The first few minutes begin with a scene setting up Rinne's and Fuuka's childhood together, which gives more insight to the characters. Soon after we get to see a grown-up Fuuka crying alone on the stairs, Rinne no longer by her side. We find out she is alone and gets by working one job, also starting many fights on the street. After one of these fights she accidentally stumbles upon Einhard, whom is a Keiser arts champion, and attacks her. Fuuka is stopped and passes out due to her injuries. This meeting is what starts her job and life in the Nakajima gym.
There she befriends many fighters like her and becomes an apprentice of Einhard, having to follow training as well. What I like about the training and the fights throughout the series is that most of them are rather realistic, not portraying Fuuka as some overpowered character being able to defeat anyone in her way and actually receiving damage. Although in other fights she wins way too quickly for my liking and gets away with barely any scratch, predictable. I suppose it could be explained with her enormous strength and magic. Other characters get to shine too in terms of fighting and development, instead of just being there which makes them more of use. There are however a few smaller characters randomly introduced and never seen much, but seem to have somewhat of an importance to the story. Not all of them, there are enough characters who have no purpose and could have been left out without missing anything.
The build-up of the story doesn't seem to be too rushed and you get to see an actual development regarding certain characters. Especially Rinne, who fights to become the strongest, begins to wonder if her philosophy is really correct. She is brought down and challenged many times but she always gets up and fights back. The same applies to Fuuka who wasn't planning on doing much until she fixated her goal on defeating Rinne, wanting to bring back her old self. Their relationship together undergoes many changes, they go from childhood friends to enemies and back to friends again.
Eventually, around the end of the series, they get to fight again for the first time in years and are both set on defeating each other. It is no short fight and despite the many injuries they obtain, they still continue fighting until it is Fuuka who wins. The battle was intense and both opponents were equally as strong. Although the continuous talking sometimes stretched it out and seemed rather pointless as they were supposed to be punching eachother instead, not mushy talking.
After the fight the two quickly recover from their injuries and suddenly they're friends, just like that. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for it, but they have had a long love-hate relationship for eachother and the fight looked more gloomy then as making up. I would figure they would struggle more befriending eachother again but apparently that doesn't seem to be the case. After this the end of the series is left open, ending with a scene of Fuuka and Einhard about to fight each other in the tournament.
Overal the story wasn't that spectaculair but I enjoyed watching it and it had many good moments as well. The cast was rather varied in terms of looks, their personalities however were less enjoyable for me. It seemed to be either mostly the same or completely obsessive like Rinne's trainer. She only made sense towards the end and before that she annoyed me a lot with her controlling behaviour. Rinne seemed to have a split personality, switching between intense anger and childlike shyness. Another thing that annoyed the shit out of me were those floating animals, if they were left out it would've saved me a massive headache.
The soundtrack was quite nice and 10/10 would listen again. The art also had a nice touch to it and most of the scenes were drawn well. No problems there. As for the recommendation, it is a nice series to watch for a change and if you were wondering if you should watch it, definitely.
