I started reading Fuuka when it started coming out in 2014. I had finished Suzuka and that was one of my favorite manga at the time, so of course I was going to try the sequel. I made it until about forty chapters in and decided not to follow it as it was publishing anymore, partially because of the upsetting things that happened and moreso just because I was in university at the time and didn't feel like it anymore.

Fuuka is basically, brazenly Suzuka in reverse. It's about overcoming grief and deciding to live again through applying yourself to a new vocation, but with the protagonist boy's story switched with the protagonist girl's this time around. And that worked very well. I could take-or-leave Yuu as a protagonist, honestly, but I can't deny that it was satisfying to see him work through everything with the band.

The art in this is very good, very Seo Kouji. There's a lot of instant gratification, and the overtly sexy ecchi shots of women only get more frequent and prominent as the thing goes on. That mixed with some rushed story beats makes me think the manga's popularity was in question at some point along the way, or something else happened behind the scenes. As much as it's done in fun, it can feel a bit skeevy at times because this absolutely does not pass the He-Man/She-Ra test. There's only a few similar shots of sexualized men throughout the whole run. I know the primary demographic isn't coming for that, but it felt unequal.

As it goes on, there are some extreme Seo Kouji twists thrown in. The best one is the obvious one that really kicks off the story around chapter 40 or so. That absolutely worked. Others did not. One of them was, I suppose, valid in a vacuum. But in the world we live in, it came off as homophobic to me. Another was just ridiculous and a blatant excuse to pad things out before the main couple got together even though they were basically already official. Others were fine.

It was fun. I picked it up towards the end of 2020, years later, and it was like putting on an old shoe. I fell right back into the rhythm and breezed through the whole thing. It's not quite as good as Suzuka, but reading it was so easy and (mostly) fun that I (mostly) didn't mind my gripes with it.