Fruits Basket

:This article is about the manga and anime series. For the game, see Fruit Basket Turnover.

About the name

The phrase "fruits basket" means simply a basket of fruit in Japan. In Japan, where arable land is in short supply and fresh food very expensive, a basket of fresh fruit is a costly and desirable item. It is written in Japanese as フルーツバスケット, fu-ru-u-tsu ba-su-ke-t-to, where the "tsu" sound means we end up with the plural S on "Fruits".

Related Topics:
Arable land - Japanese

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The series is named after the children's' game, Fruits Basket. Everyone sits in a circle, and the leader of the game names each person after a fruit; when the name of a child's fruit is called, that child gets up and swaps positions with others with the same name. When Tohru first played this game in kindergarten, she was assigned "Onigiri" (rice ball), which was fine with her, since she thinks onigiri are delicious. However, as everyone but her got called, and she was the only one left sitting, she realized that an onigiri isn't a fruit, and that she'd never be called; she was purposefully excluded from the game, just another of the mean tricks that other kids used to pull on her. She realizes that an onigiri can never belong in a Fruits Basket.

Related Topics:
Fruits Basket - Kindergarten - Onigiri

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During the course of the story, lines spoken by members of the Sohma clan are often illustrated by a SD head of the corresponding animal: for example, when Yuki speaks from off-screen a small mouse head might appear, and when Kyo snaps a reply there might be an angry cat face. Uotani and Hanajima's SD heads are based off their names and are a fish and a flower, respectively. As the series goes on, Tohru's comments are illustrated in the same way with an animated onigiri: illustrating that although Tohru might have been rejected by classmates at school, she has found a place she can belong with the Sohmas.

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