Wind Breaker Season 2

Episode 25

This season of Wind Breaker ends, fairly enough, with a look back at the beginning. Not Sakura's performance review, as I jokingly suggested last week, but rather a debriefing of everything this arc has been about. It also serves as an admission of Endo's place within Bofurin's origins, and what that means for its future now that he's reappeared. It's all portents and intimidating prospects about what's to come, which is a good move to make with the anime theoretically prepping viewers for a prospective Season 3.

It's not all ominous foreshadowing, of course. Wind Breaker still knows what Wind Breaker is about, and that means at least a little time spent on the guys just wholesomely hanging out. Kotoha even packed them fresh, delicious sandwiches, yaaaay! Sugishita and Sakura get to reinforce their little routine about not getting along even as they haven't had a ton of interaction this season (Sugi's been kind of shortchanged, honestly). It's that sense of belonging, of having a group of friends who accept each other, that's been so baked into the series this season, and this section of the boys metaphorically cracking open some cold ones is a reminder of that. Especially in the face of the fact that it wasn't always like this, and might not continue to be for long.

The long shadow of Furin isn't just the existence of Endo, but the school's earlier status as a much more typical delinquent stronghold. This is the place Sakura had heard about when he transferred over way back at the beginning of the series: a scrappy fight palace full of fiercely independent instigators who clawed each other down purely for the adrenaline thrill of being the crab at the very top of the bucket. It was fighting for its own lizard-brained sake, and while that may have been enough for some, the benefits the new Bofurin have brought to the town and its people demonstrate the value that kind of evolution holds overall.

This adds a new layer to what Endo represents. He's both the Omega and the Alpha: the wider adult world and its systems of the future, and also a symbol of the past "old ways" of delinquency. He's "tradition" as defined by opposition to progress—rejecting social assistance that uplifts everyone in favor of a rigid outside-world oligarchy where the rich and powerful can just pay to have homes busted up and people kidnapped. Endo, and even moreso his just-revealed brutal battle buddy Takiishi, are the might-based meritocracy of old-school delinquency. It's one of those ideological issues that needed to be confronted but was avoided until now, as Ume admits that he never got to directly settle things with Endo, rather letting the latter kick the can down the road and reconstruct. These are the sorts of chickens that always come home to roost.

The difference between these styles and ideologies lets Wind Breaker bust out its stylistic chops one more time, to pointedly varying effects. The stories of Ume and the others unifying Furin to become Bofurin are presented as lavishly and in different aesthetics as the series has treated flashbacks before. Nirei turns out to have a knack for Rakugo, with flourishes embellishing the heroic tale as the somewhat tall one it must be. But when Endo's side of the story is recounted, the presentation becomes more realistic and grounded. There is still symbolism, in the way Endo's fights cause the scenery to figuratively burn down around him. But it's deathly seriously rendered, staggered with the narration such that viewers question how symbolic this actually is until it's clarified. That's the threat Endo represents to Wind Breaker's status quo—that he could bring the boys of Bofurin down to being not fun anymore.

As such, it's appropriate that Endo's returning turning point orbits around Sakura. Sakura himself has been out of focus a few times in this season, playing second fiddle to characters like Kaji and Tsubaki, but always internalizing the lessons they imparted to him. He's truly learned what acceptance means in the modern version of Bofurin, and despite his momentary doubts last week, confirms that he won't be swayed by Endo's appeal to his own older ideals. There's a heartening montage that plays up Sakura's character development and sells this episode as a more effective season finale than the first season's ending episode was. Sakura won't be swayed by the toxic rugged individualism that Endo thinks he can stir in his heart, and is instead down to fight for Bofurin's ideals of accepting, affirming community.

That means for as long as this season of Wind Breaker could take on its downtime episodes or as repetitiously as it hammered some of those points into Sakura, it feels like worthwhile payoff at the end here. The lead has undergone character development, and the audience has retroactively glimpsed what character development meant for Bofurin overall and delinquent fight-boy anime as a genre, as far as Wind Breaker is concerned. That means, if this anime does get a third season, that it's going in with the advantage of not just upping the mechanical story stakes, but the ideological stakes as well. Wind Breaker built itself up by showing just how hard dudes can rock, and now those dudes will need to fight for their right to keep rocking into the future.

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Wind Breaker is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Thursdays.

Chris has watched at least 100 anime, and really really really really really thought most of them were at least okay. You can peruse his thoughts on those and other subjects over on his blog, or see which cartoon girlfriends he's reposting art of over on his BlueSky.