Tons of great reading today! And it’s not even over! (That’s my way of saying I’ll do one more round-up tomorrow.)
First of all, Laura (Heart of Manga) Mucciarone takes a particularly apt approach to character examination:
Along with the character analyses I’ve seen other bloggers post, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at how the characters align with their equivalent zodiac personalities. I did some research to find information on Chinese astrology and over-arching personality traits that are supposedly observable in anyone born within a particular year of the zodiac. I thought I’d post them here and let you see if you agree with them matching Takaya’s characters.
Adam (Completely Futile) Stephanides has some questions about Tohru’s idealized mother, Kyoko:
There’s one discordant element from the start, though: Tohru’s constant self-denigration. Even as she’s unselfishly helping everyone, she feels guilty for not being unselfish enough. My favorite example is the time when, after visiting Rin (who doesn’t even like her) in the hospital, she condemns herself for having forgotten for a moment about her goal of lifting the curse. If Kyoko was so wonderful, why was Tohru so bent on punishing herself?
Sometimes, it takes a village to address a book. That’s the approach the citizens of Manga Village took with their roundtable:
Connie: Too many! Way too many! I hate hate hate series with a huge cast of characters like this, especially characters that are introduced to fulfill a role (in this case, because there needs to be 14 Sohma family members) and then don’t figure into the story at all later. Ritsuka is the best example in this series, but that was the worst case scenario. Takaya does do a good job of juggling all the other characters, but the side effect is that the main story seems to drag on forever.
Melinda Beasi and Michelle Smith take another bite at the apple with their latest Let’s Get Visual discussion:
MICHELLE: So, we’ve been talking about Fruits Basket all week, but I’m certainly not yet weary of the topic. How about you, Melinda?
MELINDA: I suspect I could discuss Fruits Basket for weeks on end!
I could certainly read their discussions of the series for weeks on end. So it’s nice that Melinda looks back on Michelle’s examination of Takaya’s Twinkle Stars.
Again, thanks to everyone who’s linked to or tweeted about this iteration of the Manga Moveable Feast! If you’ve got a link you’d like to share, email me at DavidPWelsh at Yahoo dot Com or post a link in the comments.