Fruits Basket ch.88

February 7, 2004 | 18 Comments

Well, this is one thick chapter. Basically we know get to see the Cinderella school play after the wacky hijinks of last chapter's rehearsal. As mentioned last week, due to the clash between the personality of the players and the personality of the characters that they play, the play committee decided to change the script of the school play. In doing so, they have created one hell of a weird but unbelievably funny version of 'Cinderella'.

The chapter starts by showing Hiro and Kisa arriving at Tohru, Yuki, and Kyou's high school to watch everyone's performance. Upon entering the school, Kisa is immediately impressed by the decorations and the festive mood of the school. Her sweetness also attracts the attention of the young boys of the school, which never the less, pisses off Hiro. Hiro becomes even more annoyed when Hatsuharu appears all of a sudden and lifts Kisa up to sit on one of his hands while Momiji runs towards them carrying a digital video camera. Before he can unleashed his anger, however, he's spooked out by a strange aura from his back which turns out to be emmanating from Megumi, Hanajima's little brother, who has also arrived with a video camera to tape the performance of his older sister.

Anyway, the play then starts out similarly like any version of Cinderella you've ever heard of with Cinderella and the family getting an invitation to attend the ball. However, soon the effect of the script rewriting can be seen where every single character in the play ends up showing their own personality. Although when it comes to the Stepmother role, Minami Kinoshita (one of Prince Yuki's fanclub girls), seems to fit the bill since she is as nasty as the stepmother in her day to day life. The play then proceeds by showing Yuki as the Fairy Godmother, except that since Yuki doesn't like to dress up in a woman's costume, his costume ends up looking like a priest robe than a Fairy Godmother costume. The Fairy Priest/Godmother ends up giving 'Cinderella' (Hanajima) two beautiful dresses.

Upon seeing the dresses, the step sister (Tohru) congratulates Cinderella for making such beautiful dresses (instead of ripping it off into pieces like in the original). This earns the wrath of the stepmother who's not happy to see the stepsister being kind to Cinderella. Meanwhile, elsewhere in his castle, the Prince choose to sulk because he's unhappy about the entire thing. I guess they have rewrote the role to suit Kyou's personality after all. After some prodding by his butler, however, Prince Kyon is finally forced to greet the ball attendants, which includes Cinderella herself who is now dressed entirely in black. Upon arriving at the ball, Cinderella immediately falls head over heel for the....Yakiniku stall that is provided at the ball. Let me just say that this is the first time I see a food-obsessed Cinderella.

Prince Kyon asks Cinderella to dance with him but Cinderella seems to prefer the company of the Yakiniku grill, much to the relief of the Prince himself. Then the story proceeds to where Cinderella is supposed to leave because it's near midnight. But before she left, she gives the Prince one of her shoe as well as the chopstick that she used to cook the meat in the Yakiniku grill. Soon the search for the girl which 'annoys' the Prince begins and one by one every girl in the country try the shoe. The Prince and his butler finally arrives at Cinderella and her step family house. Just as the stepsiter is trying the shoe, Cinderella appears and asks the Prince to give her shoe back. She then proceeds to asks the Prince if she's there to propose to her stepsister. This causes Kyou to forget his role and immediately blushed and act out of character and tells her that's not it. Cinderella then asks the Prince if he then wants to marry Cinderella herself, an idea which doesn't thrill Cinderella.

The Prince, or rather Kyou who's now acting out of character replied that he doesn't want that either. Cinderella asks if he'll be alone in his castle until he die instead and when Kyou doesn't seem to mind on the idea, comments on how sad it is that the Prince has such a defeatist view of life. Kyou gets even more out of character by saying that there's nothing he can do about it. This somehow provokes Tohru to be out of character and said something about how because of that, she's....but before she can complete her sentence she realised how out of character she is and how she has inadvertently let out her true feeling. Kyou, upon hearing what Tohru said ends up blushing and wonders what she meant by that. Yuki or rather the Fairy Priest then appears to ask Cinderella what her true wish is. It turns out Cinderella just wants to become the manager of a Yakiniku shop. Then out of the left field, the Fairy Priest tells the Prince to achieve his wish with his own strength. The play ends with the audiences crying about how wise the Fairy Priest is and every cast members are relieved that the play finally ends.

© memento 2003