternatively, he was only crying to get Tohru to comfort him...
- This is practically canon is you actually take a long look at Momiji's character. He is smart. He is the only one that will recognize the fact that they have purposefully ignored the Cat's fate. When his curse breaks he becomes a slightly colder personality and he has a manipulative streak in him, especially towards Kyo. This isn't to say that Momiji isn't a genuinely very kind and childish person at heart, but his is definitely Obfuscating Stupidity.
- Add another tick to Ren Sohma's Evil Matriarch list: SHE STARVED HER DAUGHTER TO KEEP UP THE APPEARANCE OF THERE BEING A MALE HEAD OF THE FAMILY!!
It explains all of the mental disorders in the family. Ren is Obsessive-Compulsive and abusive, Akito is sociopathic and sadistic, Yuki has insecurities, Haru has multiple personalities, Kisa's a mute, Momiji has A.D.H.D., Hatori is bipolar, Hiro is jaded, Ritsu also has insecurities, Kureno has attachment issues, Shigure is a pervert (which could be stretched to be a sex addiction), Kagura is extraordinarily Bipolar, and Kyo has anger issues.
- Except Kisa's mute-ness came from outside sources, but I am willing to stretch that into a reaction of GAD-turned-w/Agoraphobia (She ran away from home to hide from people) And it ties into the large amount of other Anxiety issues and issues which have a co-morbidity with anxiety issues.
- For the record, while Shigure is definitely a flirt he doesn't act like a womanizer. That is, he says stupid, perverted things (mostly because they get a rise out of people) but a sex addiction? No.
- Personally, I think Shigure is also a sociopath[I'm using the manga as my canon here], but bipolar people have manic states and depressions, none of which Hatori or Kagura have. And note that both Ren and Akira have vague illnesses, and Akito often suffers from vague illnesses. Yuki also suffered from health problems. I don't think Ren is OCD, due to her lack of compulsions. She just is obsessed unhealthily with her dead husband.
- I'll grant that Hatori never has a manic state (he seems like he has depression in spades, though), but Kagura clearly has both states - while people focus on her manic Yandere moments, she gets rather depressed at times (particularly later on, as she muses about how Kyo loves Tohru). Also, given how he acts when nobody can see, I wouldn't say Shigure is a sociopath - he does what he does because he thinks it's necessary (even though he does ultimately manipulate Kyo and Tohru into the conditions required to break the curse for his own benefit primarily).
- With regards to Hatori being bipolar, he could always be type 2. It's categorized by having the violent swings of emotions yet not showing it (normally keeping a stoic or emotionless facade) from my personal experience, but its clinical definition is that it's just like regular bipolar disorder, just that the manic state never reaches full-on mania.
- But Ren is just a Sohma by marriage, not by blood. She was a maid.
- Actually she probably is a Sohma by blood, as the family is so large and seems to be made up entirely of one family, even the maids who for whatever reasons are members of lower standing.
- There's always the chance that Akira, Akito's father, was a product of inbreeding as well. The manga never mentions this, but the current generation certainly couldn't have been the first/second generation to practice inbreeding, right?
Yuki's mother is the only zodiac mother we know of who had another child with the perfect knowledge that it was possible that child might be born cursed. Since she had already given birth to the cursed Ayame, it's reasonable to assume she learned a lot about the curse, including the curse of the cat. She could have known that, while the cat himself is a pariah, the family members of the cat are extremely prominent and highly placed within the family (note how Kazuma, the previous cat's grandson, is so revered).
What if she knew that the previous cat had died or was dying? It's possible she may have gotten pregnant with that goal in mind: to be not only the mother of two cursed Sohmas, but the mother of the shunned cat. Although the rat is certainly revered, she never got over the disappointment of not being the mother of the cat, and always resented Yuki for it. It would also add a nice symmetry—we know that Yuki and Kyo wish they were more like the other, and we also know that Kyo's dead mother wished that her son had been the rat. Wouldn't it also make sense for Yuki's mother to wish that her son had been the cat?
Well, that, or when he changes into the 'God' - like the others change into their Zodiac forms - he changes into a girl. But being The God, he can transform at will, which messes with his already frail body and mind, perhaps explaining his/her mysterious illnesses.
- But Akito's mother wanted him to be male, so that she could provide a "proper Sohma heir." It's part of why Akito has so many hang-ups about her sex, and women in general, by the time of the manga. Plus, sex-change surgeries and hormone therapy are long-term procedures; even if you could cover those up by saying that she's "sickly" and can't be seen, that would still be plenty of time for someone to notice that something was going on.
Throughout the whole series, the readers learn that the Sohma family is twisted. Going through the cult checklist, they appear to have many of the signs of a cult. The members of the family have to have an unyielding level of devotion to the head of the family. (Akin to a cult's obsession with their leader.) One of Akito's statements to Toruh says how an outsider could never understand their ways. (Their radically different worldview puts them at odds with mainstream society.) One of the older women of the family tells the rooster that if Akito wishes for one of the zodiac to die, he needs to let Akito harm them, such as what happened to Rin. (Double-whammy: More devout members enforce the rules and the leader is able to escape punishment for such actions.)
Yuki, Kyo, Hatori, Hiro, and Haru are all shamed and guilted, to keep them in line. (Another cult sign.) Yuki is psychologically traumatized. Kyo's blamed for his mom's death, though she may've been unstable in the first place. Hatori has the whole thing with Kana on his shoulders. Hiro feels guilty for being unable to help Kisa. And Haru feels guilty over what happened to Rin.
The whole thing where the zodiac members go back to the house for the rest of their lives also counts. (They spend an extraordinarily large amount of time on group activities.) Rin, with her attempt to break the curse, is punished harshly. (Members are discouraged or punished for thinking or acting for themselves if it is against the cult.)
- The Sohma Family doesn't actually "really" need to be cult because for all intents and purposes they canonically are. The only difference is that their personal beliefs that drive their cult lifestyle are actually based in reality.
- Also, it is stated in the series that as soon as the Curse breaks the whole Sohma Family structure began to break down dramatically.
First of all, it isn't much like Tohru at all to keep grudges or dwell on tough experiences. The only reason we know about the rice ball incident at all is because it related to her problem at the time of feeling excluded from the Sohmas. When she gives her speeches of encouragement to other people it's usually that she quotes her mom and then tacks on a little bit of her own opinion. However, the first time she explained what Kisa was going through, not once did she mention "My mom used to say." Her relating to Kisa was way too specific to be just her theorizing on what she might have been going through, too. I think the game of Fruits Basket was just one part of the bullying, and Tohru and trouble telling her mom about it. This is why Kisa and Tohru became to close so fast, they could understand each other.
- The same might apply to Haru (although the same kind of lame backstory shows up in The Wallflower so it's possible he could have really reacted that way...)
- It is known that Tohru is best friends with two outcasts, a delinquent and a freak girl who we know was bullied through her childhood. I doubt she gravitated towards them only because she is so nice. The girl was an outcast herself and had no friends, until she met those two. This only breaks down in High School when Word of God states that Tohru's class in those years was very accepting towards everyone and had a good familial sense between them, hence why they probably also took in the craziness of Kyo Sohma so easily.
- Although it's a good idea, the curse is triggered by exhaustion (the body becoming weak) as well as the hug from the opposite sex.
- Funny idea but it was always my understanding that the curse functions in that way specifically, simply to keep members from forming simple and intimate relationship with other people "outside" of the curse, even to the point that they can't hug at last one half of their own biological family. Humans need touch in order to be mentally stable but Zodiac members "need" to only be close to God and the other Zodiacs.
- I think Akito probably emotionally/mentally abused Kagura as much as he did everyone else (she seems to have loving parents but states that she felt horrible about her own existence, so something must have been getting to her behind the scenes) but had no cause to physically harm as she never got close to a male character, in Akito's eyes, who doesn't even recognize Kyo as someone anyone could enjoy spending time around.
- It's a non-
squicky explanation for why they did it at such a young age, and a logical extrapolation of their unhealthy emotional states.
- He's the dragon. Dragons really did exist in the far past, but used their memory wiping powers to make the rest of the world forget them, maybe because they were being hunted to extinction or some such sad thing.
- In the side-notes of the original issue of the manga (at least my english version says so) the mangaka mentions that it was actually Hatori's father who discovered the memory erasure technique, which is very like hypnosis. However, it's never brought up in the actual story. It also doesn't discount the idea that Hatori's father re-discovered a technique a past Dragon came up with, or Hatori managed to significantly improve on his father's technique because of an in-built ability of the dragon. At one point, Shigure implies that the dragon member didn't always turn into a sea-horse, so this theory might not so 'wild' after all.
- Out of the cursed Sohma, we know that Yuki, Kyo, Haru, and Kagura practice martial arts, and if this troper remembers correctly, the manga may have implied that more of them have learned it. In Volume 8 of the manga, when Ayame and Yuki go outside, Ayame says something along the lines that he had to come outside with Yuki because he needed to protect him from bandits (In addition to the fact that he also made a promise to not leave Yuki's side for that day). Ayame's zodiac form appears to be a garden snake of some kind, which, this troper assumes, probably doesn't have venom. So without being able to inject venom into possible attackers, how else would Ayame plan to defend his little brother?
- Given this is Ayame we're talking about, he could quite possibly be talking about his irresistible charisma and sex appeal!
- There's quite a few fanfics which head-canon that all the members of the Zodiac are taught some kind of martial arts simply in order to teach them both body and situational awareness, in order to better avoid unexpected collisions that could trigger a transformation in public. While nothing like that is actually mentioned in-series, it's a practical enough idea to be highly likely. There's also the fact that in-universe Kazuma is implied to be a very well-respected sensei in Japan's martial arts community: as the grandson of the previous Cat, he's likely to have grown up around other Zodiac members. He could very well have actually suggested something like this, for exactly that reason. It could even be how he got to know Kyo and the terrible situation with his biological parents in the first place.
- If you look at the chapter page where Akira's face is shown, we see his profile. His eyes and hair and face seem very much like Yuki's. Somewhere on the Furuba wiki page, it said that Akira was the former God. This cannot be true. For one, Akira and Ren had Akito, who bore the spirit of the God of the zodiac. Then it stands to reason that Akira's position as leader of the Sohma clan is different. The reason why everyone in the Main House was overjoyed was because 'God' had not been born for generations...even a century or more. The Main House is ruled by the leader of the Zodiac, or at least, one of its members. Who better to lead the Sohmas but the one closest to God, the Rat?
- Alternately, any member of the cursed Zodiac goes by "Sohma" for the sake of solidarity, even if their Sohma parent was their mother.
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