Fruits Basket Movie Unveils New Art for Prequel Chapter

New info and art about Fruits Basket -Prelude- have been released.

New images for the upcoming release were revealed directly by the movie's official Japanese Twitter account. The new art depicts Kyoko and Katsuya, the parents of Fruits Basket's central protagonist, Tohru Honda. Kyoko will be voiced by veteran voice actor Miyuki Sawashiro, who previously starred in Noragami and Sword Art Online, while Katsuya will be portrayed by My Hero Academia's Yoshimasa Hosoya. The Twitter account also announced that the movie will feature a new theme song, "Nije to Kite," which will be performed by musician ohashiTrio.

Fruits Basket -Prelude- is a compilation film that retells the events 2019 anime reboot. The movie will feature recut content from the TV series, as well as a newly animated adaptation of the story of Tohru's parents, which was originally left out of the show. In addition to the prequel content, the movie will also feature a new epilogue scene, set after the events of the show, that focuses on Tohru and Kyo. The cast and crew from the anime series will all reprise their roles for the movie. The movie will be released simultaneously in theaters and on Blu-ray in Japan on Feb. 18, 2022.

The popular shojo franchise began in 1998 with a manga created by Natsuki Takaya. The series tells the story of Tohru Honda, a cheerful but somewhat unlucky orphaned girl who moves in with her classmate, Yuki Soma, after he discovers that she has been living in a tent in the woods. Tohru then discovers that the members of the Soma family are all afflicted with a mysterious curse that causes them to transform into the animals from the Chinese Zodiac.

Takaya's manga was originally adapted into a 26-episode anime series in 2001 by Studio DEEN. This series featured numerous changes to the source material and only adapted the first part of the manga's overall story. A rebooted anime series, this time handled by animation studio TMS, began airing in 2019. The series was co-produced by Funimation and ran for three seasons. The reboot aimed to be a more faithful adaptation of Takaya's manga than the 2001 anime, and was generally well-received by both critics and fans of the franchise.

The original Fruits Basket anime is available for streaming on Hulu and Funimation. All three seasons of the reboot can be streamed from Hulu, Funimation, and Crunchyroll. The manga is localized and distributed in North America by Yen Press.

Source: Twitter