Fruits Basket is one of the best-selling shojo manga ever published and its premise is deceptively cute: members of the Sohma family transform into zodiac animals when hugged by the opposite sex. What the series is actually about is child abuse, and it does not flinch.

Tohru Honda is the reason it works. She is relentlessly kind in a way that reads as naive for about two volumes and then reveals itself as a deliberate practice - she has lost everything and decided that kindness is the response. The series takes her seriously as a character rather than as a device.

The curse functions as a very effective metaphor for inherited family trauma. Every Sohma is trapped by a role assigned at birth, and the resolution is about someone choosing to break a cycle rather than defeating anybody.

The Cat's exclusion from the zodiac - and Kyo's place in the family because of it - is the story's emotional centre.

This collection covers Tohru and the Sohmas.