This rocked me because in the previous chapters I was under the assumption that this would be a story chronicling both Fuuka and Yuu. Now I know this is shonen manga romance; but much like in Suzuka, I knew that throughout the whole story both Yamato and Suzuka would be well represented from the beginning to the end. Instead, with Fuuka, the spotlight shifts narratively and literally to Yuu.

It toyed with me, made me feel a real sense of loss. Throughout the series I began to fall for Fuuka as much as Yuu was. What made her different from the heroines like Suzuka Asahina and Yuzuki Eba was that her character development sped by fairly fast and right as she passed away she seemed to have already become the type of heroine other Seo heroines take 100+ chapters to become. She loved Yuu unconditionally and if the fates (and Seo-sensei) were kind, we could have seen this pair go through all the pitfalls Seo-sensei likes to throw into his manga. But instead, we got loss and mourning… not just for the main protagonist but also for what the title of this manga means to the reader.

In Suzuka, the title was more so self explanatory… a story about a boy named Yamato who falls in love with a girl names Suzuka. In Kimi no Iru Machi, the theme of home and what home means to the characters was prevalent. But with Fuuka, the shift is almost jarring… though it’s in this jarring shift that I found what the title means to the series.

Fuuka Akitsuki was an incredibly passionate and headstrong woman. She exhibited the brazen nature of her father coupled with the unwavering stubbornness of her mother. She was like a wind that pushed people to discovering who they really were. She pushed the quiet and reserved Yuu to get out of his own way, and for the rest of her bandmates… she helped them realize just what this band really meant to them.