| Title: | Fruits Basket |
| Episode: | 4: Here Comes Kagura! |
| Synopsis | |
| A loud stomping sound is heard outside of Shigure's house. The Sohma boys realize what the sound is and Kyo tries making a run for it, but gets halted by Shigure. Tohru goes out to the door to see who is there. She gets surprised by a girl named Kagura Sohma who is looking for Kyo. Tohru shows her where Kyo is. An emotionally charged Kagura runs up to a nervous Kyo asking where he had been for four months. As she says she missed him, Kagura punches Kyo through a paper door and beats him up in her emotional outburst. A bewildered Tohru is told about how Kagura gets too overwhelmed by her emotions to realize her actions by Yuki and Shigure. Shigure then challenges Tohru to figure out what type of animal Kagura is. After the outburst, Kagura apologizes for wrecking the door and says it was Kyo's fault for not contacting her that led to this. Kyo yells out to her why he should. Kagura replies that they are engaged. This revelation excites Tohru while an angry Kyo points out that he was threatened by Kagura into agreeing to the engagement. Kagura excitedly explains that despite Kyo not being an official zodiac member, cursed Sohma being in love is a wonderful thing since both can understand each other's pains and can hug each other without transforming which she demonstrates by hugging Kyo and Yuki. While not knowing about how the hugging is possible, Yuki and Shigure explain to Tohru that there are two other girls who are zodiac members. This excites Tohru as she wants to meet both girls. Kagura then goes on to tell Kyo she is completely devoted to him. With Kagura's emotional outburst, Kyo is at a loss over what to say. Shigure then points out Tohru's love of the cat from the legend of the zodiac. Thinking she has a rival, Kagura asks Tohru what she likes about Kyo saying she accepts everything about him, including his "true form." Hearing of this, Kyo puts his hand over her mouth to shut her up saying he won't forgive her if she says anything else. This results in him getting strangled by Kagura. While this takes place, Tohru goes off to do laundary. Thinking about Kagura's devotion to Kyo as she gets done with Yuki's laundary, Tohru is surprised with Kagura's arrival who volunteers to do Kyo's laundary. She forcibly yanks off Kyo's shirt and begins to do her laundary. Kagura also decides to prepare tea as well for Kyo. While she does all this, Yuki and Tohru are shopping as both talk about Kagura on their way back to Shigure's house. Unfortunately for Kagura, she messes up Kyo's laundary and almost sets Shigure's house on fire when trying to deal with the burning hot tea kettle. With the kitchen in bad shape, Kagura offers to take care of the damage herself. Meanwhile, Yuki, Kyo, and Tohru decide to order out bentos while Kagura continues cleaning up and Kyo is sulking on the roof of the house to keep his distance from Kagura. Later on at night, Tohru comes across Kagura trying to repair the paper doors she damaged from earlier. Tohru offers her onigiri (rice balls) and the two have a bonding moment where the two work together to fix up the paper doors. Afterward, Tohru goes up on the roof to see Kyo where they talk about his training in the mountains with his master. Kyo excitedly tells her about how his master's training was the best he had in his life by learning new things and getting stronger. The next day, another argument between Kyo and Kagura leads to Kagura running out the door in another outburst which has her transform when she falls into a newspaper deliveryman. Yuki manages to keep the deliveryman from seeing this. While Kagura is a pig, Tohru tells her how she managed to see qualities in Kyo that she liked and admired Kagura's devotion to understanding him. As Kyo, Yuki, and Tohru walk off to school after saying farewell to Kagura, Yuki comments that he never had time to check on things at his garden saying that he was growing strawberries. As Tohru tells him that she likes strawberries, she thinks to herself about wanting to better understand Yuki and Kyo's interests and dislikes. | |
| Comments | |
| With this episode, we are introduced to a new Sohma: Kagura. With her emotionally charged personality, this episode allows the viewer to become familiar with her character and learn some new facts about the Sohma curse. As a matter of fact, this won't be the only time you can see Kagura as she will pop up again later in the series. There are more Sohmas to be seen as the series progresses. In comparison to the manga, the anime did expand the plot to have it fill up length for TV airing as shown through Kagura's efforts to attract Kyo via laundary and tea as well as taking care of what she damaged. The additional scenes were actually a nice touch for this episode as they expanded on Kagura's character which helped explore the one flaw to her that wasn't addressed in the early parts of the manga: controlling her actions when getting emotional. The anime also seemed to set up a closer bond between Kagura and Tohru than what was accomplished in the manga. Aspects of this bond will be seen more in the anime when we see Kagura later on. Besides these add-ons, much of the content from the manga was left intact. There were a couple add-ons to the anime just to give more hilarity to Kagura's emotionally charged beatings on Kyo. The way in which Kyo was threatened in his engagement to Kagura was different as well. In the manga, young Kagura threatened him with a knife instead of a boulder. There was also a lost scene in the manga where Shigure comments on the complications of a cursed Sohma and a normal person being in a relationship. As he is about to discuss how this effects having sex, his chatter gets stopped by Yuki hitting him in the face with a bowl. In terms of the English dub, it was still as solid as it has been. Meredith McCoy managed to portray the emotional antics of Kagura quite well through her voice acting. Nearly all the lines in this episode had their original meanings intact for the English dub, though there's still the issue of Tohru addressing Yuki by his first name. The only major difference I noticed in this episode was when Tohru, Yuki, and Shigure got done with their bentos. The three excused themselves after eating in the original version by saying variations of "gochiousama," meaning literally "thanks for the food." This is said after one is done with their meal in a Japanese household. For the English dub though, the three merely asked each other if they were done with their meals. | |
