Are you tired of all these fighting anime set in a school? Then try Wind Breaker, a fight between TWO schools.
Before you leave, let me explain: Wind Breaker delves into a fight between multiple schools within this city, all battling to express their school’s beliefs and expand their territories. We follow along with the Bofurin group, based inside Furin High School. This group is shown to be a ‘good’ gang, as they are a major contributor to the town’s decreased crime level, which is where the conflict starts brewing.
Wind Breaker began airing on the 5th of April 2024 on Crunchyroll and was animated by studio CloverWorks. After watching the quick and snappy trailer, I decided to watch the first two episodes and was hooked instantly. I watched the rest of the season as it came out and doing so made me wish I had found this anime once it was finished because – trust me – I hated that wait.
The first episode starts with a well-animated dream sequence of our main character balancing on a tightrope as a multitude of people complain and belittle him. Their voices seem almost distorted and haunting as they lap over one another until our MC falls off the tightrope and wakes up. We then cut to multiple different shots of a busy morning across the town, showing grocery stores and high streets as we are then shown our main character again as he talks about his philosophy of loving the strong, not minding the weak but hating the weak that think they’re strong.
The scene then changes to a woman being harassed by around five people as our main character shows up behind the main harasser, telling him ‘not to do such lame stuff while in broad daylight’. In a fit of anger, the main harasser throws a punch, and our main character dodges out of the way, and a fight happens offscreen. It then cuts to all five of the harassers on the ground and our main character telling them his name, ‘Haruka Sakura’.
After the first few episodes, I was reminded of another anime with the same type of feel. The storyline of high school gangs solving their problems through fights reminded me of Tokyo Revengers. However, that was all it had in common as the characters and actions differed between the two shows, especially in the case of the main character.
While yes, they do use a little CGI here and there, it was honestly harder to see what was actually CGI as opposed to more traditional digital animation. I believe they used it to a very small degree, and the majority of the episodes are animated in a very colourful and well-done style. This is especially evident when the fight scenes happen, as the animation then becomes amazingly fluid.
Similarly, the voice acting is held to a high standard. I watched Wind Breaker subbed, and I believe that the voice actors managed to portray an amazing level of emotion and personality in their characters. I’m curious to see how the dub holds up with such talents as Austin Tindle taking the leading role.
What I enjoyed about Wind Breaker was the fact that it knew it was a fighting anime set in a school and made sure to emphasise that this was actual teenagers fighting and not adults. This is shown through not only the characters sometimes showing a sense of maturity in protecting others and growing as people, but also how they gloat and do things to try and feel superior, even amongst themselves.
While Wind Breaker shows character growth and amazing friendships, I can see how an anime like this could be seen as ‘one tone’. Wind Breaker knows what its limits are and tries to stay on that path, which could be boring or even disinteresting to others. While yes, I can see that, I believe that there is enough variation in the plot points to keep the watchers interested.
I can’t say Wind Breaker is a top-of-the-line action anime, but it does have its enjoyable moments. I can confidently say that I enjoyed this first season of Wind Breaker, and with season two currently airing, now is the perfect time for anyone to try out the first few episodes to see how they feel about it. Even if Wind Breaker has its hiccups, I will be excitedly waiting for season 2 to end so that I can binge all of it.
Platform: Available via Crunchyroll
