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.

Lori (Manga Xanadu) Henderson looks at the first four volumes of Fruits Basket. Her verdict?

Fruits Basket is slow to build up, but once you get past them whole “OMG! They turn into animals!” and the “Which zodiac animal will Tohru meet this time?” parts of the story, it really start to have something to say.  The themes of being alone and finding a place to fit in and call home are ones that strike a chord with teens, which is probably one of the reasons it sold so well. This is another series that the MMF has convinced me I want to read, but since it’s OOP, that going to be kind of hard. Wouldn’t it be nice if another company could rescue it and make it available in Omnibuses (3 not 2 volumes) or better yet, digitally?

Oh, man, whoever scores the digital distribution rights to Fruits Basket won’t even need to print money.

Zoe (Manga Kaleidoscope) Alexander takes a good long look at one of her favorite series of all time:

I’m not even going to try to come across as unbiased during this review, because I’m not. I’m totally, completely 100% biased, and I make no apologies for that, because Fruits Basket is just that awesome.

Much as I enjoy a spectrum of opinion on a given work, I fully endorse this sentiment.

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.

Melinda Beasi and Michelle Smith devote this week’s Off the Shelf column to Fruits Basket, much to my delight:

MELINDA: I think it is pretty early on that the wacky transformations disappear, and by the time we’re getting around to discovering things like Kyo’s true form, if they’d still been happening I think they would have seriously damaged the story. Though some of the later, softer transformations are favorite moments for me. Pretty much every time Momiji hugs Tohru, it’s the sweetest thing in the world (even when it’s very sad), and Tohru’s reaction to Hatori’s transformation will always be hilarious and charming.

MICHELLE: Momiji’s hugs are indeed both adorable and heartbreaking. He just wants to hug her so bad, he doesn’t even care what will happen as a result. I think, though, that I probably prefer older Momiji, whose method of choice for breaking hearts is his sad smile.

CRYING BUNNY! CRYING BUNNY! Must… maintain… composure…

Michelle and Melinda also use 3 Things Thursday to contemplate their favorite Fruits Basket characters. I support all of their choices, but I’m increasingly suspicious that Melinda and I were possibly separated at birth.

Going solo, Michelle reviews the final three volumes of the series at Soliloquy in Blue.

Sean Gaffney gives Fruits Basket fan extraordinaire Ysabet MacFarlane the keys to A Case Suitable for Treatment so she can ponder the relationship between Rin and Hiro:

As a reader, what I look for in a series is great characters, and Fruits Basket has them in spades. I’m generally happy to talk about any of them, including the few I dislike, but when I’m starting a conversation it almost always starts or ends with Rin, and usually has a lot to do with her relationship with one of the other characters.

Over at Manga Therapy, Tony Yao looks at Rin from another angle:

The fact that Rin was able to go through so much physical & emotional abuse from her parents (who faked their happiness around her when she was a child) & Akito and still comes out with a lot of determination says a lot about her.

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.

At Comic Attack, Kristin Bomba delivers a thoughtful look at the roles of Tohru Honda and Akito Sohma for the Fruits Basket Manga Moveable Feast:

I decided, rather than go all fangirl all over the place (which I could do, trust me, for HOURS), that I would take a more serious approach to the series. One of the things that really fascinated me about Fruits Basket was the relationship between Akito and Tohru, separately and together (meaning their literal relationship with each other, and how they otherwise affect each other throughout the story). While Tohru is very easy to read, Akito is a bit more complicated to understand.

Tons of ink has been spilled on compare-and-contrast between a certain boy wizard and another who apparently must not be named, and I think there’s a similar dynamic to be examined between Tohru and Akito, so thanks to Kristin for digging into that territory!

And thanks to everyone who’s thrown some links this way, like Johanna Draper Carlson of Manga Worth Reading, who has already contributed quite a bit to critical discourse on the subject of Fruits Basket.

Feel free to send me your own links via email to DavidPWelsh at Yahoo dot Com, or post them in the comments here. And thanks for reading!