Fuuka: Season 1/ Episode 12 “Fair Winds” [Series Finale] – Overview/ Review (with Spoilers)

Fuuka ends its meandering storyline as you’d expect and thus ends a show which had promise but then lost its path.

Episode Focus: Together Forever (Yuu and Fuuka)

After the rise and fall of their relationship, Fuuka breaking up the band she coerced everyone into, Yuu pouring his heart out into a song, and Koyuki telling Fuuka she and Yuu broke up, Fuuka is still iffy about seeing him or the band. After all, she made a selfish decision to quit and doesn’t feel she will be easily forgiven. Plus, these emotions. These emotions she can’t explain or rather, have a difficulty accepting.

Yet, being that Koyuki has enlightened Fuuka about her feelings as she had done with Yuu, she realizes what she feels. She is honest about her feelings and that allows her to say to Yuu after he says he loves her, that she loves him too. Thus leading to The Fallen Moon officially reuniting and, to much surprise, the band getting a record deal. One which seemingly is just an expansion of the one offered to Fuuka.

Commentary

In Prattle’s latest review of “Kuzu no Honkai” they note:

Modern romance anime have a tendency to fall apart in their final stretches – either all their potential will evaporate immediately through an on the nose resolution or they’ll squander what gifts they have through drama-circles and too-conservative scripting.

And essentially that is what Fuuka ends up doing. It continues this weird immaturity when it comes to love which seems from a previous generation. A generation in which the perception of teenagers is that of fickle and immature people. The type who, for some reason, even at the assumed age of 16, still don’t know what love is and any sense of the word. Which, makes not one lick of sense.

Now, I can understand Yuu not understanding his feelings toward Fuuka, after all, she was very hot and cold and with Koyuki re-entering his life, and offering reciprocation, things made sense. With Fuuka though, considering her parents are together and she loves sappy love songs, her not understanding her own feelings sounded weird. Also, her being a teenager and never having a crush before? I found that utterly preposterous.

You really expect me to believe this attractive girl never had a crush on someone? Never knew what it was like to have feelings for someone, even though in the first episode she hints at dating Yuu? Urgh. That is the issue you will face if you pick up this series. It is inconsistent and sometimes seems like it is trying to rewrite characters after it seemingly established what their personalities were. On top of that, it shoved down your throat storylines and once you finally have the ability to breathe again, maybe actually enjoy the taste of what it is feeding you, said storyline damn near abruptly ends. Also, there are a lot of storylines which either start and stop abruptly or else are neglected for the sake of the quintessential love triangle every romantic media seems to find the need for.

So, overall, I’d say I’m mixed about this series. It has many cute and wonderful moments in the beginning, but as Koyuki became prominent and Fuuka just stopped any real sort of pursuit of Yuu, things went downhill. Things got better once Koyuki’s character claim to Yuu wasn’t solely about them being childhood friends, but then her character started to act erratic and became weirdly inconsistent. But, it tried to trudge on with her and Yuu together until suddenly, Koyuki decides sex will be the way to see if Yuu is really into her and him rejecting her means he is into Fuuka. Yeah. Timid Yuu isn’t just not ready to have sex or anything which could keep this show from seeming kind of generic, it is he likes another girl. Something which Yuu believes so now he is fully about Fuuka. Someone who, as she starts to understand what jealousy is, exits Yuu’s life and the band she forced him, and three others, into.

Leading to what we see in this episode which is you usual, “Oh yeah, I know I totally screwed everything up, but we don’t have time to deal with reconciling all the emotions which came from me being selfish. Let’s just move on, look happy as if nothing happened, and go back to how things used to be.”

So, if you decide to watch this, just prepare to be excited with how cute and odd Yuu and Fuuka seem as a couple, then get disappointed as ecchi, and other women, get in the way of their relationship.