Culture news I watched this anime by pure chance, and I did well: this series from the Spy x Family studio could break everything in 2024
Last week, while we were examining the new releases in the Crunchyroll catalog, our attention was focused on one of the new creations from the animation studio behind the anime Spy X Family. For my part, I had completely missed the announcement of its release and I decided to watch the first episode without knowing for a single moment that I had perhaps launched one of the potential great surprises of 2024 It just goes to show that chance works out well, and I’m going to tell you why you need to watch Wind Breaker very (very) closely over the next few weeks!
A new anime that will surely harm Tokyo Revengers
Over the last few days, I’ve decided to kick things into gear when it comes to Japanese animation and catch up or keep up to date on recent releases. This desire comes at just the right time since the opportunities keep coming : the first season of Solo Levelingthe return of Blue Lock with the episode Nagi – a film (adapted from a spin-off manga) which takes up the events that we discovered in the first season but from the point of view of the character of Seishiro Nagi -, the arrivals in the Netflix catalog from the first season of Spy X Family and all episodes of GTO: Great Teacher Onizuka or the unexpected fourth season of Black Butler. In short, thanks to this and much more, we have just started a very enjoyable spring period in terms of successful manga adaptations. As if that wasn’t enough, I extended my list with a new anime that has flown under my radar a bit and that I stumbled upon by pure chance. As a result, it has a good chance of being my spring favorite!
As I said, I found myself trapped in a viewing loop that I myself fueled by discovering… Wind Breaker. If I hadn’t paid more attention to the release of this anime, it’s because I wasn’t really interested in the manga. Tokyo Revengers as well as its adaptation, overseen by the studio Liden Films, upon its release. One thing led to another, I ended up understanding that this lack of interest was not particularly an isolated case because it is the whole genre from which it draws inspiration that pays the price for a lack of notoriety.. In France, mangas of the type “ furyo » do not provoke the same enthusiasm as in Japan – even if one of the greatest representatives, in the collective unconscious, remains GTO -, and this is explained by the fact that they are very culturally marked and that they borrow a lot of social themes specific to the land of the Rising Sun. Yet established in the manga landscape for (easily) two decades, the genre of furyo has clearly gained popularity, and the adaptation of Wind Breaker could take him to a new stage.
Wind Breaker, one of the potential nugget anime of spring 2024
After having diligently followed the episodes of Solo Levelingbroadcast every Saturday, so I naturally found a successor by setting my sights on Wind Breakeravailable every Thursday on Crunchyroll. Pretty much, I was on the verge of missing out, but I’m very happy to have launched the first episode of this adaptation of Nii Satoru’s manga, especially since it is overseen by the CloverWorks studio . A rather familiar name since we find it on the screen of the most popular and anticipated animated series : Spy X Family, Bocchi the Rock! or Black Butler: Public School Arc, to cite just a few examples. It is therefore with this experience that the teams are taking on Wind Breaker, a manga that is not that old since the start of serialization dates from January 2021, recently compiled into sixteen volumes. From its beginnings, Wind Breaker has established itself in Japan as one of the contemporary mangas to follow!
Only a year and a few after the publication of the first chapters, around March 2022, Wind Breaker had already sold 1.22 million copies. Given these results, it’s absolutely no surprise that this caught the attention of the animation studio and Crunchyroll ! For the moment, only one episode is available since the broadcast follows a weekly rhythm. However, if you are the type to watch an anime in one go, you shouldn’t wait too long since the first season only has 12 episodes. Technically, this should bring us to a final broadcast on June 20, a great opportunity to celebrate the start of summer 2024. Finally, it will of course depend on the remaining eleven episodes but, for the moment, Wind Breaker is perhaps one of the new products to follow very closely since it seems to me to have the potential to break everything this year!
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In 20 minutes, Wind Breaker made a strong impression on us, and we are already asking for more!
Come on, it’s time to tell you a little more about this inaugural episode and, above all, to give you my impressions and tell you why it caught my attention so much. Already one, after viewing, I clearly had the feeling of rediscovering the know-how of the CloverWorks studio in terms of action since “Wind Breaker” takes up what was all the rage in Spy X Family, a judicious mix between rhythmic passages and really funny sequences. Here, the central character is called Haruka Sakura and, from the start, we feel how he is a character who just wants to fight with others – we will come back to this – than fighting your own demons. If we already have some elements of understanding about it, we see the characteristics of a hero who is built on the model of “ tsundere “, or a character who displays distant, haughty and violent behavior while deep down he hides numerous flaws that will change the image we have of him during the manga/anime. In a few words, there is this endearing and psychological side that hits the mark!
Also, what’s smart about this first episode, is that he revealed enough to hook me and make me want to continue, notably by introducing a large group of protagonists who arrive during the last minutes of the episode. This same group is a bit the whole point of what Haruka was looking for when enrolling at Fûrin high school, in the heart of the town of Makochi, since the establishment is not so famous for the academic level of its students as well as for the fighting legends who follow the traditional curriculum. His goal is to be the king of the school, but a leader very different from the usual standards: he wants to become the strongest student, the one feared by all ! The problem is that he arrives a little late because the thugs of yesteryear are now the protectors of the city and the different neighborhoods: it’s quite simple, if a group of thugs acts up, another group comes to calm their ardor, and the most popular in the neighborhood are… the Wind Breakers.
It is with this appearance, full of promise for the rest of the anime, that this first episode ends., in particular because we are subsequently led to discover the way in which Haruka will integrate into this group. This is also the whole point of interest around this character because, beneath his adolescent appearance who plays tough and wants to become the strongest, it is an adult in the making who is looking for their place within a community, he who has always been rejected, as suggested by the few elements of his past that we can discover during the episode. Moreover, this marginal side is found in his design since Haruka is a young man with partly bleached hair, typical of thugs and the type of furyo cited previously. Whatever happens, it is within this gang that he will evolve and fight for his convictions. We see this clearly in the final fight which, thanks to the work of CloverWorks, honors the fights imagined by Satoru Nii. Afterwards, these seemed to me to be both fun and overflowing with humor, rhythmic, well choreographed and exhilarating with sometimes interesting ideas (like the passages in first person view): nothing more was needed to make me want to see more. In short, these first twenty minutes made me very (very) curious, and I already know that I will follow this with great attention every Thursday!
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