Season English Dub Review: Fuuka Season One

A strong series that deserves strong consideration for more episodes AND a sequel.

Oh man…the self-deprecating experience of having to watch anything that is considered ‘slice of life’ is a bit of a bitter pill to swallow. As such, when I DO review one of these shows, I like to look for a few things:

  1. Is there a plot?
  2. Is there a point?
  3. Does the series stay grounded or is their slippage of some things that kind of break the rules?
  4. Does it deviate from the source material?

That last part is a bit more important and I’ll tell you why. The second you throw a curveball in ANYTHING that separates from the source material, the writers and producers will eventually have to clean up their own mess. If they don’t, the story arcs go in wildly different directions that could lose your built-in audience and cause a lot of headaches.

Fuuka decides to do just that, and while we’re kinda early, I’ll be curious to see that if an additional order of episodes happen, how MUCH the rather minute but important changes impact the franchise. The prequel series, Suzuka, changed a few things from anime as compared to the manga, but I think with Fuuka the changes were more intense. For example, and we’ve talked about this before, in the manga Fuuka Akitsuki gets destroyed by a truck and is replaced by a lead singer named…Fuuka Aoi. It’s THIS character that Yuu eventually falls for, and with the new addition, the band changes their name from Fallen Moon to Blue Wells. If a second season of the anime happens, would the producers show any signs of a Fuuka Aoi or a band name change? I can’t imagine it.

Taking a step back from the plot for a moment, Fuuka does a lot of great things in the art department, but the one qualm I really had was the sometimes TOO noticeable element of the famed “flounder” looking faces in the character designs. I also could’ve done without the blurring of all the girls’ bodies while at the saunas. Look, if we’re gonna have nudity, just do it, but don’t piss on our legs and tell us it’s raining. If Funimation censors are so bad they can’t allow this type of shit, then take out the scenes altogether, it’s almost better that way.  In terms of background, most of it is status quo, but there are examples of exquisite art direction, such as Fuuka and Yuu at the beach, that are really legit, and demand attention. The night scenes with Koyuki and Yuu are also very well done and are on par with some of the stuff that comes out of Hollywood in terms of direction. I also thought the direction of the different bands/musicians was very well done, but there’s a caveat here that I think leads into my take on the English dub voice actors.

If I were Funimation and I knew I was going to adapt this series for an English audience, I would’ve hired some professional bands/musicians to write/sing lyrics to all the songs featured in the series, and there are definitely people out there that would’ve done it on the budget. It’s one of those things that I think could’ve taken this series the extra mile because all of the voice actors for the English dub were excellent.

Personally, I think Aaron Dismuke (“Yuu”) is a rock star waiting to happen in voice acting. Even if the dialogue kind of make his character seem a bit bitchy and emo at times, Aaron’s delivery kept the character grounded even while conflicted and given the dubious task of carrying a show that doesn’t have his name on it. The post-Suzuka afterlives of a lot of the characters in this series were fun to mess around with, whether it was Akitsuki’s family, seeing where the Hedgehogs are today, and how Koyuki’s career got so big, but still being able to have enough room to get the backstory of her obsession with Yuu.

The real drawbacks of the series came at the beginning of the season. The first few episodes and Yuu’s social media blitz was a lot of build-ups that really didn’t lead to much of anything with the exception of Sara joining the band. Also, part of me thinks the anime adaptation of this show is going to reveal that Yuu is in fact bisexual. Why? Because there is no guy on Planet Earth, unless if you are gay, that would turn down the sexual advances of Hinashi. NONE. Nope….not gonna happen. Especially when the producers put her boobs RIGHT on the knees of Yuu and the silly son of a bitch does nothing about it. Sorry, not buying it. And I don’t care if the male lead character really loves the titular character, that’s not it whatsoever. I’m not even entirely sure he completely turned down the advances of the band’s keyboard player, Mikasa. Kazuya was WAY more convincing. If none of this is the case, then the direction and dialogue need to be revised in the future so as to make sure I’m convinced otherwise.

Overall, Fuuka’s lineage is important, but this continuation does a great job of standing on its own two legs and not always doing the “remember this?” type of plot points that other sequels do. There are more questions to be had that have given me a vested interest to keep following the franchise, and I hope that comes to fruition with a second season pickup that also gets an English dub adaptation.

SCORE
8/10