Fruits Basket: Akito

I feel like writing this one today. I don’t know if I will finish today or how long it will be. (It’s been over 2 weeks, so…) It likely won’t be as long as the one I did for Yuki, I have not done as much research/refreshing beforehand. I have plenty going on in my own life right now, including changing jobs but I feel like writing this so here it goes.

Starting out, here is a spoiler warning. I feel, especially with Akito, we need to start with a lot of information that we don’t learn until near the end. And also, again, I am a Christian. I will be coming at this with a Christian mindset and morals. This will have stuff from both the anime and manga. The anime is fresh in my mind so I will draw a lot from there. I, at the end, may also include some stuff from Fruit’s Basket Another. You have been warned.

I know that at the end of the story there are some people who still think Akito is unforgivable. There are others who swing the other way and love Akito. I hope I can come at this from somewhere in the middle. As a Christian, I am very hesitant to say that anyone is unforgivable. (Also I would not say that’s my call (and we are talking about a fictional character so…).) I want to put forward how I see the character of Akito and make them understandable, if not forgivable. But at the same time, there are consequences for our actions. For better or worse, in good and bad, for every action, there is an equal to opposite reaction. As an analytical and (I hope) companionate person I try to understand people, Akito being no exception, but the things that were done by them must be paid for. We all must face our mistakes. We can’t do terrible things, and then have a change of heart (or say we do) and expect that all will be forgiven and forgotten. Maybe in an idealistic world, but I would argue not even then. This is what you call justice. That is why even though God is a loving God, we still must be punished for wrongdoings. It's justice, and God is a just God.

Now there’s the argument of forgiveness, and in the Bible, we are commanded to forgive. But we are not told to forget. Forgiveness is as much for the forgiver as for the one being forgiven. So although it would be good for all the characters to forgive Akito, that does not mean they need to forget all that was done to them and pretend all is better. And they can take their time to forgive. It can be a struggle to forgive those who have hurt you, and so forgiveness naturally may be slow in coming. And just because you forgive someone for what they did, does not mean they should not be punished for what they did. Again, that’s justice. In this story, Akito should really be in jail. The stuff she did is worthy of that. But it’s a fictional story so we will leave it as is.

To begin covering Akito I think I need to go back to before Akito was even born. I’m not sure if the “god” zodiac member was always born into the head family, but it kind of seemed that way. And in the absence of the “god” the head of the family seemed to be treated that way. In the books I think it describes Akito’s father as a sickly, young man they knew would not live long. Now we see clearly in this story that a lot of the problems they have are the ideas and perceived notions that have been passed down over the years. As such I think Akito’s father got treated as Akito latter was. He was placed on a pedestal above everyone. But being at the top is a lonely place. All the servants treat him as special, but being “special” does not often breed inclusion. He is a lonely young man who knows he does not have long to live. He’s being punished to marry and continue the family line, but they wanted just the right women, likely looking more at heritage than if she cared about him.

Enter Ren. A beautiful young woman, but an outsider and a servant. She is beneath him as such and not worthy of him. But she sees what the others do not, he is lonely and venerable. Now Ren is a whole basket case in and of herself. I am not a psychologist or anything like that. I am only analytical and I try to understand what I see and gather. I don’t understand Ren. I’m not sure we have enough on her too, and, as they say, she is not a well woman, in body and mind, and I don’t think they were lying. There are times that Ren seems like a psychopath but other times she doesn’t seem to be a true one either. I think I have heard that psychopaths only care truly about themselves, but Ren does seem to care about Akira, Akito’s father. Now whether that’s real, made up, or she convinced herself later of it, I don’t know. (Sometimes it can be scary to try to get inside and understand the mind of someone who is “crazy” or dark and twisted if you are not trained to do so, which I am NOT!)

So Ren, with pure motives or otherwise, sees Akira’s loneliness and gets close to him. Likely in the minds of the other servants she got in bed with the boss/master and raised her status to above them overnight. She went from being an unworthy outsider to the master’s favorite and second in command. For the head servant (the old “hag”) this was a bitter pill she was not willing to swallow. So Akito is born into this world. One steeped in old twisted traditions and a power struggle between her mother and nearly everyone else.

Ren definitely is power-hungry. She has seemingly a good deal of control over Akira before Akito comes along. She was his one and only and gave him the love and the acceptance he so desperately craved. In return, he gave her power, as well as likely some sort of love she could understand and accept. By being his one and only, she was given a great deal of power. The servants hated her for not “knowing her place” and rising above them. But they could not do much since the master, they had risen above everyone, said she was special and gave her power over them. It was a stow pot waiting to bubble over. And Akito was just the thing to make that happen.

Ren lost a great deal of her power to Akito. She was no longer Akira’s one and only. And you can bet the servants pounced on the chance to raise someone over Ren. Now Ren did not seem like a person ready to be a mother. She is a very selfish person, which is why I wonder just how much of her professed love for Akira was real. Now to a certain extent she did seem to love him, she seems truly distressed at his death, but I’m guessing she loved the power he gave her more.

Now Akito is born cursed as well. She is the god spirit rather than one of the zodiac animals, but she is still very much under the curse. She is the glue that holds it together. As such she has great power but is also under great pressure. Ren likely started hating her before she was even born. From the moment she is conceived people began making a fuss. Children come crying for her, and Akira, caught up in the old traditions, loves her and raises her up. Before she is even born she is usurping Ren’s power.

Then Akito is born a girl. Now traditionally leaders are boys, so some may have taken this opportunity to look down on Ren for having a girl rather than a boy (not that she could help it.) But also as a girl, Ren is no longer the only female in Akira’s life. It comes down to being almost territorial. So what does Ren do, she uses what power she can. She takes away Akito’s identity as a girl/female. Akira is either not willing or able to stand up to Ren about this.

So Akito is raised in her early life in this twisted, power struggle world. She is caught between the struggle of her parents and (more so later) the power struggle between the staff and her mother. Children need stability. Some have claimed that you should not tell your child no, but I strongly disagree. Children need to be taught right and wrong and given a safe environment with boundaries. I believe sociology has proven this. So imagine growing up in a home where one parent loves you. You are told, not only that you are loved and meant to be loved (true and good), but that you are god and can essentially do no wrong (not good). Then on the other hand you have a parent that l hates you. You are told that your powers aren’t real, and you are delusional (gaslighting), and you are worthless. Essentially you are lower than dirt. Such an environment is the opposite of being a stable environment. It’s no wonder Akito ended up so twisted.

Now that’s not an excuse, we are all responsible for our own actions (look at Yuki, he changed from what he could have been), but it makes it very understandable for Akito being raised in this environment, one parent loving them, one parent hating them. In Thought Bubble’s reactions, they mention that Akito likely has what could be called chaos attachment (hurting people but expecting them to stay with her. It’s like pushing people away to keep them close), and it makes perfect sense for Akito. Growing up in such an environment would breed that.

Now Akito as yet is not a holy terror. She is likely spoiled by her father and the servants and so can be a brat, but there is some stability to her world. Plenty of people can have a terrible parent or parents and not turn out as Akito does. What pushed Akito further is her father’s death. Up to this point, Akito has been lead to believe she is all-important. Her father has instilled this idea, and I’m sure the maids took it even farther. But then at Akira’s death, he says how much he loves Ren. I think he truly wanted them to be a happy family. But Akito does not understand all this. Why would her father love the person who hates her? Why should he want to see her (Ren) over Akito? It feels like a betrayal. Now I don’t think Akira was a bad person. He made some parenting mistakes, but what parent hasn’t. He wanted a happy, complete, loving family. But no one else did. Ren was happy without Akito, but as long as she had to share the spotlight with her child, she would not be happy. And she likely felt like Akito had stolen the whole spotlight, not just sharing. The servants didn’t want it, Ren had overstepped her bounds. She never belonged in the picture to begin with. She might be Akito’s mother, but they didn’t recognize her for that. (Ren likely didn’t want to recognize it either.) Lastly, Akito didn’t want it. She hated her mother since her mother hated her. Why would she want to share her father’s love with a woman who hated her? Plus she was told everyone was meant to love her. It was likely confusing to have this person, who should have loved her and been one of the closest people in her life, being the one who hated her. Often we cling to the hope that such a person will one day love us, and likely Akito did as a child, but as it went on, and likely with the manipulation of others, she lost that hope. So she clung to the world she knew. It had seemed like her father had betrayed her at his death but the servants were quick to assure her it wasn’t so.

So now her father was gone, and her mother she could never have, but she had everyone else, most especially the zodiac. They would cry for her and never leave her, always obey, always love (such as their love was, to her it was the only love she had). Now especially she was caught between her mother and the servants. They had lost to Ren with Akira, but with Akito, they could win again. So with no care for Akito herself, they did everything they could to use this child to get back at the women who had one-upped them. So Akito tried to one-up her mother with the zodiac, and Ren tried to hurt/put down Akito with whatever words or deeds she could.

Then Akito’s world turned upside down. Kureno’s curse broke. This wasn’t just a creak in the wall; it was a creak in the very foundation of her world. Up till now, her world was safe. It was messed up by our standards, but it was the only one she knew. Her mother said her bond to the other zodiac was fake, but up to now, she had no reason to believe that. Why believe the words of someone who hates you if there is no proof. Her world had been safe. Safe in what she had been told and what she believed. Now all that could crumble. Kureno’s cure breaking means everything could fall apart. I think few of us understand fully what this would be like. The entire world you have based your life around could fall apart. So what do you do? Well, I think Akito tries to deny it. In the heat of the moment, in absolute terror for what has just happened, she tries to keep some semblance of the status quo. She begs Kureno not to leave her. She does what most of us would do, regardless of the fact that she is still a child too, she tries to keep everything together. She begs Kureno to stay. Kureno, being too kind for his own good, agrees. And being absolutely true to his word, he stays and stands by his word. He knows what a terrible situation Akito has grown up in, and like most of the older ones know too, and he feels sorry for her.

So now Akito desperately tries to keep everything the same. She goes into denial. Hide the creak, let no one know. “See, everything is the same.” But it’s not, and Akito is not the same. She was/is in danger of losing control, so she takes it back with a vengeance. “I must be in control.” So begins the abuse. First is Yuki. He’s closest and totally in Akito’s control. She is, one, a child, and she does not know how to take control. So she does what she has seen. Her mother and the servants try to take control through, essentially, forms of abuse. Ren to Akito, “You are worthless.” Akito to Yuki, “You are worthless. Only through me do you, or any of the other zodiacs, have purpose.” Ren hates women because they are a threat to her power. Akito hates women because they could be a threat to her power. Ren has seduced men away (likely so told to Akito by the servants) so all women could seduce away her men away from her. Ren took Akito’s femininity away from her, but Akito likely rejects it herself because she doesn’t want to be anything like her mother. Likely Akito targets Rin because she resembles Ren and there’s a possibility her nickname of Rin comes from her being compared to Ren (Rin = little Ren. I’m not sure if this is true but it makes sense.)

And Akito does not know how to properly make attachments to people. As I said she likely has a chaos attachment style. She hurts people (pushes them away) and expects them to stay. She also seems to have the mentality that “if I can’t have their love, then I will have their fear.” And so be it, through love or through fear, they are tired to her. That if they can’t forget her, they are tied to her. Her way of think is very twisted and messed up, but it makes sense that this is where she is. And through it all, no one stands up to her. No one tells her it’s wrong. Only her mother and Akito doesn’t want to believe anything Ren says.

So in this strange way, Akito is desperately holding her world together. She has to believe that all she has been told and believes in is true. Because what is left if it’s not true? Her mother would be right, that the bonds are not natural or right. And if her mother is right in one thing, what else is she right in? Is Akito worthless? Will no one love her? Because of the bonds, she has never had to face the reality of no one loving her. Most of us have never had to, or will ever have to, face the prospect that no one likes us either. Most of us have always had at least one family member or friend we can trust that loves us. But for Akito if the bond broke, she could be facing a world she doesn’t know all alone. (Now a lot of that is by her own making, but she doesn’t understand that at first.) She has been raised in a world held together by the curse, her father and the servants have assured her of this. So if the curse breaks, everything crumbles. Truly such a prospect is terrifying!

So in the only way she knows how Akito tries to hold it together. Hurt manipulate, abuse, do whatever you must, keep everyone in line. If she is wrong, her mother is right, and such a thing cannot be true, so she deices it. Let an outside girl know about the curse, let the members of the zodiac go into the world. They will come back. Nothing will change. Her reality must be true, and if she questions it or contradicts the story she had told herself, it could mean it’s all a lie. So in her arrogance and desperation, she lets things happen and goes on.

The problem is the time for the curse to break has come. It’s weakened, which is why Kureno was a sparrow rather than a chicken, and Hatori is a sea horse rather than a dragon. There’s nothing really any members of the zodiac or Akito are doing that is making it break, it’s just weakened to the state of breaking. And outside forces have been trying to break Akito out of the world she has so desperately locked herself in. Enter the mastermind, devise Shigure.

Now his and her relationship is rather twisted and messed up. I had not realized just how toxic it was until I watched it in the anime. Regardless, Shigure is trying to change and move things. He sees and knows the world Akito is in and it is not good. Now it might all be for his own selfish motives, but he wants to change things. He is one of the only ones to stand up to her and not bend to her will. And he is not under the dilution that everything will stay the same. To some extent, he does care about the kids, which is why she feels bad for putting them in difficult or even dangerous situations. But however bad he may feel, it does not stop him from pushing things for his own agenda. He does not care about the curse for himself, he had already decided he loves and wants to be with Akito, so if a curse holds him to her, why would he care? But he sees how it holds Akito too. She is bound to the others by it and can never be his alone as long as she is cursed. Also everything else, her mother’s manipulation, her father’s loving but wrong words that everyone belongs to her, the servant’s words and mindset that is set in the pasted and say she can do no wrong; all these things keep her from being with him. He also hates that she clings to Kureno over himself. I think he's sleeping with Ren was twofold. I think he did sleep with her to get back at Akito for sleeping with Kureno. This is what he himself says. But my thought is that he was young and Ren played him too. She knew she could get to Akito through Shigure, and Shigure was too young and petty to see or care. These are my thoughts though.

Anyway, he is purposefully helping the others pull away from Akito so they can be free of her, but also so she can be free from them. We tend to think of love being that you never hurt someone, but if someone is hurting themselves, if you love them, you have to stop them, even if that action hurts too. Any good parent will tell you that. Shigure is willing to give Akito tuff love, even if he goes a bit far with it. And so Akito is desperately trying to hold her world together, while everything around her is trying to tear it apart. Something has to give.

The question could be asked too, does Akito understand had what she is doing is wrong? This gets brought up when Rin is rescued from the cat’s enclosure. Kureno tells her it's wrong, and she wails about everyone betraying her. This is kind of tricky. To an extent I think we are born with a moral compose, knowing right from wrong. But this is affected or changed by how we are raised. For Akito, she was rapidity told by the old hag that the zodiac members excised for her. She could do whatever she wanted to them, and it was fine, she was their god. Now there had to be other forces pushing back and telling her otherwise. The problem is one of the biggest forces was her mother, and her mother’s logic and morality were all kinds of twisted too. As I said she is fighting desperately back against her mom because if her mom is right, she (Akito) is wrong, and her whole world with crumble. Her world is severely shaken and is far from secure when things start happening in quick succession.

Momiji’s curse breaks, and she doesn’t have the control over him she had over Kureno. She is not a small, crying child, and she was never very kind to Momiji, so the begging does not work. She then tries to belittle him. “No one will want you. You’ll be all alone if you leave. Stay so you can still have a place.” But Momiji is stronger. The future is scary and lonely, but he is willing to face it. He has received the support he needed to make that decision, and it was never from Akito.

Then comes the day everything goes down. Ren comes in demanding the box with a knife. Then the box gets revealed to the truly empty. Akito tells Kureno that she half believed it was empty and half believed there was something there. As a child, she was told there was. The hag says that she (Akito) knew, but Akito has a point that how was she to know when she had been told otherwise. It’s a small thing, but she has lost something else. Then Hero’s curse breaks, which is another nail in the coffin of Akito’s life as she knows it. Kureno then brings up that they need to change. He made a mistake by staying with her all these years. It’s the true, but right then might not be the best time to bring it up. Akito can’t continue to deny that her world is coming apart. She can’t hold it together by her will, power, or dilutions any longer. She snaps.

She stabs Kureno. Kureno had only ever wanted to help her, but we can do the worst things with the best of intentions. In his kindness, he didn’t want to hurt her, but he only hurts her by this in the long run. He enabled her by letting her hold to her dilution that all was ok, rather than her facing it which she needs to do. He now says he was wrong, and they both need to change. This hurts, and Akito is not in a good place to accept this, so she stabs him.

Now I would like to mention I don’t blame Kureno. He is a kind person, who was doing what he thought was best. He was wrong, but we all are wrong at different points and about different things in our lives. He almost ends up being a very tragic character.

Akito runs away to Shigure’s place. Now whether she went there on purpose, and if she was after someone, I’m not sure. She ends up finding Tohru alone. Here is another person who has been trying to destroy her world. She accuses her. Now Tohru is going through her own thing, and because Tohru is the way Tohru is, she does not run or leash back out at Akito. She rather extends her hand and tries to help her in a way no one else has. Tohru acknowledges her own failings and treats Akito as a normal person. Tohru does not raise her up on a pedestal or push her face in the dirt. She’s also not connected to Akito unconditionally by the curse. Still, she wants to be Akito’s friend. This is a first for Akito. Up until now she has been trying to hold her world together. She can’t really see beyond it. If she was not right, her mother was, and that would mean she was worthless and no one would want her. Tohru proves both wrong. Her world is falling apart, and she knows it, but someone reaches out to her, proving she can still be loved and that she is not worthless. It’s a future she didn’t know could exist. She nearly loses Tohru then but thankfully doesn’t. Afterward in the hospital, Tohru still reaches out to her.

After the accident, Akito excepts that her world is changing. No matter how hard she desperately clings to her dilutions, they will crump. So she begins to let them go. She sees Tohru and is still accepted by her. She meets Uo and Hana and allows herself to be vulnerable and admits she did wrong. That alone is big because it’s hard to do normally, much less if you have been repeatedly told you are god, so you can do no wrong. And she is accepted by the two girls too. She has begun to change her world.

Then she makes the momentous diction to let the curse/bond go. As the “god” I think she was kind of keeping it together, and she realizes she can let them all go. (Interesting thought, could the privies gods have done this?) She is still afraid of being alone. She has no assurance that anyone will want to have anything to do with her now. This includes Shigure. I think she does care for him. She says he was the one she most feared in a sense because she seemed to have the least control over him. He would come to her, but she couldn’t control him.

Her releasing them, and really her story overall is about control and letting go of having to be in control. As a Christian, we are called to release control of our lives to God. And that is not easy. Christian or not, I think we all have to admit we have very little control over anything, including our own lives. Releasing that control can be terrifying and freeing.

Anyway, Akito let's go. She knows she can’t undo the past and she did, what she now acknowledges to be, some terrible things. I think some of the zodiacs accept and forgive her, and others do not. She also accepts her femininity. And I think by releasing herself, and everyone from the curse, and the world she had held to, she also releases herself from her mother’s control. Reality turns out not to be either the world she held to or the one her mother says it was. She lets go and, knowing she must, she moves forward, even if the Hag feel too old and set in their ways to do so. And of course, Shigure does not leave her. He is still a little shit, but he wants to be with her, and I think she finds a new purpose in wanting to be his alone. She knows she has to change the way the estate is too. She has a long road ahead of her and a lot of work to do, but she is now on a new and better path. A new world for her.

Now she still faces consequences of the choices she made and things she did. Rin has not forgiven her at the end of Fruit’s Basket. And in Fruit’s Basket Another, we hear and see more of this. She is forever in a difficult position. The old generation doesn’t like that she changed, the middle still holds a grudge for what she did, and the new, who don’t know what happened, criticizes her for not being more involved and holding herself back. People still come after her for the things she did, and even worse, they go after her son. Hey, leave him notes saying “Your mom is human garbage” and such, caring over the hate of one generation to the next. We do hear though that Akito is a good mom. Her son loves her and wants to stand by and be loyal to her, but at the same time knows she hurt people. It makes for a difficult struggle for him. In the end, I think he decides to be himself and love them both.

And Akito does not try to push it and act like just because she changed that that makes everything ok. I don’t know if I agree with her, but I kind of like that she doesn’t apologize, as she feels that would be an insulate like they need to forgive her. And in “Another” she still holds herself back and does not insist on being included. She still has problems with her mother too. We never see Ren repent or change, and I think that is realistic. Some people want.

So in the end Akito is a character I think I can understand. She is almost a tragic character, but I kind of like her. That doesn’t make what she did ok, but she is not evil incarnate or the worse person ever. There is a reason for her actions, even if it’s not an ok one. It might even be a more relatable one than we want to admit.

Anyway, this too ended up longer than I figured, but I’m ok with it. I hope you enjoyed this and maybe came to understand Akito better.

Thank you and until next time,

God Bless