Welcome one and all to the Fall 2018 season. For the rare few new ones, I am Lenlo, and one of the shows I will be covering this time will be Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru or Run With The Wind. Lets jump in!
So some general things I didn’t mention in the first impressions. Just like Welcome to the Ballroom, Kaze Fui has a style I personally really like. It goes for the realistic body size/proportions but isn’t afraid to bend and flex from that for the sake of expression and interesting visuals. Maybe I just have a thing for tall and lean character models, but Production I.G. has a style I like. Maybe its the expressiveness of the characters, the tiny pupils instead of the now modern anime moe blog eyes, that helps. Regardless, Kaze Fui looks good and I expect it to look good in motion to. After all, if an anime about running didn’t have good running animation, there wouldn’t be much point would there?
So now, onto some spoilers. There were lots of great character interactions this week, with Kaze Fui really setting a bar for dialogue. My personal favorites though, and the centerpiece of the episode, is Haiji and his manipulations. Granted, I am now slightly less on Haiji’s side because of his methods, but as a viewer that doesn’t make them any less amusing. We get to see just how much he want’s this, that he is willing to sink so low. Afterall, coercing someone with knowledge about resume’s or cute girls is one thing. But threatening eviction is another entirely. Sure, its probably in the rules, but if he didn’t tell them about those rules a head of time, that is pretty manipulative. The said, there is an argument to be made on whether or not he would really evict them.
From what we have seen, everyone in the dorm likes Haiji and think’s well of him, so I doubt this is standard behavior for him. The fact that he is changing his tactic for each dorm member instead of just gathering them all together and threatening eviction, to me, shows that he wouldn’t actually do it. Yes, its still underhanded. But at this point I believe that if Haiji received a resounding, unambiguous “NO” then he wouldn’t just evict them. He would of course still try to convince them, like the bet he made with Kurahara, but the difference I think is that one is blackmail while the other is persistence. Its a shaky line, admittedly, but I understand Haiji’s desperation. What is curious however is the one member Haiji didn’t have to convince, who seems to understand it all as well. My man Nico.
Nico is probably my favorite of the side characters in the dorm so far. He has the most complex relationship with Haiji and Kurahara. Nico, as the oldest in the dorm who has been lazing his days through an engineering degree, is probably the only one who truly understands Haiji’s desperation of this being his last year. As a former Track and Field member himself, he probably had to give up or quit his own dream in the field. Meanwhile, he can also relate to Kurahara and his experiences competing and the stress that puts on someone. Nico is in a unique position to understand both of our leads and is also their senior, so he can talk to them both about it. I look forward to seeing where Nico goes from here. He seems better suited to convincing Kurahara than Haiji ever will be.
Now I mentioned in the last paragraph Kurahara’s previous experiences and the stresses of competing. Kaze Fui showed us this week a small glimpse of that. It looks like he had, for lack of a better word, an abusive or just plain terrible coach. Some people will say that kind of coaching builds character and only the best will stick it out anyways. My opinion is that it destroys athletes. Yes you need to break someone’s technique and fitness down and then rebuild it better than before, but from what we saw, this is a coach that cares only for winning. I suspect that either Kurahara lost at an event, and got on the receiving end of it, or he feared that and so quit before it could happen. Either way I can’t wait to see more, and his arc will no doubt be about finding his passion again.
With all that done, I now need to talk about my fears for the future of Kaze Fui. You see, unlike Welcome to the Ballroom which had an interesting sport to focus on and lots of energetic movements, Kaze Fui has running. I personally do not see how Production I.G. plans to make that interesting. There are no “special techniques” nor are is it a head to head competitive sport, technically. It’s one of endurance and mental fortitude. Which means that Kaze Fui is going to be almost entirely internal problems and hurdles. So it is going to have to be carried by its characters. So far it’s managing it, I like all of these characters, and the dialogue is fun. The “Not all black people can run” joke had a very different punchline than I thought it would. But I am not sure they can carry a whole season.
So to close out, I am hopeful for Kaze Fui. It’s the series that caught my eye the most during the First Impressions posts. Whether or not it succeeds though depends entirely on its characters. As unlike many other series Kaze Fui has no bombastic battles or a Yutaka Nakamura to fall back on. It is sink or swim with these relationships.
But please, tell me what you think down below! Are the characters compelling for you? Is my taste trash? Should I stop picking 20+ episode series for this blog and dedicating myself to multiple 2 cour shows a season? Let me know!
I don’t think the series should have much difficulty filling 20 more episodes. Sure, running isn’t a very interesting sport. We won’t get tense matches or visually impressive feats. But those are hardly the only things sports series can be about. As you said yourself, the show can instead focus on the overcoming of internal hurdles and problems, and that can be plenty interesting. Yes, it’s different from ordinary sports series, and because it has to rely on its characters more, there are risks attached. But I personally rather like this fresh take on the genre, and I think the series shows quite a bit of promise.
What I particularly like about the series is that it basically follows a bunch of amateurs. Following newbies is hardly original, of course, but these people aren’t just newbies: they’re regular people, with no real interest in pursuing greatness. That makes them very relatable, and it immediately sets up some major hurdles that many beginners will probably recognize. Pursuing a new sport is scary. It requires a leap in the dark, where you have to try something new without knowing if you’ll enjoy it, and want to keep doing it. And if you aim for something big, like a marathon, you may very well fail. And that can be frightening.
Nico (also my favorite side character so far) illustrates this mental hurdle very well I think. When Haiji offers him the chance to run again, at some level he clearly wants to take it. He starts smoking less, and even puts on his running shoes again. But he’s also clearly afraid of committing himself. He’s making excuses, talking about how he doesn’t have the natural figure of a runner, and in his conversations with the law guy he seems ready to give up at a moment’s notice. On the one hand he wants to take this opportunity, but on the other hand he’s hesitant, because he doesn’t want to get hurt, and you can’t fail if you don’t try. This is something he’ll have to overcome, and it’s something that I, as a very indecisive person myself, find very relatable.
All of which is just to say that there is plenty room for interesting conflicts, even without the usual spectacle. A Place Further than the Universe told a great inspirational story of what perfectly ordinary human beings can achieve if only they’d try, and I expect something similar from this show. It may not be groundbreakingly original, but it’s something I always enjoy watching, and a message worth repeating.
Nailed it in one. Maybe you should be writing these instead.
I hope I didnt sound overly critical of it, I think if Kaze Fui nails the characters (which it has so far) the internal strife, drama and challenges can be very interesting.
I had not thought of the beginner aspect of the sport for a lot of these characters though. It makes sense, I started boxing back in June and have felt much the same as you just described. Ill have to remember that.
Nico is great.I like how quietly Kaze Fui portrayed his dilemma, from just not lighting up the cigarette like we saw him in the first, to subtly reinforcing how much of a smoker he is with one of the characters surprised his room didnt smell like smoke. Digging out his old shoes and then seemingly going out for a run on his own before running into Kurahara. I look forward to his story the most so far.