Shigure Sohma

Tall and broadly built, Shigure is a strikingly handsome man with straight, nape-length grey hair parted down the middle into an M-shaped fringe, longer strands trailing past his eyebrows. His eyes are a pale grey, and he occasionally perches oval glasses over them. He gravitates toward traditional Japanese dress, claiming a dark-green kimono and light obi put him in the mood to write, and switches to tight dark suits with slicked-back hair when business calls him out. In the Another flashbacks he has drifted toward a modern, casual wardrobe.

Early on Shigure reads as relaxed, aloof, and playful, doting on Tohru and dispensing wise advice, with a mildly lecherous streak he never truly acts on. In time a darker layer surfaces: he is selfish, cunning, and willing to use or wound anyone to reach his ends, largely unmoved by the suffering his schemes inflict. Nearly everything he does is calculated to stir the family and nudge the curse toward breaking, and he masks his real feelings behind a light facade. Yet his years with Tohru crack that shell; he comes to feel genuine guilt for exploiting her, admits he is the dirtiest one of all, and ultimately abandons his wish to possess Akito, choosing instead to let her decide her own path and to support her once she returns to him. As a father he stays as conniving and teasing as ever, though his son Shiki still counts him reliable and worth trusting.

On the day Ren Sohma conceives Akito, Shigure dreams of a still-unborn Akito promising they will meet soon, and from that moment he loves the family's God. Growing up beside Hatori and Ayame, the three form the group known as the Mabudachi Trio. His feelings only deepen, and he once confesses to Akito by handing her a camellia from the garden, calling his love an unshakeable truth. After learning Akito has taken up with Kureno, a jealous Shigure sleeps with her mother Ren in revenge, and Akito banishes him from the estate; he lives alone in his own house afterward, eventually taking in Yuki at Hatsuharu's pleading and later welcoming Tohru. As the Dog, he transforms whenever the opposite sex embraces him or his body endures great stress, becoming a grey-black dog with light-green eyes; he calls himself the most cursed of all for loving Akito as a woman rather than as a deity. When his curse lifts, the twelfth and final to break, he feels only the quiet relief of freedom. He funds his life on literary novels under his own name and trashy romances under pen names, most successfully as Noa Kiritani. By the close he is on a date with a contented Akito, looking back fondly on his three years with Tohru; in Fruits Basket Another he is married to Akito and father to Shiki.