This episode begins with its most light-hearted moment, when Hiro and Kisa return to the Soma estate. Kisa is peppering Hiro with a lot of questions about his mom and the baby, and Hiro’s mom runs out to greet them. Seeing Hiro scolding his mother is quite amusing, but it’s even more amusing when Hiro’s mom asks Kisa if Hiro would make a good husband. Seeing Hiro blush while admonishing his mother for asking that question almost made me laugh out loud.

But then, Hiro sees Rin and runs over to her and starts peppering her with questions. She tells him not to feel guilty for being there when Akito pushed her, and to go back home to his loving mother and father. But she says that last part in a way that makes it sound like having loving parents is a bad thing.

We also finally get to see what happened when Rin went to visit Shigure when the others had gone ahead to the beach house. She really thought that Shigure had an answer for breaking the zodiac curse. She still thinks he’s hiding something, and is trying to dig around the Soma estate for any information she can find. But she starts feeling sick and collapses. We see brief snippets of her thoughts before she wakes up and realizes she’d fallen asleep. Still feeling sick, she goes to Shigure’s house to look for him. Tohru arrives, and through some unfortunate circumstances, actions and noises trigger memories from Rin’s past and cause her to freak out.

This leads in to the meat of this week’s episode, which is Rin’s backstory. We find out that her home life had been great when she was younger, because her parents were always happy in front of her and nearly pampered her. But then, Rin asked them one day why they were always happy… and her parents snapped. Once Pandora’s Box was opened, there was no going back. Her parents now treated her coldly and abused her physically and mentally. One day, she collapses while walking around to avoid going home, and Hatsuharu finds her. He gets Shisho to help her, and we find out when she’s in the hospital that her condition could have been caught sooner if someone had noticed her injuries that were in unusual places. Rin’s parents are called to come and talk to them about the injuries, and it’s here that her parents reject her and say that they don’t want her to come home with them. This explains why we’ve seen her living at Kagura’s house, and we also see how it’s hard for her to feel like she fits in at a home that isn’t broken.

This flashback also reveals Rin and Hatsuharu’s relationship and how they became close. We also see the exchange that takes place that leads up to Akito pushing Rin out of the window. Akito’s words here were so cruel, and echoed things that Rin’s parents had told her before they disowned her.

This is another episode of Fruits Basket that brought out the feels. I was so pissed at Rin’s parents, because they were major assholes toward their daughter. Unfortunately, she ended up with the parents that couldn’t handle having a child with the zodiac curse, and in the end, rejected her. After seeing this backstory, the audience can truly understand why Rin comes across as so cold and distant. After what she experienced, how could she have not turned out this way?

While Rin was freaking out, though, Tohru went over to hug her and to calm her down, and Shigure walks in as this is happening. At the end of the episode, we see Rin is asleep at Shigure’s house, with Tohru watching over her. I suspect the next episode will show Tohru interacting with Rin and whatever results out of this encounter.

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