YMMV / Ao Haru Ride

• Base-Breaking Character: Kou. Lots of fans dislike him for choosing to be with Yui, well aware she is guilt-tripping him to keep her company, instead of pursuing Futaba.
  • After chapter 34, almost anyone. The current contenders are:
  • Futaba. Half of the fandom insists that she's considerably a horrible role model because of her choice to start dating Touma, claiming that she's forcing herself to fall in love with him. However, others applaud her as a strong female lead for moving out of a toxic relationship and making decisions on what makes herself happy instead of being a cliched Love Martyr.
  • Touma. Some fans claim that he's been pressuring Futaba to move on from Kou and date him, while others say that he's a better match for Futaba because he gives her the care and consideration that Kou doesn't.
  • Shuuko, for some reason, is also being hated for being the ultimate cockblock for Kou. Some say that she's only looking out for Futaba's well-being, but her detractors claim that she has no right to decide what's best for Futaba (even though they never said anything about Futaba when she did the same thing to Yui about Kou). People even take a step further to blame Shuuko's (failed) relationship with Tanaka-sensei and project it as a cause for her actions even though it literally had nothing to do with it.
• Die for Our Ship:
  • Yui and Touma get the brunt of the hate from Kou/Futaba shippers.
  • Kou's also the subject of a lot of anger from Touma/Futaba shippers.
• Girl-Show Ghetto: Ao Haru Ride can be seen as one of the more recent shoujo series breaking out of the girl-show ghetto. Many shoujo manga series around the late 2000s were more likely to see a Live-Action Adaptation rather than an anime adaptation due to shoujo manga not being very popular in the mainstream anime community. However, Ao Haru Ride surprisingly did receive an anime adaptation, and almost immediately its labelmates Wolf Girl and Black Prince and My Love Story!! also subsequently received anime adaptations too.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: A user on tumblr made a hypothetical fan cast should the series ever get a live-action production, one of them including Yudai Chiba being suggested for the role of Touma. Now that a live-action production is being made, and the casting for the main characters have been released, much of the fandom was excited.
• Memetic Mutation: Ao Haru Ride was one of the biggest features in Cup Noodle's recent commercial featuring the "kabe don" (wall slam). Yuki Kaji and Maaya Uchida discussed this in length on their radio show, Aoharadio, and Kaji candidly nicknamed Uchida "Maaya-don" to get her attention. It's caught on with the rest of the voice cast and even Io Sakisaka herself. In addition, all the fan letters submitted to Aoharadio now have senders that always have a "don" in their name somewhere.
• Misaimed Fandom: The main point of the story is youth — growing up — AKA teenagers making mistakes and learning from them. Io Sakisaka intended for readers to watch the characters grow up in their own ways. Unfortunately, with the release of every chapter, you still have people complaining why Futaba still isn't dating Kou.
• Ron the Death Eater: Fans, especially the more hardcore Die for Our Ship fans, tend to exaggerate Touma's flaws, especially when it comes down to Futaba, even though in his position it would be natural he would be more careful about keeping his girlfriend close to him.
• The Scrappy: Yui, the designated Rival for Futaba. Her current relationship with Kou is subject to lots of Ron the Death Eater moments. It's even to the point where her actress in the film, Mitsuki Takahata, had joked with her fans not to hate Yui.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: The tension between Kou/Futaba and Touma/Futaba shippers has gotten worse sometime after chapter 30 was released.
• Stoic Woobie: Kou, after his past is revealed. First his parents get divorced, then his mother becomes ill. The guy just wanted to study hard and secure a proper future for his sick mother, but ended up giving more time to his studies instead of spending more time with her. And then, he had to visit his hospitalized mother day after day, watching helplessly as she slowly inched towards her death. After having gone through all this, he blames himself for his mother's death and doesn't believe that he deserves to find meaning in everyday life. Poor kid definitely needed that hug in Episode 11.

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