Fruit Basket is one of the most unique shoujo I have ever read, It is not light hearted and happy go lucky like other shoujos, Fruit Basket touches upon many realistic issues like Abuse, PTSD, Depression, Social anxiety, Abandonment issues and potray all these in very realistic way.
The main theme of this story is motherhood and romance is just a side plot, The fact that main leads have platonic relationship is what makes it stand out from rest of the shoujos.
Characters are all well written and have depth and have very good character development, Our Main protagonist Tohru may seem like your cliched shoujo heroine which her character troupe is based on that but the reason why Tohru is different from other shoujo heroines is because she has lot of depth and character development, she is not nice just for the sake of being nice but there is reason why she is so over cheerful and nice which you would find out as you go further, in a same way other characters too have lot of depth in them as well as there are lot of parallels between the characters which is something I love too.
Whether it's romantic relationships or platonic, fruit basket potrays them very realistically it also shows human nature and their psychology.
Overall Fruit Basket is a Masterpiece, there is lot to talk about and analyze, I can talk about it whole day.