I've seen the anime for Fruits Basket and I liked it fine though it isn't my favourite shojo. The stuff towards the end is my favourite with some good takes about how we shouldn't have blind loyalty towards obsolete, patriarchal tradition just for the sake of it. The clan is very cult-coded in how their dynamics are presented which is a bit of social realism I really liked. However, I didn't agree with how some characters and drama are framed which lessened how much of the narrative personally resonated with me.
What I like about shojo is just how common empathetic storytelling is with intense emotions that just scream off the page. Like every demographic there are troupes but I appreciate any media that is unapologetically feminine and takes girls issues seriously and doesn't pass it up as frivolous. This assumption that media for girls is vapid and silly is misogynistic and damaging.
Furuba is one of my favourite manga/anime of all time - If you’re looking for a Shoujo to start with, this is definitely one of the best you could have picked! Hope you enjoy!
I literally just ordered the rest of fruit basket myself lmao
https://preview.redd.it/az5duslbjn9d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=10790b93610e63bb59d2d187dfef195751de9353
I started reading it and the first thing that stands out is the style of paneling is a little hard to follow compared to what I'm used to but the story is good so far.
Expect to either love it or hate it. No in-between.
I have gone on a very extensive shojo run just to widen my taste a bit more and a lot of extremely critically acclaimed works turned out to be full of lazy writing, heavily reliant on drama and extremely obnoxious characters with lack of any logical thinking behind their actions.
There’s also a heavy learning curve if you will when it comes to the art, it’s very flashy and often time simple with unconventional paneling at times that can be a bit annoying at first but I personally didn’t mind it too much.
PS, sticking only to manga with English releases for the following.
Fruits basket is not a manga that I bothered with because it seemed very clear that I won’t enjoy but some stuff I read and sorta of hated are Red River, Basara, Please Save My Earth (This one is especially awful), Banana Fish, different CLAMP titles, and some more critically acclaimed works.
The only work that I think highly of at the moment is Mars which I’m still reading.
I probably pissed off a lot of people with this comment but it is what it is lol.
Jesus Christ people, when did I stereotype an entire demographic? I said that I read a lot of critically acclaimed shojo and those turned out to be bad.
Yea maybe my opening line is a bit much but I said it and it’s whatever now. I didn’t stereotype shit and I don’t think all shojo is bad.
I don’t give a flying fuck if ppl get mad at me for my opinions, if I did I wouldn’t be sharing them in the first place so be mad if you want and no it’s not bait.
>I have gone on a very extensive shojo run just to widen my taste a bit more and a lot of extremely critically acclaimed works turned out to be full of lazy writing, heavily reliant on drama and extremely obnoxious characters with lack of any logical thinking behind their actions.
Really??? What Shoujo have you actually read to where this is the case? And what Shonen and Seinen don't have dramatic characters?
>Fruits basket is not a manga that I bothered with because it seemed very clear that I won’t enjoy but some stuff I read and sorta of hated are Red River, Basara, Please Save My Earth (This one is especially awful), Banana Fish, different CLAMP titles, and some more critically acclaimed works.
These are drastically different works of art... How TF do you hate all of them?
I dont know why you asked about what works I have read since I mentioned them??
And yes, they are very different, and they all sucked in their own way and I am not going to waste more time on explaining to you why I didnt like each one of them 🤭
Also, I will shit on even more Shonen and Seinen, I dont care what the demographic is, if its bad I will say its bad. The post I was replying to just happened to be about Shojo which is why I talked about Shojo... Mind blowing isn't it?
Aka, you stereotyped an entire demographic and are trying to walk it back, because you realized how bad it made you look.
There's a difference between crapping on individual Shonen/Seinen works, and crapping on a demographic as a whole. I think JJK is trash. Though me crapping on JJK does not mean I'm crapping on Shonen as a whole. I just don't care about that particular work within the demographic. Though me saying that Shonen is generic and trash as a demographic and that there are no good Shonen works of art, would be wrong and bad of me to do.
I dont care if it makes me look bad lol, I walked it back because that was not my intention. I am a fan of some shojo works, but my point remain that most of those extremely sought after, highly acclaimed shojo are fn awful.
I mean, anyone can really say all of the same things for Shonen manga too if it wasn’t their kind of ‘genre’/demographic. And this is coming from someone who exclusively reads shonen and seinen. I tried various shojo titles and not much really stuck for me, and that’s just cause it wasn’t my cup of tea. But that doesn’t mean I can’t see the amazing artwork and storytelling that’s involved in Shojo.
Like have you listened to what you said?
“Heavily reliant on drama”
uhh yeah of course it is, that’s cause a majority of shojo (not all) titles are within the drama/romance genre. What is a drama that isn’t reliant on drama?? Anyone could say Shonen is heavily reliant on action to do its storytelling, but that’s because a lot of them are in the action/sport/battle genre. It’s not a criticism, you just don’t like drama, and that’s okay. Some people just don’t like action, and that’s also okay.
“Obnoxious characters with lack of any logical thinking behind their actions”
Are you forgetting that a majority of Shonen protagonists such as goku, luffy, naruto, could be considered literal idiots who only get as far as they do because of their devotion to their friends and family, as well as their dreams. They literally wing it the whole time. How is this any different?
Are you assuming that I like shonen? cuz I dont lol.
Heavily reliant on drama is totally fine if the drama was actually good or interesting. The works I mentioned weren't that. it's that simple.
I was mainly riffing on Shonen as a more obvious comparison due to the fact that they both share the same demographic age bracket. If your tastes are more mature like seinen, josei, adult, of course there’s gonna be a lot more complex emotions, drama and storytelling as apposed to stories meant to entice literal junior high and high school students who primarily just want to believe they can make a difference in the world no matter how old/smart they are, or that they can get their crush to notice them no matter how they look/how popular they are. These are the types of people Shonen and shojo are made for. That’s not to say neither are capable of telling complex stories just cause they’re made for a younger audience. But sometimes a more basic story that tug at teenage aspirations appeal to a lot of people because it’s relatable on a more surface level. If that’s not your cup of tea, that’s okay, it doesn’t have to be. But I feel you’re just projecting what your expecting from your own taste onto a genre that just simply wasn’t made for you and labeling it criticisms.
Let’s just say this would be like comparing the god father to Star Wars
I agree with a lot of you said and yea I’m fully aware that the genre isn’t for me, but just because it isn’t doesn’t mean that I can’t critique and critiquing based on what I like is like the only way to critique it lol.
I’m not going to imagine myself as a 13 years old Japanese girl trying to get her crush’s attention in order to review or critique and rate the manga. That’s not how it works.
I do prefer more complex story telling yes, I do enjoy a handful of shonen even today and I dislike a lot of shonen as well, it’s out there for everyone to experience not just the people it’s aimed at and criticism from people outside of the demographic will happen and doing it based on what they like will also happen. That’s a given haha.
Actually since this was brought up, some of the stuff in those manga shouldn’t be aimed at people in that group age, some of the stories have extremely twisted takes on sexual abuse and other weird shit that kids shouldn’t be reading and are outright bad so there’s that to counter your point too.
What's Mars about? Personally loved Fruits Basket, but (to me) it's a series that gets better over time. My favorite shoujos are Yona of the Dawn and Revolutionary Girl Utena (anime, heard the manga is different)
Your opinion is yours but I highly doubt that shojo/josei is full of "obnoxious characters that are highly illogical in their actions" without any justification from the writing. From my experience, these demographics are the most character-driven and place especial onus on substantiating why characters act the way they do. Josei in particular, has the most consistently sophisticated character writing for me. It discusses base human emotions entangling with uncomfortable societal taboos with a maturity that's always insightful to some degree.
For me, Nana epitomises my gold standard for mature, grounded and realistic drama. Though very dramatic and angsty, nothing any of the characters do is illogical or obnoxious if you're willing to look deeper, examine and empathise. That's a given with character-driven stories anyway. Otherwise, you've completed missed the appeal and won't get anything out of these demographics.
Not sure where the convo about Josei popped up as I was not referring to Josei at all and was strictly talking about Shojo so your comment is somewhat confusing to me as it’s just you talking about something that was never a topic mentioned by me lol.
Josei I actually enjoy quite a bit, I like a good amount of Josei and I have paid hundreds on some OOP Josei that I’ve been wanting to check out so there’s that.
Nana is good, I’m just not the biggest fan of it so tbh I don’t think I’ll be revisiting it.
Uh no, everything I said applies to shojo. You're just grasping at strawmans. Did you not see where I said "shojo/josei" lol? My point still stands about the approach to storytelling of shojo and its inherent value.
I've read/watched a lot of shojo series I loved. Nana is a shojo lol. I just made an extra comment about josei as I read more from the demographic and am thus more familiar with it. I'm not sure why you decided to focus on it out of everything I said lol. Even so, the only things separating both demographics are age-ratings and the magazines they're published in. There is a huge crossover of readers. And lots of shojo delve into mature and deep themes and offer great character studies. I can talk about Natsume's, Kare Kano, Hagio, Ikeda etc.
Anyway, OP was asking for people's opinions about Fruits Basket which I already gave. I'm sure it'll mean something more to them than comments from someone who hasn't even experienced it.
Ok truthfully I didn't read the shojo/josei thing, that's totally on me.
While some shojo does bleed a bit into josei, it remains very easy for me personally to tell the difference, and that difference is why I find myself enjoying josei a lot more than shojo so nothing I said or will say applies to josei.
Most of my issues came from Red River which I bought and binged in 2 days or so, and it was a painful manga to get through, the story could have concluded in two chapters but NOOO, instead it becomes a repetitive mess with horrible villains, horrible character development, and extremely generic. the characters are absolutely PATHETIC and the entire story and conflict is a bunch of nonsense that left me offended, and every single attempt at trying to do something interesting ended up making it more of a joke and I dont want to get into this much but wtf is up with the romanticizing of rape in this piece of shit of a story?
Anyways, I can keep going on and on about the others and believe me you dont want that, but my initial comment was just my experience getting into the more popular shojo out there which I think is a fair point to make since the OP is going into their first shojo as well.
Also, you keep going on and on about Nana AND I HAVE NO ISSUES WITH IT, I told you that it's good, just not my thing.
truthfully I dont understand what points you are trying to make, the manga that I mentioned in my first comment all have those problems, Please Save My Earth has incredibly uncomfortable views on sexual abuse that's fn awful, Red river is full of stupid decisions, that are pulled straight out of the ass of the author just to keep the story going, etc... I am not referring to all shojo, I haven't read all shojo, I do see how my opening line in my first comment with them hating it or loving it is a problem and I wont edit it out cuz its there already but I dont mean that all shojo is bad.
I didnt go into details about the shojo that I do love, I absolutely love Hagio, Keiko Nishi has grown to be one of my fav female mangaka across all genres and there's more.
I hope that clears up my stand on shojo, I do apologize for "Expect to either love it or hate it. No in-between." as I don't think that's true and not sure why I wrote it but everything else still stands.
I've seen the anime for Fruits Basket and I liked it fine though it isn't my favourite shojo. The stuff towards the end is my favourite with some good takes about how we shouldn't have blind loyalty towards obsolete, patriarchal tradition just for the sake of it. The clan is very cult-coded in how their dynamics are presented which is a bit of social realism I really liked. However, I didn't agree with how some characters and drama are framed which lessened how much of the narrative personally resonated with me. What I like about shojo is just how common empathetic storytelling is with intense emotions that just scream off the page. Like every demographic there are troupes but I appreciate any media that is unapologetically feminine and takes girls issues seriously and doesn't pass it up as frivolous. This assumption that media for girls is vapid and silly is misogynistic and damaging.
Is volume 6 of Maximum Ride a fake?
No different publisher
It's published by arrow and the rest are yen press
Furuba is one of my favourite manga/anime of all time - If you’re looking for a Shoujo to start with, this is definitely one of the best you could have picked! Hope you enjoy!
I literally just ordered the rest of fruit basket myself lmao https://preview.redd.it/az5duslbjn9d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=10790b93610e63bb59d2d187dfef195751de9353
Where do you order these from
Alibris, they pack their manga pretty well
Furuba is peak
I started reading it and the first thing that stands out is the style of paneling is a little hard to follow compared to what I'm used to but the story is good so far.
Didn't care for maximum ride but Fruits Basket is a great classic shojo.
Greatness you should expect greatness.
Fruits basket makes me believe that maybe love is real and can break down generational trauma. Tohru is an angel, kyo was my first anime crush.
Where did u get that poster from?
DBZ manga box set
It looks good what are the measurements
Expect to either love it or hate it. No in-between. I have gone on a very extensive shojo run just to widen my taste a bit more and a lot of extremely critically acclaimed works turned out to be full of lazy writing, heavily reliant on drama and extremely obnoxious characters with lack of any logical thinking behind their actions. There’s also a heavy learning curve if you will when it comes to the art, it’s very flashy and often time simple with unconventional paneling at times that can be a bit annoying at first but I personally didn’t mind it too much. PS, sticking only to manga with English releases for the following. Fruits basket is not a manga that I bothered with because it seemed very clear that I won’t enjoy but some stuff I read and sorta of hated are Red River, Basara, Please Save My Earth (This one is especially awful), Banana Fish, different CLAMP titles, and some more critically acclaimed works. The only work that I think highly of at the moment is Mars which I’m still reading. I probably pissed off a lot of people with this comment but it is what it is lol.
Considering that you said that all Shoujo is bad and stereotyped an entire demographic, of course you made people mad... Like, is this bait???
Jesus Christ people, when did I stereotype an entire demographic? I said that I read a lot of critically acclaimed shojo and those turned out to be bad. Yea maybe my opening line is a bit much but I said it and it’s whatever now. I didn’t stereotype shit and I don’t think all shojo is bad. I don’t give a flying fuck if ppl get mad at me for my opinions, if I did I wouldn’t be sharing them in the first place so be mad if you want and no it’s not bait.
>I have gone on a very extensive shojo run just to widen my taste a bit more and a lot of extremely critically acclaimed works turned out to be full of lazy writing, heavily reliant on drama and extremely obnoxious characters with lack of any logical thinking behind their actions. Really??? What Shoujo have you actually read to where this is the case? And what Shonen and Seinen don't have dramatic characters? >Fruits basket is not a manga that I bothered with because it seemed very clear that I won’t enjoy but some stuff I read and sorta of hated are Red River, Basara, Please Save My Earth (This one is especially awful), Banana Fish, different CLAMP titles, and some more critically acclaimed works. These are drastically different works of art... How TF do you hate all of them?
I dont know why you asked about what works I have read since I mentioned them?? And yes, they are very different, and they all sucked in their own way and I am not going to waste more time on explaining to you why I didnt like each one of them 🤭 Also, I will shit on even more Shonen and Seinen, I dont care what the demographic is, if its bad I will say its bad. The post I was replying to just happened to be about Shojo which is why I talked about Shojo... Mind blowing isn't it?
Aka, you stereotyped an entire demographic and are trying to walk it back, because you realized how bad it made you look. There's a difference between crapping on individual Shonen/Seinen works, and crapping on a demographic as a whole. I think JJK is trash. Though me crapping on JJK does not mean I'm crapping on Shonen as a whole. I just don't care about that particular work within the demographic. Though me saying that Shonen is generic and trash as a demographic and that there are no good Shonen works of art, would be wrong and bad of me to do.
I dont care if it makes me look bad lol, I walked it back because that was not my intention. I am a fan of some shojo works, but my point remain that most of those extremely sought after, highly acclaimed shojo are fn awful.
Curious, which shojo do you like?
I mean, anyone can really say all of the same things for Shonen manga too if it wasn’t their kind of ‘genre’/demographic. And this is coming from someone who exclusively reads shonen and seinen. I tried various shojo titles and not much really stuck for me, and that’s just cause it wasn’t my cup of tea. But that doesn’t mean I can’t see the amazing artwork and storytelling that’s involved in Shojo. Like have you listened to what you said? “Heavily reliant on drama” uhh yeah of course it is, that’s cause a majority of shojo (not all) titles are within the drama/romance genre. What is a drama that isn’t reliant on drama?? Anyone could say Shonen is heavily reliant on action to do its storytelling, but that’s because a lot of them are in the action/sport/battle genre. It’s not a criticism, you just don’t like drama, and that’s okay. Some people just don’t like action, and that’s also okay. “Obnoxious characters with lack of any logical thinking behind their actions” Are you forgetting that a majority of Shonen protagonists such as goku, luffy, naruto, could be considered literal idiots who only get as far as they do because of their devotion to their friends and family, as well as their dreams. They literally wing it the whole time. How is this any different?
Are you assuming that I like shonen? cuz I dont lol. Heavily reliant on drama is totally fine if the drama was actually good or interesting. The works I mentioned weren't that. it's that simple.
I was mainly riffing on Shonen as a more obvious comparison due to the fact that they both share the same demographic age bracket. If your tastes are more mature like seinen, josei, adult, of course there’s gonna be a lot more complex emotions, drama and storytelling as apposed to stories meant to entice literal junior high and high school students who primarily just want to believe they can make a difference in the world no matter how old/smart they are, or that they can get their crush to notice them no matter how they look/how popular they are. These are the types of people Shonen and shojo are made for. That’s not to say neither are capable of telling complex stories just cause they’re made for a younger audience. But sometimes a more basic story that tug at teenage aspirations appeal to a lot of people because it’s relatable on a more surface level. If that’s not your cup of tea, that’s okay, it doesn’t have to be. But I feel you’re just projecting what your expecting from your own taste onto a genre that just simply wasn’t made for you and labeling it criticisms. Let’s just say this would be like comparing the god father to Star Wars
I agree with a lot of you said and yea I’m fully aware that the genre isn’t for me, but just because it isn’t doesn’t mean that I can’t critique and critiquing based on what I like is like the only way to critique it lol. I’m not going to imagine myself as a 13 years old Japanese girl trying to get her crush’s attention in order to review or critique and rate the manga. That’s not how it works. I do prefer more complex story telling yes, I do enjoy a handful of shonen even today and I dislike a lot of shonen as well, it’s out there for everyone to experience not just the people it’s aimed at and criticism from people outside of the demographic will happen and doing it based on what they like will also happen. That’s a given haha. Actually since this was brought up, some of the stuff in those manga shouldn’t be aimed at people in that group age, some of the stories have extremely twisted takes on sexual abuse and other weird shit that kids shouldn’t be reading and are outright bad so there’s that to counter your point too.
What's Mars about? Personally loved Fruits Basket, but (to me) it's a series that gets better over time. My favorite shoujos are Yona of the Dawn and Revolutionary Girl Utena (anime, heard the manga is different)
I appreciate your input. I just got all 8 for 70$ when normally they'd be 160 so I said fuck it lol
Have you read Nana?
I watched the anime ages ago but idc much for it
Your opinion is yours but I highly doubt that shojo/josei is full of "obnoxious characters that are highly illogical in their actions" without any justification from the writing. From my experience, these demographics are the most character-driven and place especial onus on substantiating why characters act the way they do. Josei in particular, has the most consistently sophisticated character writing for me. It discusses base human emotions entangling with uncomfortable societal taboos with a maturity that's always insightful to some degree. For me, Nana epitomises my gold standard for mature, grounded and realistic drama. Though very dramatic and angsty, nothing any of the characters do is illogical or obnoxious if you're willing to look deeper, examine and empathise. That's a given with character-driven stories anyway. Otherwise, you've completed missed the appeal and won't get anything out of these demographics.
Not sure where the convo about Josei popped up as I was not referring to Josei at all and was strictly talking about Shojo so your comment is somewhat confusing to me as it’s just you talking about something that was never a topic mentioned by me lol. Josei I actually enjoy quite a bit, I like a good amount of Josei and I have paid hundreds on some OOP Josei that I’ve been wanting to check out so there’s that. Nana is good, I’m just not the biggest fan of it so tbh I don’t think I’ll be revisiting it.
Uh no, everything I said applies to shojo. You're just grasping at strawmans. Did you not see where I said "shojo/josei" lol? My point still stands about the approach to storytelling of shojo and its inherent value. I've read/watched a lot of shojo series I loved. Nana is a shojo lol. I just made an extra comment about josei as I read more from the demographic and am thus more familiar with it. I'm not sure why you decided to focus on it out of everything I said lol. Even so, the only things separating both demographics are age-ratings and the magazines they're published in. There is a huge crossover of readers. And lots of shojo delve into mature and deep themes and offer great character studies. I can talk about Natsume's, Kare Kano, Hagio, Ikeda etc. Anyway, OP was asking for people's opinions about Fruits Basket which I already gave. I'm sure it'll mean something more to them than comments from someone who hasn't even experienced it.
Ok truthfully I didn't read the shojo/josei thing, that's totally on me. While some shojo does bleed a bit into josei, it remains very easy for me personally to tell the difference, and that difference is why I find myself enjoying josei a lot more than shojo so nothing I said or will say applies to josei. Most of my issues came from Red River which I bought and binged in 2 days or so, and it was a painful manga to get through, the story could have concluded in two chapters but NOOO, instead it becomes a repetitive mess with horrible villains, horrible character development, and extremely generic. the characters are absolutely PATHETIC and the entire story and conflict is a bunch of nonsense that left me offended, and every single attempt at trying to do something interesting ended up making it more of a joke and I dont want to get into this much but wtf is up with the romanticizing of rape in this piece of shit of a story? Anyways, I can keep going on and on about the others and believe me you dont want that, but my initial comment was just my experience getting into the more popular shojo out there which I think is a fair point to make since the OP is going into their first shojo as well. Also, you keep going on and on about Nana AND I HAVE NO ISSUES WITH IT, I told you that it's good, just not my thing. truthfully I dont understand what points you are trying to make, the manga that I mentioned in my first comment all have those problems, Please Save My Earth has incredibly uncomfortable views on sexual abuse that's fn awful, Red river is full of stupid decisions, that are pulled straight out of the ass of the author just to keep the story going, etc... I am not referring to all shojo, I haven't read all shojo, I do see how my opening line in my first comment with them hating it or loving it is a problem and I wont edit it out cuz its there already but I dont mean that all shojo is bad. I didnt go into details about the shojo that I do love, I absolutely love Hagio, Keiko Nishi has grown to be one of my fav female mangaka across all genres and there's more. I hope that clears up my stand on shojo, I do apologize for "Expect to either love it or hate it. No in-between." as I don't think that's true and not sure why I wrote it but everything else still stands.