

フルーツバスケット -prelude-
Despite Kyouko Honda's tragic death, her vivid memory lives on, providing guidance through times of hardship to her close ones. However, Kyouko was not always the wise and radiant person that she is fondly remembered as in the present day. Feeling deserted by her own family and rejected by society, a young Kyouko abandons stability for a life of delinquency, jeopardizing her education and future. Fortunately, her descent into despair is interrupted by a fateful encounter with her husband-to-be Katsuya, who has recently started his teaching internship at her school. With a composure surprisingly unaffected by Kyouko's tantrums, Katsuya quickly wins her over through his gentleness and attention toward her—sincere gestures that she has never received before. As the two grow closer together, Kyouko opens her tormented heart to him and, along with it, a door to new horizons. [Written by MAL Rewrite]
Despite Kyouko Honda's tragic death, her vivid memory lives on, providing guidance through times of hardship to her close ones. However, Kyouko was not always the wise and radiant person that she is fondly remembered as in the present day. Feeling deserted by her own family and rejected by society, a young Kyouko abandons stability for a life of delinquency, jeopardizing her education and future. Fortunately, her descent into despair is interrupted by a fateful encounter with her husband-to-be Katsuya, who has recently started his teaching internship at her school. With a composure surprisingly unaffected by Kyouko's tantrums, Katsuya quickly wins her over through his gentleness and attention toward her—sincere gestures that she has never received before. As the two grow closer together, Kyouko opens her tormented heart to him and, along with it, a door to new horizons. [Written by MAL Rewrite]
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KanpaiGuren
March 20, 2022
Saw this film in the cinema a few days ago. Seeing as there's no reviews yet, I would like to leave a quick review. The first half of the film is a recap of major Tohru and Kyo moments throughout the 3 seasons of the anime. While I love these moments, I didn't feel as much emotions due to the rapid fire recap format. Overall, it was okay and I can understand why they felt the need to add it since without it the film would definitely be less than an hour long. The second half of the film is where the real film starts. Tohru's parents'backstory was beautiful and tragic. It was on par with the best flashbacks in the 3 seasons of the anime. Tohru's dad was such a cool dude and I loved seeing how Tohru's mom became a better person and great mother through her experiences with him. The animation, while nothing groundbreaking, was good like the TV series. The amazing OSTs from the show make a return and brilliantly bring out the emotions of each scene as always. In conclusion, it was worth watching in the cinema because of the second half of the film. I would strongly advise you to have a box of tissues nearby when watching as there are plenty of tear-jerking moments throughout the film. Overall, I would give this film an 8.5, which is the same score I gave for Season 1. Season 2 is a 9 while the final season is a 10 for me. Thanks for reading!
Supporting
eff-fume
May 17, 2022
Considering the excessive amount of love Furuba as a franchise has been receiving, it would almost make me think most people haven’t watched an actual great piece of fiction and especially not one that handles abuse. Which would be a wrong assumption to make, considering HxH and Sangatsu are also in the Top 100 which make a way better case for themselves. To forefront, my feelings towards the franchise have developed negatively. I think it doesn’t present abuse in any nuanced ways, and even goes out of its way to forgive abuse without an attempt of amends from the abuser’s side. Not just only that,but the many couples in the franchise are cursed with a ridiculous age gap, imbalance of power dynamic, or both at the same time but since all the characters are so 2-dimensional, a normal viewer doesn’t seem to be inherently bothered by these issues. This movie is not an exception of that. Aside from 1/3rd of the “film” being just recap of Kyo’s and Tohru’s relationship, the rest is about a middle school girl that has been ostracized from her family as she entered a rebellious gangster phase and persuades a romance with a way older man. It cannot be concluded from the film itself if she was ostracized because she became a gangster or she already was and therefore became a gangster and therefore the ostracization intensified. Either way, she meets Katsuya, 21 years old at the time, as her “teacher” – meaning imbalance of power – and then he grooms her into a relationship. The actual romance between Katsuya and Kyoko isn’t showcasing any abuse, it does actually look healthy as far as it is shown. The characters in Furuba aren’t really that deeply written so we stay at a comfortable sea level. However, that doesn’t mean grooming didn’t occur. If you do some basic math, you can determine that they married when Kyoko was around 15 years old and birthed Tohru when she was around 18. I have my reservations about this. Child brides, huge age gap… We love to see those. It is fairly common in real life for adult men to “rescue” young girls from their toxic households into a “better” life to then later become very controlling abusers themselves. Usually, those men are way older and are making use of their assets like money and housing to keep the relationship in control. And since the original support system of the girl (family) is out of the picture because they are awful people and will not try to reach out and help her, they can do whatever they want. The same pattern occurs here, the difference being Katsuya never becomes a control freak or abuser and is “hot”. This is a very common trope in shoujo unfortunately and showcases the way toxic masculinity is rooted deeply in our society. Adult women will write stories about older men saving way younger girls and gifting them unconditional love. I assume it is the desire for a man that has assets and is accomplished loving you for the way you are, no matter how miserable, completely ignoring the youth, power and innocence aspect he gains from such a kind of relationship. Wish real life was this way, but it isn’t most of the time. It is a really questionable choice for a story, especially considering how often it happened in this franchise. And that is my main concern with this story. They kinda live together, it is happy go lucky, Kyoko has no other emotional support system besides Katsuya until Tohru is born, more or less. Eventually Katsuya dies from a basic cold (that was odd) and Kyoko has an intense mental breakdown. I have to admit that these scenes were rather enjoyable and got to my most basic emotional vulnerabilities. The voice actress also did a decent job delivering the emotions here. She eventually releases herself from her slump because she has Tohru to take care of, and then the film ends with her death again looping back to Kyo and Tohru being happy again. Kyoko’s wish was for someone to make Tohru happy, so she got this, I guess. Overall, the film is mostly filler and presents a one-dimensional romance with heavy problematic undertones. It is audiovisually completely unimpressive and the music, just like in the TV show, is way too loud too many times. Characters were very depthless especially Kyoko’s parent household. I did enjoy the more emotionally heavy scenes. I didn’t hate my time with it necessarily, but it was disappointing just like the rest of the franchise. And we as a society really need to let go of these toxic aspects that have been ingrained in all our souls since birth.
bagwsp
July 7, 2022
I have to deduct several points on behalf of whomever shoved 33 minutes of footage from the 3 seasons into a poorly edited and haphazard mess. I feel sorry for everyone who's been baited into buying a movie ticket for this, when in reality it's a decent OVA with a bunch of rehashed footage in the front to make the runtime movie length. Given this is titled "Prelude" I find it very dangerous for people who decided to start this story here. There's massive spoilers to the main story without warning in the recap, and it entirely expects you to know so much context before seeingit. This is a poor excuse for a cash grab, even by Japanese Marketing standards. This is a shame too, as the OVA is actually a nice story once you finally get to it.
sonu711
April 7, 2022
TLDR; 10/10 movie must watch after the series! I really loved the movie, it was great as expected. This movie's first 25 minutes contained recap which was placed at really good place, it showed how Kyou and tooru slowly got together and also helped me because I watched the final almost almost 9 months ago and didn't remember that much. The next part was about Kyouko and katsuya's story. Kyouko's story was saddening from the beginning, I really loved her character because she was so relatable. Kyouko was introduced as a hot-blooded person but that wasn't everything, when Katsuya was introduced he saw heractual nature when she saw her crying, she just needed people to love her back but she wasn't given that. Katsuya and Kyouko had a relationship which made me very happy. Both supporting each other, Kyouko slowly developing as a normal person as time went and her going through multiple emotions throughout the movie all were so good! A small part of Kyoru also made me smile and the kiss was also very cute XD. This movie always stuck to it's theme which i liked very much and the pacing of movie was also very good (except that it was very small) I also liked how many of the scenes were shown again but in a different time, especially Tooru getting hit by the table and getting a nosebleed. This movie had multiple stages of showing different kind of emotions at different times, it made me cry, it made me laugh and gave me some emotions that I cannot express. Small tooru was also very cute, wish I could get more of her! An extra thing I liked that Tooru's name was given by her father Katsuya, "when salt is added to sweet things, it gives it even a better taste, he wanted tooru to grow up a person like that" -Kyouko Honda Music and art was also great too. I watched this movie raw so maybe I'll watch it again sometime in not so far future. an 10/10 overall
zeroslut
June 28, 2022
TBH. It sucked. Personally, I don't like pedophilia, age gap too big, stop normalizing and romanticizing it. She was 14 going on 15, and he was 22. Could've been more comfortable with maybe an 18 year old and a 22 year old but still the teacher-student love groom trop was weird and I don't fuck with it. After 30 minutes of recap, the movie was maybe 40 minutes long and the same boring trope you see in like every romance. They rapid fired all of the scenes, could have added more intricacy and development into the plot. Very surface level character trope, with Kyoko beingthe brooding, lonely, sad adolescent, and her teacher is the only one who empathizes. Went no deeper, they definitely could of. So much opportunity they did nothing with. It was supposed to be a prequel, but so much of it was recap and present events that it didn't feel like so. Wasn't worth the time and money, wish I got more of the movie and more plot.
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