https://starcrossedanime.com/wpcontent/uploads/2024/06/WindBreakerBanner.png Delinquents are a pretty common sight in anime. From classic Shounen like Yu Yu Hakusho to more modern series like Tokyo Revengers we get plenty of them every year. So standing out amongst the crowd can be pretty difficult for a show like this. Do you get weird with it like JoJos Bizarre Adventure Season 4? Or more heartfelt and personal like Great Teacher Onizuka? Regrettably most shows never really figure that out. Whatever they try most fall short and arent able to separate themselves from the pack. Well today Im here to talk about one that manages to do just that though only barely. A delinquent battle shounen that tries its best to fly and by the end is able to fly on its own. Originally created by Satoru Nii animated and adapted by Cloverworks directed by Toshifumi Akai and with music by Ryou Takahashi and produced by Shinji Yamauchi I give you... Wind Breaker. Be warned this review contains minor unmarked spoilers for Wind Breaker. It also contains major spoilers in some sections however these will be heavily marked to avoid accidents. https://www.sakugabooru.com/data/4788953af6406209116220a2fbd8126c.mp4 Production As usual lets start with something thats important for any anime but especially so for flashy battle shounen their production. Animated at CloverWorks who are responsible for beautiful and well animated series such as Wonder Egg Priority and Bocchi the Rock it shouldnt be surprising when I say Wind Breaker looks pretty good. It doesnt reach the same same levels of detail with its backgrounds and environments nor is it quite as experimental with its animation sure. Wind Breaker plays it pretty safe with both staying well within the lanes and rarely doing anything too fancy. In doing so however Wind Breakers production manages to be consistent remaining generally pleasant to look at at almost all times never experiencing any kind of melt or fall off. Every episode has the same potential to pop off. Besides theres one thing that Wind Breaker has over everything else this season: Fight Choreography. Seriously I cannot understate how good Wind Breakers fights are. From fluid fullbody wide shots showing how every part of a characters body moves to close ups with some pretty emotive facial expressions Wind Breakers action is top tier. Whats especially nice about it though is that compared to some of its contemporaries like My Hero Academia or One Piece the fights are surprisingly grounded in reality. No insult intended of course One Piece especially has been flying high recently with Egghead Island and Wano. But its nice to have some more downtoearth action for once. Fights where no one is Supernaturally tough or has named super moves like Sky Shattering Fist or other gimmicks. Wind Breaker is just normal dudes beating each other up. Sure they occasionally jump to exaggerated heights for effect maybe backflip into an axe kick or blow someone a few feet away with a punch classic anime exaggeration. But comparatively its rather subdued. Powers wise I mean these people absolutely get messed up. This isnt to say Wind Breaker doesnt have some great visuals outside of the fights either. While not as experimental as Bocchi generally staying on model and in style Wind Breaker has a number of visual motifs and metaphors it often uses to spice up some of the more emotional conversations. The use of Light and Dark for mental states walking on glass or a tightrope for precarious positions the use of empty space for that feeling of being alone composing a scene to really sell the size and support of the class all the classics. And sure none of these are really new weve seen them before. But Wind Breaker executes on these established visual ideas pretty well with some good direction to keep them interesting. All in all Wind Breaker stands out primarily for its fight choreography and animation doing just enough everywhere else to not drag those big action moments down. So if its action you want it has it in spades. https://starcrossedanime.com/wpcontent/uploads/2024/04/WindBreaker1.1.jpg Narrative What is the action about though? Why are people fighting what are they fighting for who even are they? To answer those lets talk about Wind Breakers narrative. At its core Wind Breakers plot is pretty straight forward. It follows Haruka Sakura a young delinquent with unique hair who has come to Bofurin Highschool in his quest to be the strongest. Along the way he meets new friends finds a place he can belong and together they fight their way through various other highschool delinquents. Sounds pretty standard right? We get plenty of I want to be the strongest action shows from Solo Leveling to Blue Lock its a common idea. What sets Wind Breaker apart though or at least tries to is how it frames this conflict. Because Wind Breaker is rarely about the individual. Rather its about this one single word/theme that encapsulates the entire show: community. From the very first episode Wind Breaker is more concerned with Sakuras relationship with those around him than it is with his strength. His combat ability is never in question at no point does Wind Breaker ever ask if Sakura is strong enough to win a fight. In fact the entire season takes place over... A week? Maybe two? And nowhere in it is there any kind of training or selfimprovement arc. Rather Wind Breaker asks where that strength comes from what motivates Sakura and the other Bofurin delinquents to fight at all. Its this classic idea of the weight of someones fist that what they are fighting for is more important than their personal strength. Hell in the very first episode Wind Breaker establishes that the only reason Sakura wants to be the strongest is because he thinks it will make people recognize and accept him before realizing he can find that here in Bofurin along the way. What I like the most about Wind Breakers narrative though is that its about more than just The Individual vs The Collective. Those kinds of fights the single strong loner losing to the combined might of the community are again pretty common. Instead Wind Breakers first big conflict is community vs community highschool vs highschool and how the attitude and leadership of a community can affect its culture. Its more about the emotional strength and maturity required to recognize and confront the toxic elements of the community you love as well as how hard that is to do for fear of destroying it than it is any characters physical strength. It felt... novel. And while Wind Breaker still had plenty of the classic shounen trappings turning bad guys into allies and large casts with unnecessary fights the action I mentioned previously managed to hold it all together. Really the biggest issue Wind Breaker has narratively is how it has tied itself the classic shounen formula of Introduce new villain gt Confront villain/Get more cast members gt Get villains backstory gt Defeat villain gt Repeat. This makes it predictable and like some of the previous episodes or conflicts didnt have any lasting effect. Now since its a singlecour show this problem isnt that big but you can definitely see problems coming down the track with its already announced 2nd season. Additionally due to being a singlecour show most of the cast doesnt get fleshed out... at all. No arc barely any personality they are sort of just window dressing. Wind Breaker continues to introduce core cast members even in episode 11 for goodness sake. Before I dive to deep into the cast however let me sum this section up: Wind Breaker shows a lot of promise with its setting and core story it just gets bogged down in the trappings of the genre from time to time. https://starcrossedanime.com/wpcontent/uploads/2024/04/WindBreaker4.1.jpg Characters Returning to the cast this is where Wind Breaker is the weakest. Not necessarily because the cast is bad I can only think of one character who is an active detriment to the show more because most are barely characters at all. In fact out of the entire cast I can only think of three whom I would say are anything more than cardboard cutouts: Our lead Sakura the mentor Umemiya and the villain Togame. Each of them fulfills their role exceptionally well. Sakura is that fish out of water the excuse to other characters to explain things to the audience while still adding his own thoughts to the conversation. Umemiya is that pinnacle of strength the embodiment of what Wind Breaker is trying to convey. And Togame? Hes the one who didnt make it who believed the same things as Umemiya but wasnt strong enough to protect it. They are great Its only when we start to look away from these core three that Wind Breakers cast starts to fall short. From Nirei to Sugishita Suou to Hiragi and all the others in between. None of them are really characters closer to onenote cardboard cutouts really. Now this isnt entirely their fault there are ideas there hints of the characters they could become. Its just that Wind Breaker doesnt give them the same time or attention as the other three. It makes sense Sakura Umemiya and Togame are the most thematically important characters of the season. However that doesnt change the fact that Wind Breaker is throwing 20+ characters at the viewer and expecting us to remember and care about them. The one exception to this is Choji and that only because a bad character is still technically a character regardless of how much we might wish otherwise. Now to talk about Choji in any meaningful way I need to dive into some spoilers. So if youve watched the show or just dont care about being spoiled feel free to click in and read. Otherwise just know that Choji is meant to be the primary antagonist of the season the antithesis to Umemiya and his communitycentric philosophy. Yet hes upstaged entirely by his secondincommand Togame and ends up coming off as nothing more than a petulant child with the depth of the most forgettable Shounen villains. He is in every respect a disappointment. All in all Wind Breakers cast is decent where it matters mediocre where it doesnt and downright disappointing in only a single spot. As a lead Sakura is quite fun and satisfying to watch whether hes punching someones face in or figuring out how to talk to people who actually treat him well and depend on him. He definitely has personality even if its an abrasive one that is slowly getting sanded down by those around him. Meanwhile Umemiya is an inspiring mentor and Togame a beautifully tragic villain doing his best to hold on to something he loves. So yeah overall? Its not bad. Not great could definitely use a Season 2 to flesh most of them out but not bad. https://starcrossedanime.com/wpcontent/uploads/2024/04/WindBreaker2.2.jpg OST Finally we have the OST the last real section of this review. Partially performed by Ryou Takahashi directed by Keiki Nishida and produced by Shinji Yamauchi Wind Breaker has a generally decent track list. Regretfully those tracks havent been officially released so I cant provide you with many links nor names. Those I can give you though arent bad The big standouts for me would have to be Conversation an emotional and atmospheric track that accompanies the end of the best fight of the series. Wind Breaker also has more light hearted background music like the funky At Cafe Pothos which is just fun to listen to. And when it needs big hard to miss vocal tracks? It has Stronger a nice power ballad for Wind Breaker bust out when it needs something a tad more epic. That said those three are sort of the core of Wind Breakers music. Other than them the record doesnt have anything particularly memorable. Theres some generic rock with songs like Call my Name Upheaval and Higher Ill Go as well as some spacefilling background tracks like Supersonic. Theres even an unnamed emotional but ultimately not very memorable lament that I sort of like. But none of these can really compare to the main three I linked above. I wish I could listen to the entire OST just to make sure Im not missing anything but seeing as how I cant find a complete copy Im going to have to settle for these eight. All in all Wind Breakers OST seems to do its job but not much else. This isnt something Id ever seek out a CD for nor will I remember it years after the fact like say... Megalo Box. Inepisode its used well enough augmenting the scene and generally not taking away from anything. But it rarely elevates them like I would hope and isnt worth listening to on its own either. All around its just sort of... fine? https://starcrossedanime.com/wpcontent/uploads/2024/06/WindBreaker9.1.jpg The Search for Community With that we come to the personal section of this review. This is where I drop the reviewer hat and just try to talk to you about my experience with Wind Breaker. This is a spoilerheavy zone no holds barred so if you havent seen the show and dont want to know what happens skip it. Its mostly going to be talking about Togame and Sakura again anyways. So with that in we go https://starcrossedanime.com/wpcontent/uploads/2024/05/WindBreaker8.3.jpg Conclusion So yeah all in all Wind Breaker had a pretty promising first season. While visually the only memorable thing about it is the fight choreography the narrative and characters mostly have a lot of promise. If it can refine these ideas can break from the common shounen trappings and choose its villains a tad more wisely I think Wind Breaker could carve out a niche for itself in the market. It definitely stands out to me more than Kimetsu no Yaibas recent seasons which have focused more on flashy effects than a meaningful story. Do I recommend you watch Wind Breaker? If youre looking for some solid handtohand combat or are willing to make an early investment in a longrunning shounen then 100 I do. A 2nd season was already announced and meaning if you enjoy Wind Breaker you already have more on the way. That always makes it easier to recommend something knowing you wont be waiting forever for more of what you love. Thanks for reading If you want to leave a comment positive or negative you can leave it herehttps://anilist.co/activity/751208066.