Fruits Basket/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Canon Sue - Tohru, depending on who's watching/reading and his/her source (and sometimes, their pairing preference). More likely in the anime, since it didn't show her manga-mostly dark side composed of serious abandonment issues. Then again, at that point, she wasn't the only one...
    • She goes into Stepford Smiler territory pretty damn fast once the manga gets past the point where the anime stopped (or diverted from the manga). After that she pretty much becomes a deconstruction of a Canon Sue, and all her painful backstory and insecurities come into light, and the horribly self-destructive psychological scars get dug up and shoved down her throat. Break the Cutie oh so much. The anime on the other hand... well see below in the Fixer Sue entry.
  • Complete Monster: Ren Sohma, natch. See her entry in the anime/manga page of the tropes page for more.
  • Die for Our Ship: Oh, Tohru, and Rin too...
  • Fan Dumb: There's a good chunk of the fanbase who use to be Akito fangirls, but who now despise Akito after her actual gender is revealed. Rin also gets this from Hatsu fangirls.
  • Fixer Sue -- By and large, Tohru plays super-psychiatrist through The Power of Love, making her perhaps this more than a Purity Sue... but since the audience generally really, really wants these things fixed, most are charitable enough to give her a pass on it. After all, for all the tragic past in the story, it really does land far on the idealistic side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism.
    • Subverted ironically by the fact that Tohru's Fixer Sue nature is actually one of her major character flaws, stemming from her personality as an Extreme Doormat, which itself is probably derived by the utter disdain with which she is treated by the rest of her family (except her slightly senile grandfather) after her mother's death. As a result, Tohru's desperate need to make other people happy reaches almost pathological levels to the point that she will neglect her own health and well being for the happiness of others; a fact that becomes more poignant with her revelation as a Stepford Smiler later on in the manga.
  • Fridge Logic: Wait, a minute, Hatori is completely blind in one eye. Why is he the most competent driver?
    • Well clearly, Shigure is so horrible a driver that a man blind in one eye is better behind the wheel than he is.
      • And the other people old enough to drive would be Ayame (Hatori at one point refuses to let him drive), Ritsu (ha!), Rin (probably hasn't had time to learn), Kagura (possibly) and Akito (who gets Hatori to drive)
    • Maybe that's why he drives a foreign car.
  • Ho Yay: See here.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Shigure. He spent a very very long time manipulating and screwing people around trying to ensure that at the end of it all, he ended up with Akito. And he really wasn't nice about it. At ALL.
  • Moe: In the anime at least, Tohru. In spades.
  • Purity Sue: Arguably, Tohru. But considering how the story is, maybe it's a Justified Trope.
  • Real Women Never Wear Dresses: Some fans' reaction to Tohru.
  • Tastes Like Diabetes: Some fans find Tohru to be this, though usually more in the anime.
  • Tear Jerker: "She rejected me with her entire body. It got to the point where she couldn't even stand to look at me." Sniff, poor Momiji.
    • Also, "Maybe it's because I know that some wishes...don't come true..." Aw, Tohru...
    • Another one: Tohru's mom's backstory (in the flashback in volume 16), grieving for her husband and begging him not to leave her.
    • And, Hatori's backstory.
  • World of Woobie