Fruits Basket, Vol. 1

Tohru Honda has just lost her mother, and rather than burden relatives, she pitches a tent on a wooded hillside and keeps going to school as if nothing has changed. The land, it turns out, belongs to the Sohma family — starting with her classmate Yuki Sohma and his older cousin Shigure — and when a landslide destroys her campsite, they take her in.

Living under the Sohma roof means learning their secret: Yuki, Shigure, and hot-tempered Kyo are among thirteen family members possessed by the spirits of the Chinese zodiac, who transform into their animal the instant they're embraced by someone of the opposite sex. It's a curse that has shaped the whole family's lives, kept them isolated, and marked them as different for as long as they can remember.

Volume 1 sets up the series' emotional core through a memory Tohru returns to again and again: as a child, she was left out of a game built around the zodiac story and handed a rice ball instead of an animal, a small exclusion that becomes the book's quiet metaphor for not belonging — and for the found family she starts to build with the Sohmas instead.