the site

This shrine was created in March 2016, the month of spring’s awakening. A documentation of its creation process can be found at Song Cradle, the network’s repository.

Every volume of Fruits Basket features one character on the cover, and when you open the volume, the first page shows you an image of the character as they wake up. The image used for this shrine’s layout shows Kyoko as she wakes up, and that image in itself is special: Katsuya and Kyoko’s “volumes” are volume 22 and 23 respectively, and their wake-up images are the only ones that do not show the character’s face. Instead, Katsuya’s shows him patting his daughter’s head, and Kyoko has her back turned to the reader.

I think that’s very fitting for the role Kyoko plays: She has passed on, and her memory is fading, so she is shown faceless. But she has also been through all the hardships and now leads the way for everyone else, so she is shown from behind. There are also very few wake-up images that depict the character with an energetic or positive pose (Momiji and Ritsu), many of them still sleeping or at least drowsy. Kyoko, however, is already greeting the morning, looking toward the future and what the next day will bring.

This layout’s colours are thus meant to resemble the gentle light of dawn as well as the limitless sky — with a tint of Kyoko’s signature colour. Textures used are from Lost & Taken. Libre Baskerville, Satisfy, Open Sans and Volkhov serve as content fonts.

Special thanks to Samantha for setting up the Onigiri Box marathon and for her continuous encouragement, to Crystal for checking her English volumes several times for me whenever I needed to cross-check something (namely translations), and to all the Furuba-loving Amassment folks on Twitter, whose chatting and enthusiasm enabled the marathon in the first place.

Kyoko Honda, Again — you give me my courage
Name Meaning — none of that is futile
Linkage — each of us needs someone