RoboFlonne wrote:Fruit Baskets?
Fruits Basket, actually. In the first manga volume, mangaka Natsuki Takaya explains that when Honda Tohru was first in school, at recess the kids would play a game by this name. The rules are:
Sit in a circle.
Decide who will be "it."
Give each person the name of a fruit.
When your fruit's name is called, change seats.
Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that: as I understand it, it's based on the game we know as "Musical Chairs," except that the "fruits" all have seats. "It" tries to remember which fruit is which, and calls out the name of a person who then has to jump up and run around the circle of chairs. If "It" gets to the seat first, then the "fruit" becomes "It" and the former "It" takes over the name of that fruit.
A similar American game complex is called "Duck Duck Goose," or "I wrote a letter," after the traditional rhyme chanted during the song:
A tisket, a tasket,
A green and yellow basket,
I wrote a letter to my mother,
on the way I dropped it...
The person in front of whom it's dropped (usually as a handkerchief or rag) has to jump up and try to tag "It" with it before s/he can get around the circle of chairs and claim the now-emptied seat.
The Japanese name of the game becomes significant in the manga/anime because Tohru recalls that the other kids, as a cruel prank, would let her join the game, but would name her "onigiri" (rice ball). As this is not a fruit, her name would never be called, and so the game would go on merrily around and about her but she would not be allowed to participate in it. (Manga v. 1, pp. 179-181) "There would never be room for an onigiri in a fruits basket," Tohru bitterly concludes.
Hence the intensely dark anomie theme of the series: all of the characters in some way are part of society but, for some hidden reason, not allowed to participate in it fully (as in the curse that prevents the Sohmas from embracing persons of the opposite sex).
That one is
definitely on the exam!
Interesting series though. I had no clue what it was about!
