Posted in: Anime, TV | Tagged: anime, Fruits Basket, funimation, manga, natsuki takaya, shoujo, streaming
Fruits Basket Anime to Get 3rd and Final Season in 2021
Funimation announced today that TV Tokyo has confirmed the third and final season of the Fruits Basket anime series will premiere in 2021. The hit series just completed its second season on streaming services Funimation and Crunchyroll. Funimation also produces the English dub of the show and will continue to do so for its third season.
Fruits Basket is about Tohru Honda, a teenage orphan girl who meets Yuki, Kyo, and Shigure Soma, and learns that twelve members of the Soma family are possessed by the animals of the Chinese zodiac. They are cursed to turn into their animal forms when they are weak, anxious, or when they are hugged by anyone of the opposite sex that is a normal person. The latter is a recurring source of comedy throughout the series. As the series progresses, Tohru learns of the hardships and pain faced by the Somas heals their emotional and psychic wounds through empathy and love. Tohru also learns more about herself and how to be loved.
The original shoujo ("young girls") manga by Natsuki Takaya ran from 1998 to 2006. Its 136-chapter run was collected into 23 takubon paperbacks, and its original English translation by Tokyo Pop established it as one of the most popular shoujo manga series in the West as well. Yen Press currently publishes a new translation of the manga and collects it into thicker omnibus editions. It was so popular it spawned two spinoff manga, Fruits Basket Another and Fruits Basket: the Three Musketeers Arc.
The manga was initially adapted into a 26-episode anime television series in 2001 by Studio Deen and directed by Akitaro Daichi. The current anime series adaptation, produced by TMS Entertainment and directed by Yoshihide Ibata, premiered in April 2019. Its first season aired for 25 episodes from April to September 2019, a second season aired from April to September 2020. The rebooted anime series is a co-production of Funimation, who released the series through the Crunchyroll-Funimation partnership.
The third season will air in 2021. Its premiere date will be announced closer to the time.