Age: 15
The girl that brought Mugen and Jin(Samurai Champloo) together. Her mother dead, and her father missing for years, we first see her as a teahouse waitress. When the tea house gets burned down, she takes it as a sign to begin her quest to find the sunflower samurai.
Hidden somewhere in her clothes is Momo-san, her pet flying squirrel, to sometimes help her out of a jam. Fuu is brave, determined, and when she has to improvise (mostly when they're hungry), she uses her wits to reach the goal.
TV Tropes[]
- A-Cup Angst: Fuu is noticeably frustrated when Jin and Mugen pay attention to a woman at a bar who is fairly well endowed.
- Artistic Age: Mugen, Jin, and Fuu are 19, 20, and 15, respectively. All of them look at least a few years older, although Fuu certainly acts 15.
- Balloon Belly: Mugen, on occasion. With Fuu, it's a case of balloon body.
- Big Eater: All three of them, but especially Mugen and Fuu (see Balloon Belly above).
- Blinded by the Light: Fuu uses a pair of fireworks to confuse and blind the guards at the execution site so Mugen and Jin can escape.
- Bodyguard Crush: Fuu seems to idolize both Jin and Mugen at different points in the series. Jin is very protective of Fuu, but whether this is a romantic interest, a brotherly/fatherly interest or just yojimbo dutifulness is difficult to say. His emotional restraint makes this even more difficult to fathom, even though he seems to be more in tune with Fuu's emotions, as he's usually the one who notices when Fuu feels down or the one who runs after her when she leaves. On the other hand, brash Mugen is often argued to be in denial of a crush on Fuu; he rushes to her rescue very noticeably in numerous episodes while Jin engages a different enemy and the two tend to interact a lot more than Fuu and Jin. This tends to make him a more popular choice for Shipping with Fuu than Jin.
- Brick Joke: At the end of the last episode, Fuu reveals that the coin she had flipped had actually landed on heads, meaning Mugen and Jin had been free to fight each other the whole time.
- Broke Episode: One of the three major episode situations of Samurai Champloo. Usually the responsibility for getting money/food/other necessary items fell on Jin; Mugen and Fuu forced him to pawn his swords at least twice, and his glasses once. However, in episode 11, Jin borrows at least one Ryō from Mugen (won it on beetle sumo wrestling) to "buy a woman", so it might be warranted in the rest of the series.
- Character Development: Most prominent in the last arc where it shows how much Mugen, Jin, and Fuu changed since their meeting.
- Contrived Clumsiness: In the third episode, Jin and Mugen have left Fuu to fend for herself, she wanders through an alley where two men are watching her, they stick out a vase to make her bump into and break, she apologizes and they tell her to pay up and she tells them she doesn't have any money, they then proceed to kidnap her and stuff her into a sack.
- Curse Cut Short: In episode 1, after seeing the old man getting harassed at the teahouse, Fuu shouts "YOU GUYS ARE A BUNCH OF—" before being taken away.
- Damsel in Distress: Fuu. Given how often she gets in trouble (often being Bound and Gagged) she comes off as rather sensible for hiring two capable body guards. This is Truth in Television. In Edo period Japan, it was not only incredibly dangerous, but actually illegal for a teenage girl to travel without some sort of legal guardian like Fuu does. She would be stopped and questioned by law enforcement on sight. Unless brothel "recruiters" got her first (like one of the episodes shows).
The Dulcinea Effect: Zigzagged throughout the series:
- In the first episode, Mugen offers, unprompted, to help Fuu with her teahouse's thug problem... in exchange for food. When said thugs actually threaten to cut off her fingers, Mugen lounges on his table until Fuu promises him an absurd amount of dumplings to save her.
- However, as early as the second episode, Mugen nearly verges into Always Save the Girl status, barely reacting to the woman who poisoned him until she mentions that Fuu is in danger and killing anyone who gets in between himself and Fuu (including Oniwakamaru, who would have surrendered).
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Fuu finally meets her father, in time to see him killed by Kariya, who is in turn killed by Jin. While recovering from their injuries, Mugen admits that he doesn't want to kill Jin anymore, and Jin admits that after spending years as a loner, he was glad to have friends to travel with. Fuu suggests they should meet again sometime, and they all go their separate ways. This is a threeway Moment Of Awesome, Heartwarming Moment, and Tear Jerker.
- Gainaxing: Fuu gets a moment of this (and a good chunk of Male Gaze) when she smuggles two bombs in the front of her kimono.
- Heavy Voice: Fuu gets one whenever she gorges herself to bloatation.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Jin and Mugen spend 99% of the series without a clue what Fuu is really looking for. Jin just doesn't care, and Mugen can't bring himself to pay attention. They eventually steal Fuu's diary to get a better idea of what's going on, but that plan fails fairly quickly. Mugen doesn't even realize that Fuu has a pet squirrel until halfway through the series.
- Parental Abandonment: All three in various ways: Fuu, literally her parents; Jin, his master; and Mugen, his whole family.
