I was deterred to watch this anime years ago because the bad reviews of it, and the reviews for this show is something that I would probably agree with, if I'm still my younger self. But I have matured now, at least for a bit, and now I can understand why Fuuka is a 10/10 anime, and right now I would consider it to be at least in my top 5 all time anime.

I watched this anime on a whim, mostly because it's already in my Jellyfin server, and when I watched the first episode, seeing the first half of it, I was already annoyed on how possibly bad it is, but after finishing the episode, I really liked it. It seems like a lot of people who reviewed this anime in any other website didn't get the point of this anime nor the demographic it is targeted towards to, apparently being generic and cliched it bad now, but as I wrote in the summary, it is done perfectly. When I looked at the profiles of the people from multiple website who is the most negative about this show, you'll see highly acclaimed "elitist" animes in their favorites/page, and most of those animes are good and deep, and this is where the cognitive dissonance comes in, just because a show is not extremely detailed nor "deep" (for whatever tf that means), does not mean it's bad. The pacing is perfect for what it is, this is anime I don't know why people are asking for it to be "realistic", like "unrealistic" things don't happen in real life.

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.”

― Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

Here's the full quote I copied off Goodreads, people seems to forget this quote, especially for the people who say this the most, there's probably easy nitpicks to this show (and actual problems to this show), but there's no point trying to deboonk it all in a review to this show.

So anyways what's so good about this show anyway, like a great band, the cast really fit together, and for a 1 cour anime, the development is on point, while possibly one of the main criticism of this show is how fast the main couple hit it off in the first episodes and how much unnecessary drama in this show, I think it's on point, since everything that happens actually justified as the show progress, people seems to be blacked out mentally when a show doesn't fit their box of being a good anime, they just dismiss everything and point out everything that they don't like as generic and chiched and what they like as good reference/inspiration, funny how that works. Nothing comes out of a vacuum, nor do I think that blatant ripoffs without any inspiration are good, so the thing that makes this show stand above the rest of the supposed generic and chiched shows is it's full of inspiration, the tension actually makes sense and it's not like the MC is being indecisive for 24+ episodes, it's clear that there's actual development happening between the main couple throughout the show, so what if they're dumb and do dumbshit? They're in highschool they're supposed to be that way, and there's a difference with stupidity that actually makes sense and some ultimate anime bullshit, I understand that most anime are bullshit because it's bullshit and mindless, but it's quite unfair to put everything in the same box since it's similar to any other bullshit anime in some ways. The main couple really fits well and the romance between really makes sense, unlike any other bullshit anime, you'll actually be compelled to root for them being together since they're actually likable together, not something I can say for most romance anime. Other critism of this anime is how did they gitgud for some reason, anime obviously and other than the MC the whole band are quite acquainted with their instruments already, and another criticism is how generic the music is, it's generic because they're not that good actually, just my interpretation since that just connects to me.

TL;DR: I really like this anime, because the characters are likable and believable, the common "criticism" are mostly rooted in unawareness towards good writing between the shows in the same genre, as they can only see something being good if it's in a box of their ideas for a good anime, so they can only like animes when it fits a certain mold/genre or niche. And the most important thing, the end was really satisfying, so I try to not spoil anything.