Anyone who has been reading my content for a while may have seen a feature I did on characters who were worse than their designs or popularity would suggest, the same would go for characters who were better than they look, so my special which will go on through February will be themed precisely on that starting with the one character I have most gripe with, Fuko Kirisawa from Flame of Recca.

Fuko is the wind user among Recca's team of elemental warriors and the lone female in a group of mixed male characters, while Recca and Tokiya are played straight as a fire and ice duo, Koganei and Domon who are little genius and large orge but are a little more well thought of in design I'll talk about another time.
Finally coming round to Fuko who if you stand next to Yanagi is supposed to be the strong capable female next to the damsel in distress, yet Yanagi is not the damsel here.
Fuko has a ridiculous track record of failures, for someone who can fight on par with Recca in a normal battle and should at least be smarter than him, she's really bloody stupid, so let's review.
1. She accepted a weapon from a stranger who mind controlled her into fighting Recca.
2. She was gullible enough to fall for two lies from bad guys faking tears, the second time nearly cost her, her life as well as the whole teams.
3. She wasted Fujin's powers without even bothering to find the weapon's power core.
4. She wandered off multiple times and found herself trapped in everything from alternate dimensions to temple ruins.
5. Is saved by Raiha on multiple occasions further cementing the fact that she is less damsel and more dumbass in distress.
6. Even in her backstory, her attempts to be a lone wolf are scuppered by the fact she's always in over her head and is upstaged by other female characters who don't even fight.
I really don't want to look like I'm hating on Fuko but all that makes it so difficult for me to really call her a good character, this isn't the author's fault, as he does have superbly designed female characters such as Kagero, Neon and Marchen's Dorothy who is easily top ten material.
I'm not demanding perfection from my female characters either, the Mulan live action showed just how boring a flawless character is, it's just that Fuko's design doesn't support her being a dumbass in distress, it's a flaw too big to ignore.