So here I'm about to pan one of the most-loved manga series of all time, what am I thinking...

I think the reason I have such a negative opinion of this series is because it is so fundamentally wrong on so many levels. But the largest is that it's a story of abuse, abuse, and more abuse; abuse as the default of human interactions; abuse carried through the generations; abuse that carries the weight of some kind of vast karmic mystery. And that's revolting.

Caution: while I will try to avoid spoilers, it's possible that I'll give something away as I will discuss plot in what follows.

It shouldn't take long for the reader to realize that this is one of those stories where incomprehensible painful circumstances are meted out to all characters indiscriminately. Our heroine Tohru is recently orphaned; and thrown out of her house by her grandfather, because his family doesn't like her. So she's living in a tent in the woods.

Cheerfully.

COME ON. This is a straight-up Stepford Smiler routine. If you ever meet someone who is this relentlessly cheerful under these circumstances, sleep with one eye open, because that is some INTENSE baggage, most especially to be dumping on a 14-year-old! With no support structure! Tohru's smile ought to be hiding profound psychological agony; Tohru's unrelenting smile should suggest to all that she has some serious unaddressed issues. But no, her principal characteristic is that she truly does love and forgive everyone, even when she ought to be torching the place. This also establishes early a central theme of the series, which is that extended family exists to torment everyone.

Soon we meet the other family that will be the focus of the series, a large, wealthy, extended family straight out of a semi-feudal society. Which is itself made up of a bunch of smaller family groups, all of which have been torn apart by a karmic curse that exists for Reasons and which pretty much everybody would like to break, but nobody knows how. (Don't worry, reader! By the end of the series, nobody will still know how--although the Power of Plot Compels It, so I suppose there's that.) We also meet the two live-in love interests, a pretty-boy sweetheart who's too shy to look you in the eye, and an Angry Young Man. Of the former: well, that shyness is largely because of the abusive environment in which he was raised, with inappropriate relationships and responsibilities thrust upon him immediately, and rejection by his actual family; to the extent that he's suffering from learned helplessness and unable to make his own decisions. Of the latter, we can at least say that he is portraying a much more realistic response to abuse than Tohru does: he's been threatened, made to claim responsibility for things that he did not do, physically abused, socially rejected, and generally tortured his whole life; and his response is, understandably, to inflict that pain right back on everyone else, physically or emotionally.

This is supposed to be a romance?

One can predict, from the genre, that the theme is a Really Tolerant, Persistently Loving Girl needs to come along and rescue one of these poor tortured boys with the power of unconditional love; but the reality is these folks don't need a girl(or boy)friend, they need a therapist. Well, actually they need the police; and child protective services; and then several therapists. Because these are not problems that one person's unconditional love is capable of solving. These are problems that will need to be reflected upon at length, until all three of these characters have learned self-respect and the ability to set and enforce safe boundaries, and have recognized the maladaptive coping mechanisms and expectations their lives of abuse have instilled within them.

Not to mention that it is not the job of the first attractive accommodating woman to enter the life of a troubled young man to perform all the agonizing emotional labor needed to Fix His Dark Brooding Past. (But five bucks what's going to happen...)

It gets worse from there; it's a 23-volume series and there's only one direction for the stakes to go. But suffice it to say that this is a series that normalizes phenomenally troubling interactions and presents them as acceptable. It's a series that promotes an acquiescence to horrific circumstances; and a seriously messed-up response of just accepting and forgiving and accepting and forgiving, in a way that's revolting to watch.

This is the principal reason for my low opinion of the work, and I've gone on long enough anyway, but I should add that aside from its bad social modeling, the book is largely just meaningless melodrama. Several volumes seem dedicated to side characters who serve no real narrative purpose other than to provide extra bodies to pair people off with. I suppose one could call this "character development," but the growth that occurs is largely arbitrary and implausible; it feels more like filler.

The art's good enough--not my favorite, and rather lazy and repetitive in many places--but passable. (Although of course Takaya-sensei can draw way better than I can...) But overall the series is an offensive, tedious slog.

I made it all the way to the end hoping there would finally be some questions answered, or that the inevitable happy end would be earned somehow. If you're hoping the same--well, better luck to you than I had.