WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Fruits Basket Season 2, Episode 8, now streaming on Crunchyroll.

Back in the mid-2000s at the height of the anime boom, seemingly everyone wanted a second season of the first Fruits Basket anime except for creator Natsuki Takaya herself. It's for the better she vetoed a continuation at the time, as Yoshihide Ibata's new adaptation has proven more satisfying than Akitaro Daichi's was. Most of the differences between the two anime's handling of the same material were subtle, but subtle differences add up, and this week's episode reaches a plot point which simply could not have worked in the old anime.

Fruits Basket Season 2, Episode 8 (there's some confusion on the official title; the previews listed it as "Well, It's True" but Crunchyroll is listing it as "Dog," despite Shigure's role this week being extremely minor) continues the summer vacation arc of the past few weeks. It's not a game-changer but it accomplishes a lot of smaller yet significant character development. As Tohru reflects on her passionate encounter with Yuki on the beach the night before, she has a very different yet similarly intense beach experience with Kyo.

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In contrast to her moonlight kiss from Yuki, Tohru's daytime activities with Kyo read as less romantic and more friendly, building a sand castle as the tide comes in. However, whereas Yuki hardly said anything aloud to Tohru, Kyo is more open with her, discussing his anxieties about the water... and about the beads that keep him in human form.

This is the small artistic difference between the 2001 and 2019 anime adaptations that makes the biggest impact here: in the old series, Kyo's beads where black and white, but in the new one, they're red and white as Takaya meant them to be. The significance of those colors? They're made of human bone, and the red ones dyed with human blood, supposedly from an ancient priest. Kyo doesn't know for sure if this story is true, but the thought that his ability to live a semi-functional human life might be predicated on someone's death is one that upsets him.

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Fruits Basket 2-08 Tohru meets Rin

The other most significant part of this episode is Tohru finally meeting Rin. Rin has clearly had it with her family's issues; in this episode, she dismisses Kagura's love for Kyo as phony, criticizes Yuki for acting as "Akito's pet" and transforms from horse to human form despite her weak physical state out of sheer willpower. Tohru's kind of freaked out by this beautiful and furious woman.

Having finally met the Zodiac's Horse, she assumes Akito must be the Rooster. Of course, Tohru is completely unaware of Kureno, who Akito is preparing to introduce to her. One thing's certain: when she finds out what Akito really is, everything is going to change.

New episodes of Fruits Basket Season 2 premiere Mondays at 1:30 PM EDT on Crunchyroll. Dubs of these episodes are released three weeks later on FUNimation.

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