In New Prince of Tennis, Fuji laments over how he longer has Tezuka to help drive him to keep improving at tennis after the latter leaves for Germany. Fuji recreates his tennis to be more offensive (as opposed to his more defensive, passive approach of past matches) in order to be more competitive at the U-17 world cup, at which he is one of the 14 middle schoolers representing Japan. His first new counter, Hollyhock Blizzard, reflects this by replacing the Higuma Ootoshi (which is functionally a lob) altogether, as this new counter returns opponents' smashes with a smash of his own.