It was as wonderful and heart-warming as the anime series but instead of that recap it'd have been much better if the content was entirely new. Overall this was great and a definite watch if you've watched the series.

As an overly exaggerated and contrived addition to the main series, Fruits Basket: Prelude proves that some things are just better left in the past. It’s still the Fruits Basket we know and love, just at its absolute worst and buried beneath a lack of clear focus, and some frankly questionable choices. The first third of the runtime is wasted on a recap that adds nothing to the events of the final season, leaving just under an hour left for the actual story at hand – a choice that leaves the production no other option than to utilize exposition to a detrimental extent, leaving less time to explore the relationship moments that one would expect and making developments feel much more procedural than organic. The recap is way too lengthy and straightforward making it extremely redundant for return viewers, whereas viewers new to the franchise are just getting thrown headfirst into the middle of narrative and would likely be left with more questions than would have been answered. The story that comes after is still quite an emotional affair, but the rushed nature of it makes it all feel very over the top, to the point it almost ends up being comical at certain stages. Production wise, it’s incredibly close to the main series, and probably the strongest point of this movie, as it does emulate a good atmosphere despite the narrative issues surrounding it. However, one of the more glaring issues is the choice to not retcon some of the more questionable aspects of Kyoko and Katsuya’s relationship. While the choice to stay true to the original material, no matter how dated, is commendable, the head-first approach that doesn’t even attempt to tiptoe around the more problematic elements is something I found difficult to come to terms with. It was hard to get that bad taste out of my mouth no matter how sweetly the production tried to paint it. At least young Tohru was cute, and the small epilogue we got for her & Kyo was quite nice. However, these alone are not enough to balance out the exaggerated soap opera elements leaving the movie as a mere fractured reflection of the emotional magic that made the main series so good.

I absolutely ADORE Fruits Basket. It’s my favorite series ever. The age gap in this movie really bothered me. Teacher x Student. Was super weird.. other than that I did enjoy it, but I do wish we would had gotten more content from our main cast. I some mixed feelings on this. My favorite part was at the end of the movie when we saw some new Tohru and Kyo content. First 30 minutes was a recap of the series. I did enjoy it since I’m a huge fan of the series, but I was very confused as to why we were getting a recap 😂 :woman_shrugging:

The first half was a recap of the series. The second half a relatively uninspiring family story. Quite useless, but might need to be reevaluated according to the actual series.