First Impressions / Fuuka

「ライブ!」 (Raibu!)
“Live!”

I don’t know what to say — this episode was done quite beautifully and left me feeling like everything in the world of Fuuka is going in the correct direction.

Love Triangle? HAH!

While it remains to be seen whether or not Koyuki will come rampaging back in the future, I must say that the resolution that came out of this episode left me feeling surprisingly full with joy. Seeing how our titular character is probably the one who Yuu will eventually end up with (at this point at least), I’m so happy that we got to see both sides of a complicated misunderstanding. Starting with Yuu and Fuuka unable to even hold a simple conversation, I was loving the amount of teen angst that was flowing out of my screen. With Fuuka and Yuu unable to find common ground to even express their feelings, the tension was getting so thick you could cut it by simply swinging your finger around. And typically, it’d be at this point where there’d be some crazy plot point that would attempt to bring the two together and eventually leave us with a half-assed answer that partially fixed things without actually addressing what happened. Instead, the best wingman in the world named Mikasa managed to get our two love birds to express their true feelings to one another. Sure, there was a little bit of deception in play but there’s no denying how effective it was.

All of which eventually lead to everyone ending the episode on a high note. Something that I didn’t expect even by the halfway mark and was happy to see since there’s enough shows out there that try to build up romance based off of impossible anime-logic.

The Band!

While the drums might have been a dead giveaway, I’m confident that most of us realized that Yassan was some sort of influential drummer. His hair, the goatee, and that body build just screamed like he could have been part of a band that may have gotten its name from a spiny mammal that sometime is colored blue with red shoes. What was a wee bit surprising though was seeing how their homeroom teacher was also a part of HEDGEHOGS, which in hindsight explains a lot but in any case was a fun little surprise. At this point, I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised since the story needed a really good way to get some music guidance into Yuu, Fuuka, and Mikasa and what better way to do so than with some professional musicans?

Also, even though I wasn’t expecting much in terms of animation, the impromptu performance actually looked pretty good! If I had to rate it, it was a bit better than what we got for K-ON! season one’s performance right before it ended. But honestly, the expressions on everyone’s faces a they performed (and Yuu literally not playing at all) really sold it for me.

Looking ahead

Boy, I thought I was going to have some real choice words for this post when the episode started. Amazingly it turned around quite quickly and actually turned into one of the best things I’ve watched all week! Man for a third episode (I know it’s the 4th, but technically it’s the third week) I have to commend Fuuka for doing such a great job at staying true to what drew me in. Anyways, I’ll see you guys next week. Ciao!

17 Comments

  1. I was reading through Fuuka’s wikipedia page when suddenly I read a MASSIVE spoiler written like it’s nothing, no warning at all. I’m done with wikipedia when it comes to airing anime. I hope you guys don’t make the same mistake as I am if you don’t want to be spoiled, stay away from Fuuka’s wikipedia page.

    danes256
    Reply

    2. Never go to wikipedia if you want to avoid spoilers, that’s not really an important concern there. Also, if manga readers have been hinting about a potentially massive spoiler in the comments, you should probably be very careful about looking around the internet at all for info about a show, since even google autofill might spoil something. That particular event happened over 100 chapters ago, so spoilers are highly likely to be found throughout the internet.

      SK
      Reply

    3. To be honest, I knew something would have happen, given that the synopsis I read about this anime hints at that, but I didn’t know to what extent. I also fell into the trap of reading the Wiki

      paulrenzo
      Reply

    1. It happens in ch 36, end of vol. 4. This episode changed the order of some of the events, but covered all the way through ch. 18, the first chapter of vol. 3. I expect it’ll happen sometime in the middle of the season (ep 7/8?), which gives time to see the aftereffects and finish with the Lightning Rebellion.

      SK
      Reply

  7. Seeing Yassan become the drummer was a pleasant surprise. I didn’t see that coming at all and maybe I should have lol.

    On a different note, is their really no one blogging Kazu no Honkai!?! Originally, I never intended to watch the show because I don’t usually like warped love…but now after what happened in the last episode I’m totally blown away. I’m HOOKED. And now I’m kind of upset it’s not being blogged here on randomc.net. T_T

    CitanLu
    Reply

      1. Haha definitely let me know! ^^ Regretfully, however, I jumped the gun. Somehow in my excitement I missed that someone is blogging it (Cherrie), smh. Just got a bit too excited (and lazy) with my Friday afternoon anime time lol.

        CitanLu
        Reply

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