Sakura Haruka’s been shunned throughout his youth for his half-white hair. He’s had to learn to fight, even taken a joy in it. That’s why he’s transferred to a high school known for its violence. Here, he’ll challenge himself and fight his way to the top. The premise is an overly familiar one in delinquent anime, but “Wind Breaker” quickly turns this on its head.
At Furin High School, the fight-obsessed students protect the town and are celebrated by its townspeople. The students patrol the town after school, or just outright ditch class for nefarious activities such as…repairing storefronts, painting, and helping the elderly.
It’s all repulsive to Haruka, who’s been habituated to distrust acceptance and just wants to fight. His safety net is being able to punch his way out of a situation. His defense mechanism is aggression, so he’s off-balance when his rudeness is taken in stride.
“Wind Breaker” is populated with characters who play off of or invert stereotypes – the long-haired tough who barely utters a word but speaks with his fists; the eyepatch-wearing enigma who never breaks his calm demeanor; the stressed out second-in-command who’s always popping antacids.
Despite valiant attempts otherwise, Haruka even befriends Akihiko, the comic relief who can’t fight but has an encyclopedic knowledge of other delinquents’ fighting styles.
“Wind Breaker” takes its first turn by dismantling the notion of Haruka fighting his way to become the school’s #1. How is there time for that when you’ve got to protect the town, fix it up, and run off less wholesome gangs of delinquents?
The characters are likable, and the animation has plenty of detail. I love the scuffed street lamps each covered in unique graffiti. The town has a sense of place, streets that are narrow but long, somewhere that’s seen tougher times but is climbing out of them. The character designs are strong and interesting, immediately recognizable from each other. Interiors play with slanted light and shadows.
I love any excuse for a good fight scene, but I’ve never really synced up with the delinquent genre. Hearing characters spend an episode trying to out-tough each other as build-up to a fight where you more or less know how it’s going to go isn’t that interesting to me. That makes the storytelling rely on convincing stakes, zany comedy, and fight choreo and it’s rare that anything – animated or otherwise – can land two of those three.
Go the other direction and you’ve got the comparison freshest in my mind: I was excited about last season’s “Bucchigiri?!”, a gorgeously animated, queer re-imagining of “One Thousand and One Nights”. Unfortunately, that spent most of its time on a navel-gazing protagonist and an aggravating genie who just wouldn’t stop spouting his catchphrase. It had some of the most fluid fight choreo I’ve seen animated, when it remembered to actually have a fight. “Bucchigiri?!” had great direction driven into a hole by awful writing and it’s that writing that I often sense is missing in delinquent stories. If I’m going to deal with nothing but stereotypes, I can watch those same stereotypes punch it out as mecha or isekaid into a fantasy comedy. The delinquent genre’s ability to toy with realistic settings and relationships offers the opportunity for character-focused depth, but that’s not always what’s pursued.
How does “Wind Breaker” cut a different path? The plot stakes are interesting because they’re really about Haruka’s acceptance of himself and ability to find a community. You can already tell that becoming #1 at the school isn’t about fighting his way to the top, but about whether others are willing to form a community around him and trust his decision-making.
As frustrated as Haruka is by the lack of fighting his schoolmates, there’s still plenty of fighting to be had overall. It’s refreshing to see an anime about fighting that doubles down on the amount of fight scenes without becoming repetitive. Each character has their own style with nuanced differences to the visual presentation. I was worried at first that it wouldn’t be grounded enough, but a mid-season tournament arc introduces a number of believable fights, including a jaw-dropping animation of aikido that is crystal-clear and beautifully fluid in its movements.
That tournament arc shepherds in what “Wind Breaker” is really about. The show unexpectedly evolves into a contemplation on the nature of different kinds of leadership, who each attracts, and the sacrifices each asks of its followers.
The leader at Furin spends most of his time gardening, which immediately sparks Haruka’s ire. How can Hajime, the strongest fighter at their school, be a scatterbrain who spends all his time lost in growing tomatoes? Yet as different as they each are, his gang of delinquents each has the freedom to make their own connections and decisions. His guidance is gentle and emotionally smart. A fight is only what’s needed to protect someone or achieve a goal…and then its period of usefulness is over.
The rival Shishitoren are fascistic and brutal. One failure earns a pummeling and ejection. Brutality inflicts terror and terror keeps order. The leader’s whims are only sometimes kept in check. Devotion asks emotional numbness and denies growth. A fight means the loser is tortured far after the loss, less as punishment and more to terrorize and keep in order those who remain.
They throw down on an abandoned stage, one-by-one. Flashbacks on both sides paint the nature of sacrifices asked and given. Haruka spends more time biting at his teammates than his opponents. You genuinely don’t know how each match-up will go. For some, the fight is less important than what it allows the storytelling to reveal, but don’t be mistaken – the fights are utterly gorgeous.
Every hesitance I have with delinquent anime is addressed by “Wind Breaker” and turned into something beautiful. It isn’t perfect – its character introductions mean the fights carry the pace initially while the stakes evolve more slowly. As much as we may understand him, Haruka would become aggravating if the others didn’t handle him so well and give him an opportunity to be likable. Women are barely represented in the show – really it’s only the owner of a cafe, adoptive sister to Furin’s leader Hajime, who gets a complex role. Two early fight scenes are spurred by a man jumping in to protect a cornered woman from aggressors.
All that said, “Wind Breaker” does a pretty good job of breaking down toxic paths that men are tempted to follow as they grow up, and what a little bit of gentleness, nurturing, and acceptance from other men can do. By the time “Wind Breaker” hits its stride a few episodes in, you’ve already enjoyed some good fight scenes with even better ones on the horizon, and you’ve met an ensemble of likable characters you’re about to understand a whole lot better.
“Wind Breaker” is on Crunchyroll.
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Gabriel Diego Valdez 