You Guys Need to Try This!

Do you want to hear something coo coo for cocoa puffs crazy? As we get older, we change. Yes, shocking, I know! As we meet new people, become more mature, and experience new things, our beliefs, perceptions, and preferences change too. OK, OK, I’ll admit that everything I just said is actually common knowledge… But I think that this stuff is so obvious, that it had kind of slipped my mind. That’d go some way towards explaining why my most recent brush with the Fruits Basket franchise has taken me by complete surprise… 

OK, let me start adding some context… I first watched Fruits Basket (the 2001 anime) back in 2009. I was but 14 years old at the time. Picture this: a teeny, tiny Ty still very much in the throes of puberty, hormones raging left, right, and center. It’s hard to imagine now, but, back then, I was a very angry person. Hormones most certainly had a hand to play in this, but my anger mainly stemmed from my peers, who consistently shunned me, my teachers, who constantly wrote me off, and my mum, who continually failed to create a stable, loving home thanks to her drinking problem. I never lashed out physically, but I did have a hard time controlling the words that would come out of my mouth. Does this remind you of anybody? I am, of course, referring to Kyo. As an angsty teen, I identified with him in a big way. When I saw the way he was treated by other people and his ongoing struggle to keep his temper as a result, I saw myself. It should come as no surprise, then, that, at the time, he was my favourite character. When I saw Yuki, however, I saw somebody who’d had everything handed to him on a silver platter, and I resented him for it. Again, much like Kyo… 

I know that this must come as a shock to those of you keeping up with my weekly Fruits Basket posts. I’ve been covering Furuba for 14 weeks now and many of the posts that I’ve written have focused on Yuki, singing his praises from on high. So what’s changed? Well, a decade has passed since my first brush with the franchise, so it kind of goes without saying that my life looks a lot different to how it did back then. I’m no longer in school (praise Jesus), or living at home with my mum, but I think the biggest change is what’s occurred on the inside… 

Since finding Christianity, I’ve learned to base my identity, not what on my classmates, teachers, or anybody else says about me, but on what Jesus says about me. My faith has also helped me to forgive my mum, for her past behaviour and the things that she put me through as a kid. So now, when I look at Kyo’s anger, it no longer resonates with me. Where once I kind of dug it and cheered him on for “sticking it to the man”, I’m now sort of appalled by it. Is that really how I used to be? It scares me to think about… 

As for Yuki… Because of the life experience that I’ve accrued, the many hours that I’ve spent sitting in a counselor’s office, etc. when I look at him now, it’s pretty easy to see the corners of his mask. Don’t get me wrong, his prince mask is good, but it’s still just a mask, something that he’s using to cover up his insecurity (will people still like me if I let them see the real me?) and the pain caused by the difficult relationship that he has with his mother. When I look at him now, I see somebody who’s not as different from me as I first thought. I also struggle with insecurity and I, too, have a difficult relationship with my mother… For those of you who don’t know yet, I’m actually reading the manga whilst watching the anime. I won’t spoil anything for you, but I will say that the grace and maturity with which Yuki handles his mother later on during the story is nothing short of inspirational to me! So where once I identified with and loved Kyo, I know identify with and adore Yuki! 

The point that I’m trying to make is this: it’s funny how time can so completely and utterly change the way in which you look at something. The material itself hasn’t changed, but you, yourself, have changed so much that it looks completely different from one point in time to the next! It seems like such an obvious thing that it should really go without saying, but over these last couple of months, this simple truth has utterly blown me away! I’d really recommend that you go away and try this for yourself: read or watch something that you’ve not touched in years and see how your most recent experience varies from your last. Like me, you may be surprised!