YMMV / Fruits Basket

• Ass Pull: Yuki seeing Tohru as a surrogate mother figure struck a lot of fans as this, as it immediately resolves the Love Triangle at the heart of the series in an anti-climatic manner. However, it did receive some foreshadowing, since Yuki never gets flustered around Tohru like Kyo does aside from one instance where Tohru uses First-Name Basis on him for the first time, and he's briefly shown to be envious when seeing Tohru act like a mother to the younger Sohma members, but it's very easy to miss on a first read.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Some have theorized that Hanajima knew about the Sohma curse thanks to her powers and is a Secret Secret-Keeper.
  • Is Momiji being Innocently Insensitive whenever he annoys Kyo or is he intentionally trolling him?
  • Shigure is a very difficult character to pin down, which is even lampshaded by Yuki. Is he truly selfish, or are his actions motivated by something deeper? It's obvious he's not completely callous, so exactly how much does he care about the people around him?
• Awesome Art: The 2019 anime's fourth opening, "Home", has some particularly gorgeous visuals, including a lovely panoramic view of Tohru, Yuki and Kyo standing together on a bridge at sunset.
• Awesome Music:
  • "For Fruits Basket" by Ritsuko Okazaki, the opening theme for the 2001 anime, which is a gentle, relaxing song with uplifting lyrics. It's telling that the series' creator Natsuki Takaya has admitted to liking this song despite how much she disliked the 2001 anime.
  • The reboot's first opening theme "Again", which got an official English version by singer Beverly.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Akito is either a Tragic Villain who deserves a chance at redemption or an irredeemable Karma Houdini who was way too Easily Forgiven. A large part of it comes down to whether one feels her Freudian Excuse is adequate enough to give more context to her behavior or she committed far too many abuses (and in one case, outright crossing the Moral Event Horizon) to deserve a second chance, much less forgiveness.
  • Hiro. Some like him for his Hidden Depths, his cute moments with Kisa, and for being one of the few Sohmas who doesn't worship the ground Tohru walks on, while others hate him for his Bratty Half-Pint behavior, being unjustifiably mean to Tohru in his first appearance and only stopping when Kisa tells him to (and continuing to act rude and hostile towards Tohru throughout), and generally coming off as possessive towards Kisa.
  • Kagura has evolved into this over time. Some people enjoy her sweet personality and justify that her antics were considered standard comedy in anime at the time the series started, noting her eventual character development. Meanwhile, others find her switching personalities annoying and can't get over the pushy and almost stalker-like way she treats Kyo, and do not like the fact that it's still Played for Laughs in the 2019 reboot despite most modern viewers no longer finding her antics funny.
• Broken Base:
  • The first anime adaptation is heavily polarizing due to its multiple aesthetic and characterization differences, although this was hard to avoid since the anime almost Overtook the Manga. The fact that Natsuki Takaya herself didn't like the first anime very much hasn't helped in that regard. Some fans like the 2001 anime's lighter, more comedic tone and how it sometimes breaks the fourth wall, while others dislike how exaggerated the comedy is compared to the original manga, which eventually becomes more serious and ambitious with its themes. However, Ritsuko Okazaki's songs are widely praised by the majority of fans regardless of whether they like the 2001 anime or not, with many wishing the songs could have returned for the 2019 anime (though Okazaki's death in 2004 means that they'd have to be covered by someone else).
  • While fans have been generally excited for the 2019 adaptation, there has been some debate as to whether they prefer the new art style or the art style of the manga or original anime. The fact that the change was requested by Takaya herself has done little to change this. The art style can be seen as beautiful and appropriate at best, or bland at worst. Natsuki's heavier involvement with the series keeps the tone consistent with the manga, but at the same time, it lacks the bravado of the first anime series.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The "Akito is a woman" reveal in the 2019 anime can come across as this. The reveal comes as a complete shock in the manga, since the character is drawn and referred to only in masculine ways and their voice is not heard. Even the original anime, which came out prior to that reveal in the manga, cast a man to voice the character. But in the 2019 anime, Akito is voiced by female actresses, causing a number of viewers unfamiliar with the manga to guess the reveal early on.
• Catharsis Factor: It was very pleasing to see that Tohru's Jackass relative got slapped by Tohru's grandpa for their apathy and disdain for her. The 2019 Anime reboot, especially amped this up even further when Yuki flicked the forehead of Tohru's cousin (who had insinuated that Tohru is being a slut, of all things before he got slapped) so hard he fell on the floor. Additionally, seeing Yuki and Kyo getting Tohru back to the Sohma house after all that is the feeling and thought that Tohru deserved to stay with the Sohma's than stay with her jerks for relatives (sans the grandfather) because of their apathy and disdain for her.
• Die for Our Ship: A few examples:
  • Tohru and Rin got hit with this from some group of fans who prefer the Ho Yay ships.
  • Machi also got hit with this due to getting together with Yuki.
  • Kyo also got this from fans who prefer to ship Tohru with Yuki.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Hatsuharu is probably the most popular secondary character, due to his good looks and his hilarious freak-outs as Black Haru.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The 2019 anime is often nicknamed Fruits Basket: Brotherhood (or occasionally Fruits Basket: Sisterhood) due to being a more faithful adaptation of the manga compared to the 2001 version, much like how Brotherhood is a more faithful adaptation of Fullmetal Alchemist compared to the 2003 anime.
  • Kyo's biological father is given the derisive nickname of "sperm donor" by fans because of his status as a Hate Sink and for the abuse he heaped on Kyo and his mother. Kazuma is instead referred to as Kyo's "true father" for his more loving and fatherly relationship with him, a sentiment shared in-universe by Hajime Sohma, Kyo and Tohru's eldest son.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Some fans of the Tohru/Yuki ship (or even Tohru/Yuki/Kyo) would prefer to believe that the fact that Yuki sees Tohru as a surrogate mother figure doesn't exist.
• Franchise Original Sin: Tohru's Jerkass family members were an early sign of the kind of drama that would go on later in the series, but they were minor antagonists who were taken care of within one chapter, and Tohru hardly lets their actions weigh on her. Later on in the manga, however, nearly every character has some overblown backstory of familial abuse, with severe mental issues because of it.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • With Ouran High School Host Club, which isn't surprising considering how they were two of the most popular and defining shoujo series of the 2000s, and shared a number of English Dub actors in common. While some may prefer one show more than the other, it's not uncommon to find fans of both shows in either fandom.
  • To a lesser extent, with fans of Final Fantasy VII, especially fans of the character of Aerith Gainsborough. This is due to Takaya being a fan of the Final Fantasy games as well as her appreciation for Aerith as a character.
• Gateway Series: The original Tokyopop US publication is generally considered to have sparked the Western shoujo manga boom of the early 2000s. It was one of the biggest parts of the boom, at least.
• Growing the Beard: Company example; while Funimation was already showing signs of this with their dub of YuYu Hakusho and largely solidifying it with their dub of Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), the fact that this was their first major dub of a shoujo anime rather than the shonen action fare they did up to this point also played a part in the beard growing, if not outright cemented it.
• Harsher in Hindsight: While Kagura's reasoning for why Kyo should be with her is played for laughs in her introduction, we see later she's not wrong about how difficult it is for Zodiac members to be with non-Zodiac partners. In addition to not being able to hug their partner without transforming, Hatori's relationship with Kana comes to an end because of Akito. And that's not even getting into how many many people don't respond well upon finding out about the curse.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Takaya's comments on Tohru and Akito being a possible item had Akito been a boy from the start ring somewhat happy for Another, where their next generation expies Sawa (a Tohru-esque girl) and Shiki (Akito's son) are heavily teased together.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Tohru is essentially abandoned by the paternal relatives she had left (aside from her grandfather) due to their dislike of her mother Kyoko's Former Teen Rebel past and then she passed away shortly before the start of the series, but Tohru faced it with a smile, something that many characters find as admirable. While this is initially played straight, the latter half of the manga makes this a Deconstructed Trope with the reveal that she is also a Stepford Smiler affected by how, during her father's funeral, she listened in on her relatives who weren't aware and could care less, that Tohru can understand them talking about how she didn't resemble her father and that it's no consolation because of how much they hate Kyoko for her former social standing. Then there's also her being told off by Kakeru to quit her whining at Kyoko's funeral. Why? Because he believed that Tohru is being self-centered as she grieved for her mother. To drive the knife even further for her? He adds that she's not the only one who lost a parent in his belief that Tohru is being self-centered for grieving. All those things only made Tohru feel even worse about herself, and it's later made clear that bottling up her feelings is damaging her in the long run.
  • Momiji had to watch his mother driven into insanity with the knowledge of giving birth to a child with a zodiac curse and hear that his mother's biggest regret was giving birth to him in that insanity. And for the sake of his mother's mental health, he is cast out and had to live alone. Yet, he never thought that life is unfair even once, and decided that he'll bear having those sad memories as he moves on with his life. This is evident in his monologue at the start of episode 14 in the 2019 reboot.
    Momiji: I don't think there are memories that are okay to forget.
• It Was His Sled:
  • Considering how well-known the series is, especially with shoujo fans, most people enter it with the knowledge that Akito is a woman.
  • With the manga having ended its run years ago, many people also know that Tohru ends up with Kyo.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Kyo is abrasive and rather inconsiderate at first, but considering how he grew up shunned by the inner circle of the Souma clan and he doesn't seem to fare well with those in the outside circle of the clan either except for his Parental Substitute, with his biological father blaming him for his mother's death when it's actually his biological father's own fault that she was Driven to Suicide, it's hard to blame him. The "jerkass" part gradually becomes more toned down over the course of the story as he mellows out and learns to control his temper around people (especially Tohru).
  • Rin/Isuzu is not a terribly pleasant person, especially in her first few appearances. Future chapters reveal her past, in that her parents started to abuse her after she asked an innocent question and left her scarred for the following years with Hatsuharu being the one bright spot in her life. Then she got beaten down by Akito when she talked of liking and dating Hatsuharu, a beatdown that left her hospitalized early in the manga. This event prompt her to pull a Break His Heart to Save Him on Hatsuharu as a result. She remains fairly aloof and bitter even near the manga's end. No one can recover from years of trauma that easily, but it's apparent she is healing.
  • Akito, of all people, turns out to be one. She grew up as a Daddy's Girl, but she still faced a lot of verbal abuse from her abusive and jealous mother Ren, which only got worse after her father died. This caused her to cling to the older male zodiac members to fill in the void of her father's death as her Parental Substitute. Then Kureno's curse broke on its own, causing her to freak out and start doing everything she could to ensure the zodiac members would stay with her and she wouldn't be alone again. Even if those methods brought more harm than good.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • JoJo's Basket. ^Explanation  Episode 30 of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind anime was initially uploaded to Crunchyroll with the subtitles for episode 7 of the 2019 Fruits Basket anime. The surreal juxtaposition of the subtitles with what was actually happening has led to this being a Fountain of Memes.
  • Kyo is sponsored by Adidas. ^Explanation  Diehard fans noted Kyo's sudden preference for clothes emblazoned with an Adidas-looking insignia in the 2019 reboot. It wasn't until he opted to wear a black Adidas tracksuit to Kyoko's gravesite that this character quirk reached memetic levels, simply due to the serious Mood Whiplash. Even Jerry Jewell got in on the fun when he updated his Facebook profile photo to this◊ shortly after the episode in question aired.
  • SOUP ^Explanation Many Western fans of Kyo/Tohru were looking forward to the 2019 anime adapting the chapter where Tohru gets sick and Kyo cooks leek "soup" for her, with the fact that he was willing to cook with leeks as a sign of how much he's come to care for her. It got to the point that simply mentioning "soup" would elicit emotional reactions to the pairing. However, the "soup" Kyo makes is actually a thin rice porridge called okayu that people in Japan typically eat when they have colds. The meme got so prevalent in the fandom that Natsuki Takaya herself expressed confusion on Twitter about why Western fans were calling okayu "soup".
• Moe:
  • In the anime at least, Tohru. In spades. Just look at her adorable expressions!
  • Kisa! She is so endearingly shy.
  • Tsundere/Yandere or not, Kagura is pretty cute herself. Her Establishing Character Moment even plays this with Kagura acting bashful.
  • Hiro is cute as well, at least in terms of looks.
  • Momiji is adorable. The guy is cute enough to rock a girl uniform. He later becomes more masculine though.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Rin's parents disowning her after implied years of physical and verbal abuse...all while she's in the hospital.
  • Though Ren is far from ever being liked, learning that she threatened to abort her female child unless her husband agreed to raise her as a boy made her irredeemable to many. Many fans find it especially despicable of her that she talks of how she only ever would love Akira but then so casually slept with Shigure in order to hurt her daughter. And that's not getting into how she set up Rin as a pawn in her little game.
  • While Akito Kicking the Dog is just a day that ends in "Y" for him or her, she/he is considered by many to have crossed it by half-blinding Hatori and then guilt-tripping his girlfriend over the incident, forcing him to erase her memories of their relationship because she was falling into a deep depression.
  • Kyo's biological father might have the biggest case of this, as not only is he directly complicit with Akito in the plan to lock Kyo up for the rest of his life after graduation but his abusive treatment of Kyo's mother led to her being Driven to Suicide, yet he deflected the blame onto Kyo to make him feel like he was at fault simply for being the zodiac cat, and needed to pay penace for the "unforgivable crime" of "killing his mother" for all these years. It gets even worse considering the psychological issues that Kyo's dad contributed to him having ended up getting in the way of Kyo being able to save Kyoko Honda from a tragic accidental death.
• Narm:
  • To several viewers in the 2019 reboot, they find Hatori's voice acting when he narrates his past as something that ruined the whole dark mood because they felt Kazuyuki Okitsu sounding too bland and trying too hard to voice The Stoic character of Hatori.
  • When Tohru tries to reason with Kyo after he turns into the Cat's true form, Kyo lashes out at her because he's ashamed and accidentally scratches her shoulder in the process. The 2019 anime makes it more dramatic by having Kyo not only injure Tohru's shoulder, but shoving her hard enough to send her flying into a nearby river...and then Tohru gets up with barely a scratch on her aside from the shoulder injury, while also showing the water was a lot more shallow than it looked. The fact that she was sent flying so far but without looking much worse for wear made many viewers feel this moment was too over-the-top to be believable in what was otherwise a very serious and moving episode.
  • Akito scratching Tohru's cheek in the 2019 remake was rather awkwardly animated, looking like Akito simply traced her fingers over Tohru's cheek and it somehow was enough to make her bleed.
  • While Akito's confrontation with Ren was otherwise well done in the Season 3 premiere, the lead in with Akito running through several doors while strangling Ren and somehow launching into the air while still holding onto her quickly got made fun of for how over-the-top and dramatic it got portrayed compared to the manga.
  • For the 2001 anime, many viewers were uncomfortable with Aya Hisakawa as Yuki, making some first-time viewers think that he was a she.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The 7th episode of the 2019 anime reboot has averted the Gory Discretion Shot of Hatori's Eye Scream and showed that Hatori was shoved into a mirror and had his left eye injured from the mirror fragments that fell from the impact (Or, in the original 2001 Anime adaptation, had a vase thrown at his way). No wonder Kana got traumatized! Akito's Mind Rape following that made it worse for Kana...
  • The 9th episode has a brief flashback of Yuki getting psychologically tortured by Akito when he is looking at Kyo and Hatsuharu training martial arts together, which sent him to a panic attack that made his fever worse. Akito's hand creeping towards Yuki's eyes is almost disturbingly sudden, and is definitely meant to evoke the feeling of an abuse victim being taken by their abuser.
• No Yay: Many find Kyoko and Katsuya's relationship disturbing as Katsuya was a teacher in his early twenties romancing Kyoko while she was a middle school student (13-15), which, to a modern western audience comes across more as grooming than romantic. The announcement that Kyoko and Katsuya's flashback chapters which was omitted from the 2019 anime will get its own adaptation in 2022 were thus met with mixed reactions between those looking forward to it and those hoping their ages will be altered somehow to avoid an inevitable backlash.
• One True Threesome: Many fans decide to end the heated debate between Tohru/Kyo and Tohru/Yuki by simply ship all three of them together, as aside from the fact that both Yuki and Kyo are fond of Tohru, the interaction between the two boys can be seen as Belligerent Sexual Tension.
• Questionable Casting: How some people feel about Akito's voice in the 2019 anime. Despite Maaya Sakamoto's experience with voicing Bifauxnen women, some people feel her performance is too feminine. This has led many first-time viewers to figure out that Akito is a woman before it was even revealed. Ditto for Colleen Clinkenbeard in the English dub.
• Rainbow Lens: Yuki. Due to his trauma he was very unsure of his qualities or his importance so he just made a persona acting like he was the prince like all the school see him, but he actually was very lonely. Tohru was the first person that supported him for who he was, and he started feeling something for her but he wasn't sure what it was, so he tried to flirt with her to see if he feel something, but he only felt that this wasn't right. Them he joins the student council and he still felt out of place at first but he felt accepted latter, latter he opens up to Kakeru about his childhood trauma and how he sees Tohru as a motherly figure rather than a romantic interest. Turns out he ends with Machi (Kakeru's sister), but there is a lot of things in Yuki's character arc that could imply that he could be gay, but that wasn't the case.
• Retroactive Recognition: Parisa Fakhri, who voiced Arisa Uotani, is more known as Naima in SEAL Team.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: Yuki and Machi for some, since the latter is introduced fairly late in the story and happens to be another one of the many tragic characters in the series. This trope is especially felt for those who rooted for Yuki and Tohru, though in the end Yuki sees Tohru more as a mother figure, and Tohru falls for Kyo.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Despite their limited interaction, Momiji and Kagura are regularly paired together, mostly due to them being the only main characters that didn't get a love interest in the end.
• Signature Scene:
  • The very first scene of the series of Tohru admiring the clear sky as she gets out of her tent.
  • Tohru finding out about the Sohma curse when Kyo, Yuki and Shigure all transform for the first time onscreen.
  • The Reveal of Kyo's true form.
  • Tohru and Akito's verbal confrontation during the Summer Vacation arc.
• Stoic Woobie: Hatori, whom by all rights had a good reason to hate Akito for what she did to Kana and nearly blinding his left eye. Despite this, the guy decided to not hold it against Akito and just moved on, only praying for his first love to find her own happiness.
• Strangled by the Red String: Due to having one of the most egregious examples of Everyone Must Be Paired in anime/manga history, where almost all of the characters pair up, this was inevitable for at least a few couples:
  • The number of individual appearances Ritsu makes can be counted on one hand, while Mitsuru is used almost exclusively as The Chew Toy. Their lack of character development makes the romance that blossoms between them seem forced at best. This gets somewhat rectified in the 2019 anime, where in Episode 19, it expands on the characters' bonding and becoming friends, paving the way for a relationship to naturally occur.
  • Arisa and Kureno share all of one off-screen interaction with each other, and then Arisa is suddenly passionately in love with him and upset that he appears to be avoiding her. Kureno also ends up returning her feelings despite a very noticeable age gap between them.
  • Due to the 20+ year age gap, the relationship between Hanajima and Kazuma felt less like an actual romance and more like a Precocious Crush that was inexplicably reciprocated at the last minute. This may be why Another retconned it and had Hanajima end up with an unnamed foreign man closer in age to her many years after the end of the original series.
  • Hatori and Mayu is liked by fans but relies on One Degree of Separation for it to be plausible. They get a tiny bit of foreshadowing and a heart-to-heart, but that's about it.
  • Yuki/Machi ends up being this in the 2019 anime as notable bonding moments between them were removed, resulting in their relationship making an immediate jump from the chalk-break moment to Yuki realizing he's in love with her, versus the more gradual development the manga provided them.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: To a lot of fans, it's just incredibly cute how Yuki and Kyo are both so protective of Tohru, even if they show their affection to her in different ways. Also, the way Tohru can make all the Sohma members and many other characters fond of her in one way or another, being the massive All-Loving Heroine and Team Mom she is.
• Sweetness Aversion: Some fans have this reaction to Tohru herself, though usually more in the first anime where the more negative aspects of her personality aren't touched on. She's given an equally over-the-top cutesy voice in the remake too which can still make her this to some viewers who find that she sounds more like a ten-year-old than a teenager.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • Kyo's story arc regarding the cat spirit's true form in the 2019 anime adaptation in comparison to how it was handled in the 2001 adaptation. This is mainly prevalent among those who watched the earlier adaptation, either not knowing or caring that the 2019 adaptation's version of the events is actually truer to the source material and that the parts from the 2001 adaptation that are missing were only made up in the first place to tie up loose ends due to the unlikelihood of that adaptation getting a second season even at the time.
  • For fans of the first anime series, the shift away from comedy fantasy elements can make the series a fairly standard Shoujo anime.
  • In the 2019 series Seasons 1 and 2 are both 25 episodes long and given enough time for each season's respective story arcs to breathe naturally. Season 3 is 13 episodes and after the first couple episodes, the show starts moving at a breakneck pace. Because of this several small story arcs had to be pushed aside once a major part of the story began. The character most affected by this change was unfortunately Yuki as they skipped major parts of his development with the Student Council, his brother, and most importantly his growing relationship with Machi.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Who wasn't disappointed to learn that the one born in the Year of the Dragon transformed into a seahorse instead? Granted, it makes sense; the Japanese for seahorse translates to "dragon's child", and given Shigure's comment about the curse breaking, it's one major way of showing as such. On a surface level, however, one might still be forgiven for wishing Hatori would have turned into an actual dragon.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: For a story where one of the most memorable moments is the reveal that some characters can turn into animals if hugged by the opposite sex, this revelation is surprisingly underutilized in the plot. You’d think that characters becoming animals would play some significant role in the story, but most characters transform only once as a reveal and then never again. The focus is mostly on the heavy family drama and development of relationships between characters, and the cursed Sohmas' issues are less about the transformations themselves and more about the forced roles being associated with their Zodiac animals trap them into. You could honestly remove the animal transformations, replace them with something more grounded in reality, and the story would barely change.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Kyo is supposed to be sympathized with for his crappy childhood and being the outcast of the Sohma clan, but it's hard to feel sorry for him when he spends a good chunk of the story having a major Hair-Trigger Temper where he behaves unnecessarily hostile towards anyone who so much as looks at him funny and his tendency to complain about everything. This gradually lessens over time as he goes through Character Development and learns to keep his temper under control, and how it's eventually made clear just how badly the Cat is treated by the rest of the family, especially with the reveal that after he graduates high school, Kyo will be put in solitary confinement for the rest of his life like every other Cat before him. The 2001 anime unfortunately never has Kyo go through this character development, and actually has him lose his temper and yell at other people more often than he does in the manga and 2019 anime.
  • Momiji's mother. Willingly erasing Momiji from her memory wasn't necessarily justified in-story; in Momiji's flashback to the moment before Hatori erased her memory, she tells Hatori that giving birth to "that creature" was her greatest regret in life with a Broken Smile on her face, not realizing that Momiji had heard what she thought of him. However, she's still painted in a somewhat sympathetic light because she suffered a Sanity Slippage and attempted suicide beforehand. It's hard to feel sorry for her when she took her frustrations out on her son for reasons beyond his control and is constantly cossetted and pandered to at Momiji's expense. It doesn't help that, unlike Rin's parents, she is never properly called out for what she did.
  • Hiro. While his guilt and trauma from being Forced to Watch Kisa getting beaten and Rin being pushed out of a window by Akito is understandable, that doesn't justify him bullying Tohru in his first appearance. His continued hostile attitude towards her for her sisterly relationship with Kisa only furthers this sentiment, as it makes him come off as irrationally possessive.
  • Akito. While her childhood was undeniably horrible and her mother is to blame for a lot of her attitude, many fans felt that it all rang hollow due to the horrible abuse she subjected her own family members to, and as a result, her being forgiven by everyone (with the exception of Rin) comes off as unearned and undeserved. However, the 2019 anime notably left it more ambiguous how many people actually forgive her, and the sequel story Another reveals that regardless of forgiveness, she intentionally isolates herself from the rest of the family sans Shigure as a means of atoning for all she had done to them, but for some fans this was too little, too late.
  • To fans of Kyo or those who don't view him as this like those above, Yuki can come off as this due to his general treatment of him. While his Freudian Excuse of being jealous of Kyo's ability to form bonds outside of the family easier due to not having to suffer Akito's abuse as much and having a bit more freedom due to being excluded from the main family is somewhat understandable and Kyo does kind of have it coming pre-Character Development due to generally being more abrasive with everyone, including Tohru, it becomes harder to get behind this treatment when Kyo starts to mellow out. Even when Kyo merely challenges him to a competition that's not necessarily a fight, just insults him, or is just there and not doing anything, chances are that Yuki is going to respond with physical violence or overly harsh comments, a stand out example being him trying to force-feed Kyo a leek just because Kyo complained about not liking them. And while Kyo's hatred of him is more understandable due to not being aware of the exact nature of the abuse Akito forced him through, Yuki is heavily implied to be aware of what hardships follow being the Cat, such as the ostracism they face and the monstrous and painful transformation they can go through if they're not wearing the beads Kyo always wears, and yet still treats Kyo like crap when he has to deal with situations related to these, such as verbally abusing him even after he went through being forced into that transformation against his will and fearing Tohru would hate him upon seeing him when all Kyo was doing was talking about how he's going to try and change for the better and rein in his temper. The fact that he's never called out on his poor treatment and that all their fights are a Curb-Stomp Battle in Yuki's favor when Kyo is more experienced in and a lot more passionate about martial arts than he ever was, along with the implication that the only reason he does win is because the Zodiac curse makes it so that Kyo (the Cat) can't beat Yuki (the Rat) in anything, can also make Yuki come off as someone who Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing.
• The Un Twist: The 2019 anime doesn't try as hard to hide that Akito for the series' first half is meant to come off as a man until The Reveal that she's actually a woman. While the 2001 anime portrayed Akito as actually being a man due to the manga not having reached the reveal yet, the 2019 anime gives her such a feminine body and voice you wouldn't think anyone is supposed to believe that they're seeing a man, apart from the characters referring to her as such.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Katsuya's conservative, proper family objected to him marrying Kyoko, not because she was a middle school-aged girl at the time (13-15) while he was very recently given a job as a teacher at her school (in his early twenties), but because she had been a delinquent. Granted, they are his family rather than hers, and that last one could be a point of contention for anyone, but generally, Americans tend to frown more on disparities between age and power dynamics (adult/minor, teacher/student, etc) than social standing as the Japanese.
    • Most of the Honda family also looks down on Tohru as a Black Sheep, not only because she's the result of Katsuya and Kyoko's union, but also out of the belief that she could become a delinquent like Kyoko, which stems from the Japanese view that a child of a criminal will inevitably become a criminal themself. To a Western audience, this not only comes across as ridiculous since Tohru is as far from being a delinquent as anyone could possibly get, but also because having a delinquent/criminal parent wouldn't be anywhere near the level of ostracization as one would face in Japan.
  • Several characters within the Sohma family are into each other in a romantic way, which comes off as incestuous to western viewers. However, most western fans don't quite grasp the fact that the Sohma family is a clan of 150 members, not simply a large family. Despite having the same last name and referring to each other as "cousins" (which is mainly out of formality rather than actual relation), most of them are only related very distantly by blood or not related at all.
  • Tohru's remark that "marriage is every girl's dream" may have been intended to sound romantic, but would now be viewed as a rather old-fashioned idea. Funimation's dub of the 2019 anime changed this line to a more general statement about how everyone dreams of finding a soulmate, which is much less dated.
  • Kagura's antics, while over-the-top, were considered standard comedic tropes in anime and manga during The '90s (especially with the popularity of Rumiko Takahashi's works and how often she used those tropes with her own characters). These aspects of her character were kept in the 2019 anime, but modern viewers don't consider her treatment of Kyo very funny, especially with Kyo getting beat up multiple times in Kagura's intro episode, characters simply taking her antics as a sign of how passionate Kagura is towards Kyo (and several blaming Kyo for all the destruction she causes), and a flashback of Kagura pulling a knife on Kyo when they were children. As a result, Kagura's character feels very much like a product of the time when the manga was first written.
  • Ritsu's crossdressing was often criticized directly by other characters in the manga and 2001 anime, even implying that his crossdressing is getting in the way of him becoming more confident. Naturally, this view hasn't aged well. The 2019 anime rectifies this by eliminating nearly all of the jabs towards Ritsu's crossdressing, instead focusing more on his anxiety and constant apologizing as the real problems he needs to overcome.
  • According to Takaya, this is largely the reason why the characters no longer smoke in the 2019 anime, as the original manga was first published in 1998 and is thus "a result of a different era".
  • Hatsuharu proclaiming he "won't give up" on Rin after she breaks up with him and later forcefully kissing her after she tells him not to touch her is portrayed as romantic gestures on his part, but definitely doesn't fly as well in the time of the remake's release as it did when the manga was written. While Rin is later revealed to still be very much in love with Haru, the portrayal of his actions and said reveal not coming until way later down the story can still leave an odd impression for contemporary viewers questioning how much Haru respects Rin to treat her like he does at those times.
• The Woobie: Kisa. She was bullied by everyone else at school due to her unusual hair and eye colors as part of the curse of being the Tiger, which only got worse in time as she stopped speaking and eventually ran away from home, until she finally met Tohru and started to get better. It's also revealed that she was hospitalized for two weeks after being badly beaten by Akito, all because Hiro had told Akito that he loved her.
• Woolseyism: Every language has a different way to have Yuki and Kyo awkwardly smile for Hatori, as the original joke wouldn't make sense translated. Bonus points for the English dubs for also having them say "cheese", like you do when taking pictures.

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