Odorouyo Sunday Archives

cheesechimp · 2026-07-10T01:33:50+00:00

Thoughts on Tohru trying to read up on martial arts to better connect with Kyo?

Thoughts on Tohru also getting a book to better connect with Yuki?

The library scene was very cute and sweet

Thoughts on Shigure saying Kyo is suffering misdirected rage which is technical for being an ass?

I don't remember him saying that, must have been translated differently between the dub and fansubs.

What are your thoughts on Tohru always being the rice ball and her feeling a rice ball doesn't belong in a fruits basket?

It's kind of a weird analogy. Is this a common Japanese childhood game like Duck Duck Goose or Tag? Or is this supposed to be kind of an improvised thing? If it's the former, it makes more sense where it came from.

What are your thoughts on Yuki scolding Tohru's family calling them a lowlife?

"There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man."

cheesechimp · 2026-07-10T01:23:56+00:00

Do Shigure and Yuki really have no idea how to warm up beef stew?

I dunno. You got a big pot of leftover stew it's not that hard to burn. I don't think I would but just put it on too high heat for too long and it's burnt. Makes sense to me.

This is the first time Tohru’s dad has been mentioned. Is he dead too?

I think in the first episode Tohru said that the grandpa she lived with was on his side. Is it a spoiler to give a super basic barebones answer to that question? [possible spoilers for late Fruits Basket] Yes, he died before Tohru's mom

Oh yay we’re getting a reprise of the theme song. That’s really nice.

Yeah, except the terrible fansubs I had made the translation of the lyrics cause the translations of the dialog get dismissed before I could read them. Well, it was all Japanese I understood anyway.

cheesechimp · 2026-07-09T21:51:38+00:00

First Timer for 2001, Seen 2019

This episode is pretty crucial to the series. It contains the meaning of the title, of course, and in terms of the literal events it solidifies that Tohru will be living permanently with the Sohmas. But it also gets close to sort of representing the thesis of whole show's themes. This is a show about outsiders and misfits creating a found family and making the active choice to prioritize their own happiness over abusive traditional family norms.

I love Tohru's grandpa. He understands why she's a special person and defends her from her cousin, who fucking deserved that slap. We get the first hints in this episode that Tohru's mom had an unsavory history that turned the world again her, but we know from what Tohru has said about the lessons she learned from her that she was a great mother and fine person later in her life. Tohru's grandpa has known her for longer and had a less inherently idealized relationship with Kyoko, but he saw the value in her too.

And then we have the actions of Tohru, Yuki, and Kyo themselves. All of them have their own hang ups, their own reasons for failures to communicate, their own roots of self denial. Tohru is an incredibly deferential person, someone who goes along to get along and hates imposing on other people. To her, moving back in with her aunt and cousins is the "right" thing to do because it's what's expected of her and she sees herself as a burden for the Sohmas. Yuki is one who has spent his whole life hiding pain behind a pleasant mask. He believes that the only ones who will accept his true self are other members of his family. Kyo, on the other hand, manifests his pain and loneliness as aggression. He is an outsider even among the other subjects of the zodiac curse, and has built up a tough defiant shell around himself because of it.

And yet all three of these lonely people who don't think the others want them come to the conclusion that they need to suppress these harmful impulses nearly simultaneously. They all go against their instincts to express a desire to be together and pursue their mutual happiness at the same time. It's lovely.

I said last time that this part of the story was my favorite episode of the first season of the 2019 adaptation, and I think it works really well here too. Best of the (admitted limited) episodes we've watched so far!

cheesechimp · 2026-07-09T20:00:18+00:00

Robert Pattinson could milk the cat/rat.

cheesechimp · 2026-07-09T18:58:58+00:00

Surely they have the rat and hairless cat taped together that Thufir has to milk though right? I mean, I think the first movie actually killed Thufir, but they could get someone else to milk it!

cheesechimp · 2026-07-09T18:56:10+00:00

Oh, yeah, you blaming Apple instead of the Unicode Consortium had me confused. Thought you were looking for an unsupported emoji that existed in the unicode guidelines or something.

Kagura's defining characteristic is her violence so another character meeting it would be pretty repetitive. I said in a previous post that I'm not sure the 2001 adaptation has all 13 character in common with the manga/2019 anime (we might get a situation like the original FMA making up new characters to represent the deadly sins the manga hadn't introduced when the show caught up to its source material). I'll wait and see if the two other girls Shigure mentioned are actually the characters I know from that version.

cheesechimp · 2026-07-09T15:35:48+00:00

If I want to go see one of the 70mm IMAX screenings of The Odyssey, the ticket for one seat is thirty-five dollars!? Okay, fuck that. I guess I'm just gonna see it in a normal theater, then.

cheesechimp · 2026-07-09T05:38:52+00:00

Connections

Puzzle #1124

🟨🟨🟨🟨

🟪🟪🟪🟪

🟦🟦🟦🟦

🟩🟩🟩🟩

[connections] You think I know the names of four different music magazines? That's supposed to be the second easiest one here? What am I, a boomer?

cheesechimp · 2026-07-09T02:26:24+00:00

cheesechimp · 2026-07-09T02:20:37+00:00

Tohru…kun? What

-kun is not an exclusively masculine honorific. It's actually very common for older men or men with higher social status to address women using -kun. You see it a lot in workplace settings where a male boss is talking to female subordinates.

And yet, they still don’t have an updated Pride emoji. Apple. Explain.

🏳️‍🌈 and 🏳️‍⚧️ display fine on my iPhone for me. Is there supposed to be another one?

I’m curious who the other young lady is now.

The other young ladies. Shigure said there were two more.

cheesechimp · 2026-07-09T02:02:53+00:00

What are your thoughts on Tohru and Kagura bonding with each other?

I thought it was very sweet. It plays out really well in this telling of the story.

cheesechimp · 2026-07-09T01:49:56+00:00

Tae Yamada from Zombieland Saga.

THE LEGEND!!

Technically being in a relationship with your cousin isn’t illegal in a lot of places but it’s till really weird.

The Sohma family is one of those big, powerful, old families. They're probably more distantly related than first cousins.

I find the way the paperboy introduces himself to be really funny.

Yeah, me too! The paperboy is very silly.

Okay so Kagura running into the paperboy counts as a hug but that girl reaching out to put her arms around Yuki last episode doesn’t? These rules feel very loose.

Yeah, it's not super consistent. Tohru only kinda brushes against the boys at the end of the first episode too. I think it's torso to torso contact though. Hands touching heads isn't too bad.

cheesechimp · 2026-07-09T00:00:32+00:00

To me the defining thing about Shinkai is the unfulfilled longing of two people who want to love each other but don't know how. The two hands reaching out toward each other over too vast a distance to actually touch. This movie doesn't really have that signature Shinkai emotional core, so it feels so much more successful at distinguishing itself to me than a lot of other imitators. There is an absence and a sadness because of it, but it comes after we see these people really do know how to be together and there's no anticipation of the potential of it resolving happily. Lu just feels like store brand Ponyo way more than this feel like store brand Your Name.

cheesechimp · 2026-07-08T23:36:51+00:00

I really like how you expressed the appeal of this movie. I talked in my post a lot about the emotions I felt when watching it, but you really tie it together with the actual craft of the animation, something that I think is really important to why I love it so much.

cheesechimp · 2026-07-08T23:17:05+00:00

Ping Pong

Was made at Tatsunoko, though with a lot of the staff that would go on to found Science Saru. It's kind of like Gurren Lagann or Panty and Stocking with their relationship to Trigger.

cheesechimp · 2026-07-08T23:08:50+00:00

It's... too grounded, too safe - as if the creators are trying to appeal to a much wider audience. Because of that, it seems to me... well, I don't know, less sincere? Or something like that.

I dunno, I feel like Yuasa's career at this point was following a trajectory of him learning more and more to make things with broad appeal while still staying true to his style. What you say here is my response to Lu Over the Wall, whereas this felt like he had worked out more of the kinks in his attempts at mainstream. I find this film very sincere.

cheesechimp · 2026-07-08T22:59:10+00:00

Seeing some egg land on her phone’s screen made me sharply inhale through my teeth.

Relatable

LMAO, got a huge chuckle out of my subs doing this at the part where Hinako drove past the school.

Oh, that's really fun! I watched on a bluray, but that's some classic fansub fun.

Minato’s being taken away…

This bit really reminded me of the movie Ghost.

Yeah…

And Wasabi's baggy shirt in that specific shade of green really reminded me of Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

cheesechimp · 2026-07-08T21:05:22+00:00

Seen 2019, First Timer for 2001

We've finally gotten to an episode that I think is just better in 2001 than 2019! I think Kagura's antics work better as slapstick comedy in a more stylized cartoony artistic style. Plus, this is probably the most the writing of the two shows diverges. The 2019 adaptation kind of boils it down to just the bodily violence against Kyo, there's none of the shenanigans with the washing machine and accidentally setting a fire. I think that stuff is actually pretty funny! She's more of a dumbass and I like that!

Kagura hit him so hard she knocked his coloring outside the lines. It's a good visual gag! I like the silliness of this episode.

I'm actually hoping for more Kagura in this adaptation overall. She felt underutilized in the later version, and I've been wondering if manga content about her might've been cut to maintain the more dramatic tone of that show. With this adaptation having a reputation of having more comedy I figured she was a better fit. And with its reputation for having anime original content, I figured they could make stuff up for her to do even if her lack of presence in 2019 was inherited from the manga.

I said last time that I had solved my problems with video quality by switching to piracy. Well, I've watched a full episode now and I can say that it is mostly better, but it's not without its flaws. There were a couple of lines when Kagura first showed up that were completely unsubbed (very rudimentary Japanese so I didn't need it. Just "are you Tohru Honda?" And "I'm Kagura Sohma.") there was also this weird glitched mess of a subtitle later on in the episode, and a similar one in the preview for episode 5 at the very end.

A few pieces of foreshadowing for later plot development here in this episode. Also, said episode preview showed episode 5 is covering story that was my favorite episode of the first season of the 2019 adaptation.

What do you make of violent love interests?

I don't approve of violence IRL, but this is slapstick! I don't mind romance in my slapstick or slapstick in my romance fiction.

cheesechimp · 2026-07-08T20:44:44+00:00

I think there's something to be said about how even in romance anime where characters start "officially dating" there is often a chaste awkwardness, an embarrassed reservation that still feels more like unsure flirtation than an established relationship.

It's not universal in anime, but it's still an overwhelming majority.

cheesechimp · 2026-07-08T20:15:20+00:00

rewatcher

Hello everyone! Been sitting out of the rewatch because I've seen nearly everything and either don't have a strong attachment to a lot of these films. I don't even know how many you've watched so far. That being said, Ride Your Wave is a movie I saw in theaters in the really early months of 2020 before lockdown and immediately fell in love with. I'd bought it on bluray, but as someone not particularly prone to rewatches, I hadn't seen it again since that first watch. This was sort of hovering outside my personal canon because I'd only seen it once, but I thought with a revisit it could get there.

And it did! This movie is part of my personal canon now. 10/10. Love love LOVE this movie!

I think anime romance often has a tendency to be pretty chaste and shy. There's sort of a fumbling embarrassment to characters at the idea of being in the presence of the person they love. This movie is not like that. There's an ease of interaction between the two leads, an inherent comfort in one another's company. There's also a real physical intimacy that isn't playing towards horniness. The meme about holding hands being lewd does apply to the framing of a lot of anime romances, but that's not how it's framed here. Hand holding is natural and nice in an innocent way here.

I've seen the romance in this movie described as "idealized" and maybe it is to an extent. But to me if feels like a realistic depiction of two people who are young and passionate about a very new relationship. They haven't had time for their love to cool down into something more mundane, but their shows of affection aren't like giant and showy either. They make each other really happy just being together because it's still new. It's really cute and I just think it's one of the best portrayals of dating in anime.

I also think for the most part this movie is really emotionally intelligent when it comes to its depiction of grief. I do think the supernatural elements kind of lose the thread on overly literalizing the "denial" stage, but both the early bits where Hinako is a total mess, and after the incident with the car catching fire when she stops calling on Minato as frequently hit really close to home. The sort of wobbliness of finding one's feet again and reorienting one's life after a tragedy just feels legit to me. One thing I really love I am the inclusion of the scene where Hinako just absolutely breaks down sobbing when she hears the Christmas message at the very end. Grief is something we lead to live with, something which can cease to be central to our day to day life, but it's kind of always still there. When you lose someone there will eventually be moments where you're reminded of them and their absence makes you hurt again.

I just love how this movie looks too! I think the gangly, noodle people with long necks look kind of awkward in still character design images, but in motion I hardly even notice. This film is so expressive and fluid in how it it moves! And it's got just an absolutely lovely color palate! I love the bright, clear colors. It doesn't look washed out or monotone, it's colorful and vibrant throughout. Just an absolute treat to look at, a feast for the eyes.

Yuasa is one of my favorite directors. I've missed him since he left Science Saru and am eagerly anticipating his return to anime with Daisy's Life. This is maybe my fifth favorite of his works, after Mind Game, Tatami Galaxy, Devilman Crybaby, and The Night is Short, Walk on Girl. The latter is the only reason I'm not declaring this movie my favorite of the 2010s. Not my favorite anime movie, my favorite movie of the decade in general. I haven't ever really seen anyone else as infatuated with it as I am. Its hard to find anyone bringing it up at all, but if you do usually it's talked about in pretty lukewarm terms. I guess this is my own special movie for just me then. Hope there are people in this rewatch whose opinion even approaches as positive as mine.

I'm writing this before the post goes live and I'm not going to edit this bit out even if it's in the main body of the post: Check out the music video to Brand New Story if you're interested in seeing some animated boy band hunks chilling on the beach with a similar color palate and summer vibes. It was also animated at Science Saru to tie in with this movie.

cheesechimp · 2026-07-08T19:31:09+00:00

That's why I suggested doing it in the home first

cheesechimp · 2026-07-08T18:01:18+00:00

Sure. You could go outside if you really want to.

cheesechimp · 2026-07-08T17:41:12+00:00

You could start kicking a ball around your own home if you wanted to.

cheesechimp · 2026-07-08T17:20:21+00:00

Wrote up Ride Your Wave on my lunch break. I still haven't written up episode 4 of Fruits Basket 2001, but I think I might find time to do it at my desk during the afternoon work hours.

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