Wind Breaker Review - A Storm of Fun

Article at a glance:
The main draw of Wind Breaker is its diverse and memorable characters, with strong voice performances and unique fighting styles that reflect their personalities.
The plot effectively supports Sakura’s natural and compelling character development, despite some flaws in story resolution and predictable fight outcomes.
The anime boasts fluid animations, excellent fight choreography, and enjoyable soundtracks, contributing to its overall high enjoyment.

Wind Breaker was better than it had any right to be. I won’t claim it was a masterpiece or anything like that, no. But it understood its setting and what kind of characters it could deliver in said setting. And took full advantage of it. And I think aside from the amazingly animated fights, the characters are the main draw of this anime. After watching episode 12, I think I am finally ready to review Wind Breaker.

So welcome back to another review, once we are talking about Wind Breaker. I enjoyed this anime a lot and I think waiting till the penultimate episode to review it was the right choice. So let’s get started.

Plot

The plot is nothing special. But it does two things well. From the very beginning, it gives us a general idea of Sakura’s character arc, essentially having his character arc be a part of the plot. Secondly, the setting is pretty good. Again, it contributes to Sakura’s character development and it allows all these interesting characters to flourish. So while the story itself isn’t particularly good, you’ll hardly even notice its flaws because of how well it supports the characters.

My biggest issue with the story is how the whole thing with Choji was resolved. Sure, it was a good character moment for both him and Umemiya. But they could’ve drawn it out a little more, instead of having his attitude completely shift by losing just once. Also, Bofurin winning all the fights was a little questionable, because we get all this build-up about Lion Head and most of them end up looking like chumps.

Characters

As I said, the characters are the main draw of the series. The voice performances for every character are incredible, the cast is pretty diverse and full of wacky characters, making them even more memorable. And to add more to all this, the show even goes as far as giving them different fighting styles based on their personalities. Suo and Nirei want to see Sakura grow but this doesn’t happen instantly. It only happens after they get to know and understand Sakura.

I already talked about how Sakura has a character arc baked into the plot, which makes it even more compelling. And it’s a very natural character arc because he was treated like a monster his whole life but now suddenly, he has all these people who treat him normally and want the best for him. It freaks him out initially and he is still getting used to all this. And then I could list off a whole bunch of awesome side characters like Togame, Kiryuu, Kotoha, and more.

And then when you see Umemiya, and how he carries himself in serious situations, you instantly understand why he is the leader.

Animations and Soundtracks

The animations are awesome. Not only are they fluid and good-looking, but the fight choreography is also really good. Every fight in this anime was enjoyable as hell. The soundtracks are quite nice too, I liked the opening theme as well. Awesome production in general.