Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Run with the Wind
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yuna49
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I don't see how he can run in Hakone if he needs surgery. I also thought Haiji was way too dismissive of the guys who wanted to join the club. Don't they need subs just in case? I understand that Haiji worries adding them might break up the current team camaraderie, but I think having an insurance policy against illness or injury makes more sense. |
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rahzel rose
 Subscriber Posts: 824 |
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I can understand why he didn’t add anyone in, though. At this point it’s just way too late in the game to train someone to be able to do the running they’re doing. Maybe they have long distance running experience, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to just jump right in and compete. Anyway, this episode was so good, but it was definitely hard to watch. I spent the whole time waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’m glad Haiji and the twins made up, though. And Yuki and Kakeru bonding about family was good too. Sucks for Kakeru that his mom said those things to him, but. Small towns, man. I can’t imagine how Haiji is able to walk around like normal, though. Of course we don’t know what the doctor is saying, but . . . from witnessing my mother deal with knee issues, I can only imagine the pain he must be in. |
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Merida
 Posts: 1945 |
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Jota telling Joji that Hana-chan might actually like him and Joji's reaction to it cracked me up.
 It's nice to see that there's still room for humour inbetween all the running drama.
There were so many awesome little moments between various characters again, that i'm having a hard time to pick my favourites. But Haiji & Prince and Musa & Shindo are defintely at the top of my list. So i guess it's going to be "suffering with Shindo" next week, then maybe some less tense episodes (in terms of physical suffering at the very least) before it'll be "suffering with Haiji"....i'm not exactly ready, but definitely willing to stay with these boys until the very end! |
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yuna49
Posts: 3804 |
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One of the nice features of Hakone from a story-telling point-of-view is that it lets the writers focus on each man for a brief period of time. On another site these sequences were decried as too monologue-heavy, but I thought each runner's vignette was nicely balanced by portraying the other runners as well.
This is truly an epic contest if each runner is covering some 23 km, in some cases with substantial terrain effects. Can't think of anything equivalent in the US, and certainly not any such event that would get substantial television coverage. We have marathons, but no long-distance team events like Hakone that I know of. |
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NeverConvex
 Subscriber Posts: 2302 |
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Yeah, this was hilarious! I've honestly been pretty lukewarm about the two of them as characters, but I loved them in this past episode. Heart-warmingly hilarious.
Oh, wow! I had somehow missed that they each individually are running 23km. That is indeed what wiki confirms, though! It's kind of an odd distance, though -- a tiny bit over a half-marathon per runner? Wonder how they came to that figure exactly. |
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Gina Szanboti
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While they obviously couldn't substitute Shindo, aside from creating drama, why didn't they swap him with someone running the second day? Especially since the 5th leg is the longest and most grueling. I know you can't sub anyone once the race begins, but changing up the roster beforehand doesn't seem to be against the rules, as far as I can tell. He seemed much better just by evening.
Nevertheless, powerful episode. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2302 |
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I'm confused and upset by Shindo's story all the way around. What was the point to writing a deeply ill runner into this story? It looks absurd and deeply self-injurious in a story that's otherwise grounded and deeply concerned about the well-being of its cast.
I would have sort of gotten it if the payoff was (to pitch a hypothetical example) them all giving up on the race because they realize the true value in running for them wasn't in the running itself but in caring about one another and ohmygodwhydidtheyletShindodothis... (although I personally rather like running for its own sake!) But they didn't go that route at all. It's just Shindo-chan nearly killing himself and creating a clearly insurmountable disadvantage for our team of runners... even though they were already at a comically dramatic disadvantage. Ugh. I just come away from it thinking like this was exactly the sort of ginned up, artificial drama that doesn't really say anything or mean anything and which I thought this story was above relying on. Is there something I'm missing that redeems the way Shindo's arc was written? |
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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The feelz... stuff like that work really well. It's probably going to be one of the most beloved episodes of the show and an highlight for most people. I'd disagree over how grounded the story is (I think it's pretty ridiculous that they even cleared the qualifier), so I'm not really surprised how this went. I am however extremely surprised that the story went with the illness arc on the first day, like Gina said I can't imagine that it'd be forbidden to have a 2nd day runner switch with a first day. I didn't realize the race was a 2 day event until they mentioned it, so I was pretty flabbergasted when they mentioned that. I'm guessing the writer didn't want this arc to take the wind out of the sail of w/e will happen with Kageru in the 2nd day. Honestly I wouldn't even be surprised if Shindo time was somehow really good (supposedly if a runner finish 20 minute after the first person to finish a section it get noted but no one mention anything about that) it was pretty ridiculous that Prince didn't even finish last (I think he was 16 out of 18) and that every person was somehow passing plenty of people despite there team being dead last in qualifier. It's like the writer has huge respect for the Hakone marathon but none for the team that compete in it or believe that every school send there B or even C team to the event or something. I think it bares mentioning that running with a cold was a spectacularly bad decision, this isn't just a bad moment to pass this is potentially life threatening. Between the fever and the dehydration you can cook your brain. One of my friend has a relative who decided to play basketball when they had a high fever as a kid, they're a vegetable now. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2302 |
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I think the rest of the series is reasonably grounded. I mean -- it's not a documentary, sure. It does tell a certainly implausible story about a team of complete amateurs who turn around into high-quality half-marathon runners in a short time period. But I think that's more "merely" implausible than it is outright insane; while competently running a half-marathon isn't easy, it also is incredibly far from the limits of human ability. It's not like the story's claiming Prince went from reading manga 24/7 to competing in ultra-marathons and triathlons for fun.
That said, I absolutely agree that A] Shindo's self-injury while running was painfully underplayed. I was trying to get at the same point, although I got a bit distracted; I was specifically frustrated that after running a half-marathon while deathly ill, Shindo was clearly totally OK and cheerful just a few hours later. That portrayal is absurd and downright irresponsible. Running a half-marathon while deathly ill is not just a matter of loving your friends a whole lot and wanting to run with them; you are going to seriously harm yourself B] I don't understand why our multiagonists' team is shown as relatively easily surpassing much of the Hakone competition. This isn't just deeply unrealistic, but also entirely sidelines the race itself in favor of internal team drama. It completely fails to acknowledge that everyone involved in the Hakone run trained quite seriously. Such a strange decision |
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whiskeyii
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Even as someone who enjoyed this episode (I am a sucker for these kinds of push-past-your-limits plots), I would so heartily never EVER encourage this kind of behavior in real life, and it did feel oddly melodramatic in a show that's been on an otherwise fairly even keel. Having said that, I think this was meant to "nerf" Shindo; he's a very fast runner who was in his best element, so the intent was probably to ramp up the stakes *even higher* (because seriously injuring yourself isn't enough, I guess?) for the second half, ie the final battle. Still, the real-life Hakone facts give me shudders; it's both heartbreaking and horrifying. |
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sabriyahm
 Posts: 291 Location: Georgia |
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Prince was dead last. Each runner after caught up a few spots but Prince I am certain was 20th. I saw a clip of the woman’s race where the runner BROKE her leg and crawled on her hands and knees to the next runner. So this is some pure Japanese thinking and I’m not surprised by it. I had a lot of feels watching this. I wanted them to switch him out but I don’t think anyone actually knew he was sick except Yuki. I forgave them that. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2302 |
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Do you have a sense of why it was necessary to 'nerf' Shindo? He has been portrayed as a pretty fast runner, and especially competent in mountainous terrain, but both of those are certainly true of many other runners participating in the Hakone Ekiden -- of people who have been training for this opportunity for years, and didn't just fall into it because an anime protagonist happened to wander into their life.
It feels to me like there's a clear opportunity to tell the obvious story there: Shindo is a good runner in some intrinsic sense (& because of his experiences growing up), and well-fitted to local terrain in Hakone, but he's matched up against many runners who are at least equally intrinsically well-suited and have spent a great deal more time actually training for this opportunity. Why not tell the story of Shindo exceeding his limitations by realizing that his childhood trips through the mountains, while valuable, were still a world apart from dedicated training as a runner, but that he still gosh darnit wants to wreck these fools and run his heart out for his family & friends (or whatever)? Making him super sick, even leaving aside how reckless and awful that makes his treatment of himself and everyone else's treatment of him, robs us of the opportunity for an actually realizable, actually laudable story of a runner exceeding his limitations in the moment. |
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Sisyphusson66
Posts: 96 |
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I don't think they "nerfed" Shindo, I think his illness actually fits with his part of the story in a certain way. While everyone else was trying to overcome something or discover who they were, etc., Shindo didn't have any of that, as he was the most stable of the group. Even in his episode earlier in the series, he was depicted as being some sort of superhuman, as he was balancing everything at once. Eventually though he can to lose something because of this, his girlfriend. While Shindo remained roughly the same, stable character, he is uniquely the only member of the team to actually lose something of value as a result of this experience. So in the illness, Shindo is overcoming the obstacle threatening to cause him to lose something again. Now, of course the depiction of it is to an extreme for a dramatic impact, but I think the situation is also depicted as Shindo's alone. We never see the others pressure him to run in his condition, and it is safe to say that none of them would have blamed him for dropping out. The coach tried to get him to drop out, but other than that, the decision was Shindo's, at least from a story perspective, and the team was there to support his decision either way. Now what would have possibly had made the depiction demonstrate the recklessness of the decision would have been to have Shindo hospitalized afterward, or at least hooked up to an IV in the hotel, and/or have Haiji reprimand him or something for continuing to run in such a condition after the race. |
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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Yeah I double checked, just before prince pass his sash they mention a university being 16th so that's why I though they were 16th. Although that university is apparently only 40 sec behind the lead so prince is something like 1 minute behind the fastest runner of his section, on a 20 something km that's insanely good. The difference between the fastest runner and slowest for the 10 km at the olympic is a bit over 2 minutes and those are all the fastest athlete of there country (no half marathon is run at olympique level but the difference would obviously be greater). If we assumer that the best runner for the Hakone marathon are close to olympic level, which is not an exaggeration at all since most track and filed olympic athlete come from university athletic team, that means prince went from literally no running experience to close to olympic level runner in a few months. Musa also manage to not only recover all that lost time (so you know prince wasn't that far behind the last runner) but also overtake some other runner, making it to position 14th. That would be exceptionally good even for a long time athlete but for someone who had zero experience less than a year ago that's downright silly. |
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whiskeyii
Posts: 2245 |
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Speaking purely in terms of shonen sports anime, I think it’s probably because we the viewers have no knowledge of other strong mountain runners, so we expect Shindo to be something of a trump card here. If you think about the other strong runners we’ve seen in the show, they’re either distinctly African or they’re one of two people we’ve seen from rival schools. From a realistic perspective, yes, there’s a high chance that some if not all of the teams have runners primed for this section. But from a narrative standpoint, we only know that Kakeru’s would-be school is strong, and that one guy in particular is very strong. So unless he’s running, I think there’s an inherent audience expectation that Shindo alone would’ve given our boys a real leg up in the competition, which was dashed to pieces with Shindo’s fever. That said, he really should’ve been hospitalized or at least hooked up to an IV after all that. >.> |
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