Wind Breaker Season 2

Episode 22

Fighting is extremely cool and all, but as it must often be asked, what are you fighting for? Roppo Ichiza is here to protect Keisei Street and its angel in Shizuka, as shown over the past couple of episodes. But are there heavier emotional depths to that drive—the sort of thing that makes Kanji want to keep swinging even when it's clear he'll go down eventually? As seen in what characters like Nirei have learned in this arc, fighting isn't always about winning. Sometimes it's about simply surviving, and sometimes it's about sacrifice.

Kanji is willing to sacrifice himself and, through his tempering of his whole team, several reinforcements he's got up-front. It's something Sakura notes he hadn't considered in the moment as he was taken in by the raw cool factor of Kanji's declarations. It's a case of Wind Breaker's oft-shown contrasting leadership styles where one isn't necessarily meant to make the other look better. Sakura knows that the fierce fighting of Furin is in the name of protecting their home, yes. But the idea of laying down your whole life (or at least just getting the holy hell beat out of you) to say you didn't give up on protecting one person from your home is a little extreme for him. It also clashes with what he's learning about delegating and letting others handle things, as Kanji is about putting himself and everyone he knows on the front lines. This comparison in the approach between Bofurin and Roppo Ichiza even gets displayed at a turning point in the fight after Tsubaki appears and takes charge.

Getting to that point requires that Shizuka show up to make her stand first, and that is, unfortunately, a weak point of both this episode and the arc overall. Shizuka's motivation is a well-worn classic that even interfaces with those contrasting themes I detailed above: she wishes to stop the fighting and prevent Kanji and the others from getting hurt in her name. She's willing to personally suffer and throw her own life away (not unlike Sakura's pre-character-development attitude) if it means she won't intrude on anybody else. Like I said, solid enough.

The shortcoming is that after just a couple of episodes of buildup, Shizuka's stroll-in to dramatic music and basic moves of martyrdom ring with very shallow pacing, in my opinion. Part of the problem is that viewers haven't gotten much perspective on her, her decisions up to this point, or the degree of agency she could exercise in making them. The other issue is that the details are, in my opinion, presented out of order for effective impact. It isn't until after Shizuka has angsted about giving herself up multiple times, to what, it isn't clear, before the situation is finally exposited. And it's not that majorly shocking a reveal, being that she came from the same impoverished Sunaba district as the guys of GRAVEL, sold into servitude before she ran away. The core idea of the pathos is there, but it feels like a speedrun to the emotional payoff, clipping out-of-bounds through the story's structure to shave off precious minutes. Even the payoff itself is unsatisfying, as she finally asserts agency to do what she truly wants to do, which is…exactly what everyone had her doing already up to this point.

It's an odd miss for a series that's otherwise done pretty well with doling out drama in the previous few episodes, even more so given that rhythm is a key element of this episode! This marks the entry of Tsubaki onto the battlefield with GRAVEL—tying into the broader arc, theme-wise, as Shizuka's past flashback also centers on the idea of acceptance. As might have been inferred from that powerful pole dance, Tsubaki's fighting style is heavily dance-informed, and that goes for sub-commander twins Uryu and Seiryu. Whereas much of the fighting in this episode had been a bit basic compared to what came before, once this section gets underway, the energy to the combat springs to life again. In-synch twins tearing it up is one of those well-worn fighting concepts, but that's because it whips ass every time. Plus, if there are any twincest shippers in the audience for this (and if I know my fight-boy fujoshi, there are), they're probably going nuts over this level of intimate coordination.

Tsubaki's fighting is similarly rhythmic and confident. Even when the gamer-bro GRAVEL lead does score a hit, it's in service of informing how people get hurt in this practice and how that threat shouldn't be enough for Shizuka to sacrifice herself. Also, the through-line about Tsubaki's makeup and the way confidence in oneself lets them move forward does nominally fit with Shizuka's (however undercooked) concept of making her own decision for herself. There is an interesting read on GRAVEL's inability to interface with the more material elements of both makeup and fighting for satisfaction. Still, I'll wait until at least next week's episode to decide if I need to dig into that. This episode, slick debut fight aside, already feels like a step down from the previous entry just because of its central emotional character beat not anchoring things but that more straightforwardly set up action.

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Wind Breaker is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Thursdays.

Chris brawls his way through the mean streets of anime reviews, with a close-knit crew of co-writers he knows he can count on. You can check out his stomping grounds over on his BlueSky or see some of the tags he's thrown up on his blog.