OP: “Catch up, latency” by Unison Square Garden
In a very real sense, for me the Fall 2018 anime season starts with Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru. We’ve had a few premieres and the second episode of Double Decker was certainly encouraging, stamping it as the first candidate to break out of the second tier of new series and be a keeper. But there are three shows that rank far, far above the pack in terms of expectations and Run with the Wind is the first to make its entrance. So truthfully, this is when things start getting serious.
Any time a season looks as weak as this one does, that really ramps up the pressure on one of those top tier series – and intensifies the pain if things don’t work out (as was the case this past season). I pretty much know what to expect from Golden Kamuy’s second season – it’s basically a split cour – and after Ushio and Tora, Karakuri Circus shouldn’t provide many shocks (especially with the major staff of Ushio carrying over). But Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru is more of a mystery, though it does have some known names among the staff. And of course, the author of the novel it was based on, Miura Shion, is now a familiar name to anime fans.
Miura-sensei of course was the author of Fune wo Amu, on which the excellent series that sparked a modest if intermittent rebound for NoitaminA was based. Run with the Wind is produced at Production I.G.. They deserve credit for consistently spending some of the capital from their commercial shows on more literary stuff like Miura’s works (23 episodes in this case, for heaven’s sake), and their general aesthetic – cerebral, introspective, visually elegant – is well-suited for it. And as you’d expect, Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru looks great – virtually 100% hand-drawn, excellent and distinct character designs, rich background details. This is right in I.G,’s wheelhouse, that’s for certain.
This series shares no key staff with Fune wo Amu, despite the fact that less than two years separate two adaptations of the same author. Directing is Nomura Kazuya, who’s a long-standing I.G. veteran with a good if not great record as a director. Scripts, interestingly, are handled by Kiyasu Kouhei – quite well-known as a seiyuu and actor but new to writing for anime. He has written for several TV shows and films, and that fits – thematically this series could easily be a live-action series. The other notable staff name is Hayashi Yuki, a major figure in anime music composition whose efforts make a distinctly positive impact on the premiere.
After all that, then, how is the episode? In a word (or maybe it counts as two, I don’t know) – on-point. Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru delivered the premiere I expected, and that’s a good thing. The build is relatively slow here, though we are introduced to a veritable army of characters (there are big names among the cast, but I’m not going to laboriously list them all now). The anime makes the interesting choice of doing a bit of time-hopping in the premiere – maybe the novel does too – and it works to good effect. The two main names to remember for now are Kiyose Haiji (Toyonaga Toshiyuki) and Kurahara Kakeru (Ootsuka Takeo). While there are ten prominent characters in the story, these two are the ones around whom it will seemingly pivot.
The theme around which Fune wo Amu was built was language, and with Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru it’s running. But Miura seems largely interested in obsession – the drive to complete a task at any cost. That certainly seems to apply to Haiji, who’s determined to field a team (10 seems to be the required number) to complete the Ekiden, an ultra-marathon from Tokyo to Hakone. He’s already got nine men in his apartment house at Kansei University – he finds his tenth in Kakeru, who he spots on the run from a convenience store clerk after shoplifting some bread. Haiji clearly knows good form when he sees it, and it’s obvious that Kakeru has running experience – to the point where his name may even be a famous one in the sport. I quite liked the fact that Haiji made Kakeru apologize to the clerk before taking him back to the apartment – it’s a nice touch of realism and a hint as to Haiji’s character.
That apartment house, Chikusei-sou, is actually the dorm for the Kansei track & field club – though none of the guys living there knew that before Kakeru arrived. It’s an eclectic and interesting bunch of oddballs (including a transfer student from Tanzania), but Haiji has clearly recruited them for a reason. That’s interesting as some of them seem not at all athletic, and one has been there longer than Haiji has. A motivating factor for Haiji seems to be a major injury he suffered in high school, from which he still carries the scar (the intricate depiction of Haiji’s tan is a great display of attention to detail).
As I said, this is a bit of a slow builder, but I’m fully on-board already. It’s a two-cour series that would certainly be classified as seinen if it came from a manga – it’s not going to be in any hurry, and that’s fine with me. College is a tragically underrepresented setting in anime, and I hope Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru ends up as the antithesis to the execrable Grand Blue, a truly awful and demeaning depiction of college life. There’s plenty of drinking and minor debauchery in this episode – this are college guys, after all – but anime is crying out for a smart, ambitious take on college life and the strange psychology of the long-distance runner both. With the pedigree behind it I’m pretty confident this is a series that can provide it, and nothing I saw in this excellent premiere changed that.
ED: “Reset” by Taichi Mukai
Simone
October 3, 2018 at 10:55 pmAs for the staff, from what I understand, there are a lot of names in common with “Haikyuu!”, which makes a lot more sense than carrying people from “The Great Passage” – if this series is going to feature running, which isn’t in itself the most exciting sport to look at, they’ll need to make those scenes dynamic and interesting, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen better representations of sheer athleticism in anime than what “Haikyuu!” had.
As for “Grand Blue”… I’ll happily admit I dropped it, a bit out of boredom, a bit because it was technically pretty poor, but why “execrable”? It was supposed to be an exaggerated comedy to begin with, and honestly, netting out a bit of an exaggeration, I’ve known people whose life in college didn’t seem too different from that, nakedness aside. For obvious reasons they tend not to end up as top scorers, of course.
Guardian Enzo
October 3, 2018 at 10:58 pmEverything about that show is unspeakably degrading and awful to me. In addition to its relentless focus on brain-dead stupid behavior, most of the humor derives from humiliation and bad anime comedy tropes.
But I really don’t want to talk about that show. As for the Haikyuu connection I certainly see it – that was indeed one of the most impressively drawn sports anime ever. But I wasn’t aware of any Haikyuu key staff working on this show except Chiba Takahiro doing the character designs.
elianthos
October 4, 2018 at 3:37 am@Enzo: Key staff in common – courtesy of a friend – : Takahiro Chiba (Haikyu!! chief animation director) is designing the characters. Hideki Takahashi (Haikyu!!, Neon Genesis Evangelion) and Takashi Mukouda (Gurren Lagann, Space Dandy) are key animators. Hiromi Kikuta (Haikyu!!, Mr. Osomatsu) is sound director.
kamuy
October 4, 2018 at 1:16 amI agree that this looks very promising but let’s face it, if this were a female running team, you’d find plenty of reasons to naysay or even pass on the show like you did with Hanebado for example. FYI Hanebado’s final match was a total love song to playing sports and a best-of-Haikyuu level nail-biter.
Guardian Enzo
October 4, 2018 at 6:22 amOther than the fact that both series are nominally about sports, I can hardly think of two more dissimilar first episodes. That’s a very strange hill to die on.
kamuy
October 4, 2018 at 1:34 pmYeah, silly me, how could I forget that huge sports anime fans always pick up or drop a sports show based on just one single episode. But Ok then, let’s hear about some shows with (mostly) girls playing sports that you’ve praised as much as you’ve praised those with (mostly) guys playing sports.
elianthos80
October 4, 2018 at 6:10 pm@kamuy: to be fair unlike sport anime until circa mid-Nineties ( fond childhood memories of mine of those seminal volleyball tennis basiball and gymanstics shoujo series [Attacker You!, Ace O Nerae, Attack No. 1, Hikari No Densetsu, Yakyukyou No Uta , anyone? ] but they haven’t aged too well in either animation quality, script or voice acting ) most sports anime nowadays either have a mainly male cast or are sourced from seinen and shounen titles so it’s a niche withing a niche. Smaller pool, worse odds. In this light Haikyuu!!!’s Hinata as Attacker You!’s main heroine secret grandson in both attitude and looks is both amusing and bittersweet to me as more or less conscious hommages go btw :,D .
I tried watching Hanebado and the beach volley series too but they didn’t click with me either unfortunately.
elianthos80
October 4, 2018 at 6:11 pmpardon the typos please :,)
Simone
October 4, 2018 at 8:38 amMmm, I don’t know about Enzo, but personally what put me off Hanebado was how serious it felt. In fact, almost gloomy, oppressive. This one feels much lighter in mood. Not saying Hanebado’s approach is wrong, but it may not work for some people (like me).
Guardian Enzo
October 4, 2018 at 9:05 amOr me.
kamuy
October 4, 2018 at 1:44 pm@Simone. I don’t see what’s wrong with being serious about sports, it’s not an easy field and hearts can and do break. I thought the show did a good job showing how true love of sports can prevail through all the obstacles. Not every show with girls has to be about cute hijinks. In any case there were plenty lighter moments, it was hardly all doom and gloom.
Yukie
October 4, 2018 at 8:20 pmFor me the drama and angst of Hanebado just honestly felt very artificial…the animation looks amazing but the story is a hard sell.
Flower
October 5, 2018 at 1:36 amThis. Exactly this for me as well.
And on both accounts. I thought the animation and production values were superb. But I just could not get around the overall tone of that aspect of the story, and to be fair the number of people who had similar reactions were not few in number.
But on the other hand I also knew many who enjoyed the series, and I could definitely see how someone could love the series if the aspect of the series that was a stumbling block for me was not so for others….
kamuy
October 5, 2018 at 4:35 amI thought most people were upset with how the mother issue was handled but I can agree that some of the drama was overblown. It was never bad enough tho to overshadow the love of sports that this anime represented very well. The final match over the last two episodes alone would’ve made up for it even if I’d hated the rest of the show. I haven’t felt this kind of genuine passion since the last arc of Haikyuu where they played that super server guy’s school. Haikyuu’s better, but the feeling I got from this last match was pretty close and the animation in it was right brilliant.
kamuy
October 5, 2018 at 4:39 amI meant to say super striker tho I guess he was great at serving as well.
Simone
October 5, 2018 at 5:36 amI’m not saying there’s anything wrong, I’m saying I wasn’t interested in it. There’s plenty of things that are realistic but that I wouldn’t watch a show about.
Passa
October 4, 2018 at 9:51 pmIs that same Hanebado with the weird titty (can I say titty on this site?) physics?
I knew I wasn’t gonna go near that thing when I saw how they made those girls breasts move…
Spencer
October 5, 2018 at 12:13 amHow can people stand to watch seasonal anime with a mindset like this? Yeah, fanservice is stupid and often degrading, but it’s built into the artform at this point. There are better reasons not to watch Hanebado than, “Those breasts are out of control!”
Zilla
October 4, 2018 at 4:19 amI thought this first episode was fairly “paint by number” storywise, but that’s okay with me in a sport driven anime. I do like the animation style quite a bit.
Deluxe
October 4, 2018 at 12:15 pm“… and intensifies the pain if things don’t work out (as was the case this past season).”
Don’t really see which show you are referring to… Banana Fish maybe ?
Guardian Enzo
October 4, 2018 at 12:44 pmThat would be a yes.
animealex
October 4, 2018 at 6:53 pmAside from everything else going on, my first reaction was “This feels real.” That may be the result of my nearly sleepless 24-hour shift which just ended before watching this, but looking over the cramped, dirty backgrounds I don’t know how else to describe this. And somehow this show speaks to me, perhaps because I was an avid hobby runner during my twenties in the military and later at the university (college) while also partying similar to the guys here.
Tangent one: I like the inclusion of a no gag black char among the cast.
Tangent two: I’m also already very tempted to ship the two main leads, even though I don’t think there will be any substance to it.
And now, off to bed.
Snowball
October 5, 2018 at 4:41 amDespite the laid-back atmosphere I found this episode pretty energetic. It was a brilliant opener.
Future Imp
October 21, 2018 at 11:17 pmSparse pickings, but this one’s a keeper. Def has that collegiate, communal Honey & Clover vibe which is right in my wheelhouse.