It’s time to go back into the world of Fruits Basket. Back in the manga days I was always pretty tough on this one. I remember it being one of my least favorite Shojo titles. The anime helped me like the series more although I would say it still has some key issues that never really went away. This film does a quick abridged version of the movie and then goes into the prequel part. As a result, neither section is quite as long as you might have expected here. It all goes by fairly quick so the pacing is on point. Of course you already know how the story will end so there isn’t a whole lot of suspense in there.

For the recap part, it’s basically the Kyo show as we see him introduced as a lonely kid who was really on his own. Then he met Tohru’s mom Kyoko and finally had someone he could talk to outside of his Dojo master. The two got along well but one day Kyoko was destroyed by incoming traffic and Kyo had the chance to save her but hesitated because of his curse. This curse transforms him into a cat or sometimes a raging monster if he touches a girl and he didn’t want the world to know. I do think if he had more time he would have grabbed her but in the split second he couldn’t react. So this is why he tries to put some distance between him and Tohru.

But this is a romance title so you can probably guess how that went! It’s pretty interesting to see the whole show condensed like this. At the end of the day the core show is about the two of them getting together so this one cuts the fluff and just gets right to it. The way it arranges the scenes can sometimes be a bit odd as it is not trying to be chronological at all. Still it’s not a bad setup. I feel as always that romance dramas are a bit tougher to make elite compared to romance comedies but it works well enough.

Kyo and Tohru just don’ have close to the same level of banter as your average romantic leads. They get a quick minute again at the very end of the film and even there you’re just not ready for a whole show about them. Nothing wrong with their romance, at least from this movie but they just aren’t super interesting. It would really all come down to the main segment.

In the prequel, we see how Kyoko met Katsuya before nature destroyed him. Kyoko was a tough kid who was a super rebel in part due to being around negative influences and her parents not doing a thing to help her. She was in a tough spot at all times. One day the parents have had enough and kick her out and the school is about to do the same when she meets one of the assistant teachers, Katsuya. That begins their romance.

Now the obvious issue from the jump here is there is a fairly big age gap going on. I don’t think the film makes it clear just how big but you can use logical deductions from him being an assistant teacher and her being a student. At the end of the day, my stance has always been that age gaps lower the percentage of the relationship working out and the bigger the gap, the more likely it will fail. I can’t really say I would support this romance at all to be honest and even aside from all that, a teacher and a student is rather messy.

This may sound like it’s my same old speech but it would work so much better as friends. He could just be a nice guy getting her out of a real sticky situation and helping her to appreciate life more. Then after that she would be able to stop being a rebel and really come into her own. That would have been a whole lot better. Well, at the very least he did end up being a nice guy the whole time. He told off her parents who the film shows to be as petty as possible. The fact that they called her just to remind her that she’s disowned after Katsuya died was crazy stuff.

Katsuya dying to a random cold is pretty effective since it makes the whole thing more sudden. What I would have liked to have seen more of was Kyoko once she was happy again though. We know from Tohru’s memories that they had a lot of good times before she passed on but we don’t get to see almost any of them. Instead it’s mostly about how depressed she was for a while there and then the film starts to wrap up. It’s as if the happy moments always have to go on a speed run to the next tragedy to occur.

In a way that’s the Fruits Basket way though. It felt like bad things were constantly happening to the characters and they couldn’t really escape their fate. As soon as they began to move forward and make a difference, something would happen like clockwork. The series could be quite unrelenting like that.

The animation is reasonably good. There’s not really anything for it to show off though so it’s a bit hard to say. I thought the motorcycles looked really sleek the whole time though so that was cool. Meanwhile the soundtrack is more on the subdued side. I can’t think of any tunes that super stuck out here.

At the end of the day, this is more of a low key story that has to stand on its own without many technical elements to help it out. It’s not bad but I also wouldn’t say it’s all that good. There really isn’t any replay value and the best parts are the ones being recapped from the show so you just want to go through that anime again. Yuki for example has some of the best scenes here like when he really takes it to Kyo. You sort of wish he would have been in more of the movie. If you want a lot of drama then this is the film for you but it doesn’t always leave a lot of room for fun.

Overall, Fruits Basket: Prelude is definitely very dramatic. It’s absolutely got the kind of tone that you would think about you picture the series. This doesn’t always work in its favor though. I feel like this movie doesn’t have much of a hook since a lot of it is old footage and as a result the prequel origin doesn’t have a whole lot of time to itself. We could have used the extra time to show the main characters hanging out and having some good times. It could have been more of a break from how everything would always go wrong for Kyoko in the end. So this is an interesting film but unless you are a mega Fruits Basket fan, you can probably skip this one.

Overall 5/10