Character · Fruits Basket
Yuki Sohma
The most admired boy at school is a rat, literally, and he hates every minute of the fan club that follows him down the corridor.
In Otakana the clue reads: School prince who becomes the zodiac rat
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Fruits Basket
- Letters
- 4 · Normal
Yuki Sohma has a fan club with formal membership and a code of conduct, neither of which he asked for and neither of which he can stop. Girls call him the prince. He is polite to all of them and close to none, because the moment any girl hugs him he becomes a rat in a pile of clothes. The curse turns ordinary teenage life into a logistics problem with no solution.
In the zodiac story the rat rides in on the ox's back to arrive first, then keeps the cat away from the banquet with a lie. Yuki carries both halves of that. He holds the highest standing among the cursed members and takes no pleasure in it, and Kyo, who turns into the cat, blames him for a grudge that predates them both by centuries.
Under the poise is a lonely boy who was isolated by Akito as a child and never learned how to talk to anyone his own age. Watching him acquire one real friend takes most of the series, and the friend is not who anyone expects. Natsuki Takaya began Fruits Basket in Hana to Yume in 1998, and the 2019 TMS adaptation is the version that follows Yuki all the way.
Spelling YUKI
Four letters, YUKI, and the puzzle wants the given name; Sohma belongs to a dozen characters at once. It is one of the most common given names in anime, which is the real risk here: you may be picturing a different Yuki entirely. Two beats, yu-ki, no long vowel and no doubled letter. The same sound also means snow in Japanese, written with a different character.