Hello and welcome to the last week of Kaze Fui for 2018! This time Shindo gets dumped, the team rallies behind him and Kurahara catches an older mans eye. Lets jump in!
First off, lets get the elephant out of the room. That’s right folks, no Kaze Fui until January 8th. Looks like they are taking a break between seasons. It’s not unusual for the Holidays, but it does mean less pretentious blog posts from yours truly. That out of the way, onto the actual anime. This was the first week Kaze Fui failed to ‘WOW’ me. It’s not bad by any stretch, I still love it. But it feels like the series knows about the 3 week break and is choosing to calm down for a moment before the Holidays. We got some development of Shindo, and it was good. We also get to see our team come together, even Kurahara joining in, to comfort him. But there were no big revelations or big paradigm shifts like the last few episodes. Maybe that’s for the best though.
Now as I said, Shindo was the big focus this week, and he needed it. Up until now he has mostly supported other scenes and characters, and that isn’t bad. But him, Musa and the twins are starting to fall behind a bit in terms of character arcs. What I like about Shindo’s though is we get to see the overwork that plagued Nico, Haiji and Kurahara from a different angle. With them, they couldn’t handle it or didn’t pace themselves well, trying to do everything. They fell apart. With Shindo, he had that down. Shindo just made sacrifices on his time, prioritizing it. Of course, this still has consequences with what you sacrifice though. In this instance, Shindo sacrificed his relationships and social life to dedicate himself to the team. And Kaze Fui showed this brilliantly.
You see, up until now it had slipped my mind that Shindo had a Girlfriend. Kaze Fui did mention it earlier, but I just assumed she would show up as a side character. Instead, Kaze Fui had us forget about her just like Shindo seemingly did. Not even giving her a name, nor dragging this out. We saw Shindo’s perspective 100% of the way, as she no doubt struggled with the decision on her end. Eventually it getting dropped on his lap. Sure, you could make judgements against her for dropping it so suddenly, but we don’t know the whole story. And from a narrative perspective, I think it works. Shindo is to well adjusted, having his life together as Yuki said, to have the same issues as Kurahara or Nico. So it makes sense that his issue’s would come from outside his carefully curated daily life.
The contrast to this lost relationship though, is we see the relationship Shindo has built up with the team. We see how much he really cares about this, to the point that not getting a good time is starting to bother him. In regards to the team, I thought the running segment in the middle was great. Seeing them one by one join Shindo “just because”, until they were all running as a group. In step with each other, even Kurahara who started the series running alone. I also like that Yuki, in response to Haiji’s “every runner is unique” threw it right back in his face. Trying to spare Shindo’s feelings a bit. After All if everyone is unique, doesn’t that mean some people can’t run at all? For me, I would say yes. Everyone can run, but not everyone can run at a competitive level.
As far as running competitively though, we do see 3 more members of the team earn official times. Those being the Twins and Musa. The twins make sense to me, they did Soccer (Football for everyone else), so they are used to lots of running. Musa is a bit more of a mystery to me, and it seems like Kaze Fui is just sort of playing the “black people are good at sports” stereotype here. I hope we see more of his story, because the Foreigner in a Foreign Land aspect appeals to me. Really though, everyone in the dorm seems to have unusually decent fitness to be able to run like this every day. I don’t know if that’s just the Japanese school-system paying dividends, or Kaze Fui taking some liberties. I am assuming the latter, based on Prince’s times, but I could be wrong.
The last bit that happened this week was the return of Droopy Eyes Sakaki and a creepy reporter. For the first, I am glad Sakaki is back. He was one of our first real bumps in the road, and triggered Kurahara’s introspection. I want him to be involved, to trigger more growth and to see Kurahara’s current growth. To tell us more about what happened before all of this. As for the reporter, I hope he can do the same. I call him a reporter because of the camera and because we saw him interviewing Fujioka before to. That he has only shown up after Kurahara’s name showed up on the track team website? Well clearly he is interested in the story, and most likely knows a bit about Kurahara’s Highschool days. Regardless, I hope we get some backstory from one or both of these guys soon.
So all in all, a decent episode for Kaze Fui. Like I said, it didn’t wow me in any way, but I did still enjoy it. For a 3-week cliffhanger I did feel it was pretty weak though. I get that it’s setting up the next arc a bit, with the reporter and Sakaki, but to stop in the middle of a track meet? Well, technically right before the meet, but still. Leaves a sour taste, though I suppose it worked. After all, I definitly want to see what happens come January. Suppose we will have to wait and see.
But what about you? Enjoying it so far? With 1 Cour done, how do you think Kaze Fui will shape up with the upcoming strong Winter season? Let me know below!
