My favourite is definitely Fruits Basket. Looking at it objectively, I can see that it has its problems, and I've read manga that I think are better. But no other one has had anywhere near the same impact on me, and I doubt any ever will. ^_^ I started reading it at a very dark point in my life. I was kind of circling the drain emotionally, I had completely lost track of who I was and where I was going, and I had a deep seated distrust of others. Though it might sound silly, through reading Furuba all of that started to change. I found so much to admire in the gentle life lessons the manga delivered, and in the wonderful, altruistic attitude of its lead character. I wanted to be like her. I wanted to see the world the way she did, to greet people with the same gentle warmth, and to always look to tomorrow with the same optimism. Through my admiration of Tooru, I gradually learned to love the world and the people in it, and I learned to see the good in people, and perhaps even the good in myself. The changes were subtle to begin with. Nobody can change completely overnight. Still, within hardly a year my days were filled with more sunlight and joy than I knew existed in the world. And now, four or five years later, I'm simply worlds away from where I was then. I'm genuinely glad to be alive. I love my family, I love my friends, I love my tutors, and I love most every moment of every day that I'm on this earth. ^_^
Of course I'm not naive enough to believe that life is like a shoujo manga. The real world has more unhappy endings than happy, and sometimes things don't go right no matter how hard you try. Still, even if Furuba has a tendency to sugarcoat things, I feel there is a great deal of wisdom in the attitudes it presents. And I believe the morals it promotes are extremely noble ones to pursue, even if any real person would have trouble adhering to them as closely as Tooru does. In short, I feel like I owe Natsuki Takaya and her characters a great debt of gratitude. ^^ I'm not going to be melodramatic and say that they saved my life, but they led me to so many wonderful people, and helped me to gradually start to become a person I could almost be proud of. They might not have saved my life, but I'm thoroughly convinced that they helped me make it something worth living. ^_^ Whether Fruits Basket is actually good or not is completely irrelevant. All I know is that it made a genuinely meaningful difference to me at a very crucial juncture in my life. And even if I one day forget all about Japanese pop culture, it will always be important to me.
