A REVIEW OF A CROSS-COUNTRY ANIME STARRING XC JESUS

The sly captain, Kiyose Haiji

THERE ARE SPOILERS HERE. IT'S A REVIEW, NOT A BOOK REPORT. 
Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru or Run with the Wind is an anime adaptation of a Japanese novel of the same name that has been airing this season (Winter 2018). You might have heard of the company that is producing it: Production I.G. They produced hits like Prince of Tennis, Kuroko's Basketball, Haikyu!!, and Welcome to the Ballroom, which have become well-known sports manga. This is another sports anime that features a group of college roommates who are suddenly made aware that signing the dorm contract means that they have unwittingly joined their university's track and field team. The captain, Kiyose Haiji forces them all to train to run in the Hakone Ekiden, which is a marathon.

The Hakone Ekiden course route 

Got'em

Kurahara Kakeru attacked by dorm mates

The plot centers around the main character Kurahara Kakeru and his internal struggles with his teammates, opposing runners, and himself. Kakeru has some things that he complains about before episode 10 (the most recent episode as of this post).

1. The most major thing he complains about is that there's no way that a group of unathletic people can train properly enough to run the Hakone Ekiden

2. One of the dorm mates, the otaku Oji (Prince), is so slow that it doesn't look like he is making any progress. At one point Kakeru wanted Oji to quit the team if he didn't improve his time.

Running angry is just as bad as driving angry

3. Kakeru thinks that training a lot means that you will get faster (because he likely didn't get enough training from his high school coach despite being the fastest runner - its a point of conflict in the story, I'll explain it later). Therefore, when he overtrains and doesn't get any faster he takes a hit to his own confidence and starts freaking out to Haiji.

The salty teammate

Another struggle that Kakeru faces include salty teammates from middle school who saw Kakeru getting preferential treatment, which is pretty silly because he turned into a crazy workhorse who has no concept of overworking and has a unordinary desire to win his races. In any case, his teammate is salty that Kakeru never spoke up about getting fair treatment and just left the team.






The summary of the story so far is as follows:

Haiji! Too close!

Kakeru who is in college and has left behind running for sport is stealing food from a convenience store.

Haiji is nearby, sees a person running really fast, hops on his bike and chases after him. He then catches up, freaks Kakeru out and convinces him to join the dorm... cough cough (track team) and introduces him to all the other dorm mates.





Kakeru is introduced to:

Nico-chan Senpai/Akihiro Hirata (an older student who smokes a lot)

Yuki is that kind of glasses character

Yuki/Yukihiko Iwakura (who has already passed the bar exam)













Musa/Musa Kamara (an international student from Tanzania)









The twins Joji and Jota/Jiro Jo and Taro Jo










Shindo/Takashi Sugiyama (a goody-two-shoes from the countryside)








King/Yohei Sakaguchi (actively looking for employment and a quiz show enthusiast)









Oji/Akane Kashiwazaki (a major otaku)

Press F in the chat

Haiji announces that he has finally filled the dorm and proceeds to tell all the tenants that they must either train for the Hakone Ekiden or get kicked out of the dorm.

Haiji proceeds to lure all of the tenants to training through blackmail, playing to their desires, and forcefully pulling them outside before training. Despite Haiji's efforts, there were still multiple tenants who would not accept his terms. These were Yuki, Oji, King, and Kakeru.

Through episodes 3-7, Haiji works to break down why they feel like they cannot or do not want to run. For King, the desire to look for a job was greater than the desire to run. Haiji convinced him that running in the Hakone Ekiden would be great to put on a job application. Yuki wanted to have free time in clubs learning how to socialize with women. When his upperclassman Nico-chan Senpai began working out in earnest, he decided to stick around for the training a little longer. Oji has a really hard time sticking with the training because as an otaku he likes enormous amounts of free time to sit down and read manga. He is also very weak and has no desire to become athletic or physically strong. However, after being looked down upon by Kakeru and Kakeru's salty ex-teammates, he decides to continue training.

Kakeru realizes that Oji can run with better form when he is reading. Try reading a book while walking around,, you will understand. 

Kakeru is the hardest nut to crack because of his previous experiences in running, and how self-invested he was in high school. By episode 10, however, Kakeru has undergone an intense character redevelopment. He goes from criticizing the little amount of progress Oji has gone through and asking him to leave the team if he can't get faster to believing in Oji and taking leadership of the team. It takes being left out of a race and Haiji overworking himself to exhaustion for Kakeru to take responsibility - being the one that everyone looks up to (because he's so freaking fast). He starts personally training Oji, understanding the different members of the team, and sacrifices his own race to make sure that Oji does make the progress that Kakeru demanded of him.

It's XC Jesus

This anime means a lot to me because for the past 6-7 years that I have been exploring the manga/anime landscape, there hasn't been a sports anime about running that has caught my attention like this one. Another runner (in real life), that I know, also watches the series. I asked him what his thoughts were on the series so far.

Some things he said:

"I am a former Cross-Country runner and a current University student so the setting and plot are perfectly combined to be both relevant in my life and bring nostalgia from my days as a runner."

- This is particularly unique to Run With the Wind because college is typically an untapped setting for anime. The high school age range and the "living alone means the main character is special" setting is highly typical of anime.

"The characters are definitely the star of this anime. Each embodies a certain stereotype, but I feel it isn't for the same reason that harem anime has a cast of the major girl stereotypes. The characters embody the reason that many of us gave up running, and I feel that I can see myself in almost every single one of them."

-Run With the Wind definitely has a lot of tropes that it fits but it dares to put these tropes in sports anime where they are rarely seen. While the token black character/"DNA affects sports performance" is way overdone/irrelevant in anime, the idea that nerds/geeks/otakus can be on a sports team and carry the same spirit of the team as everyone else can't be seen anywhere else. While it is true that they embody the reason that many xc runners give up running, in Run With the Wind, they are used to demonstrate that running is a unifying force that pulls in people from all backgrounds.

"I would like to talk about the nostalgia that the topic of running brings me. During the training sequences over the first few episodes, I was constantly reminded of moments from my own time in XC. The competitiveness between runners. The feeling of decreasing your time by a few seconds. The exhaustion after a good run. Being dead tired at practice at 5am... The meet created this feeling most of all."

"While the animation was a little janky at times, you can tell that these scenes were designed by people who had run in races before. Most of the actions seen were the same that I did in many of my races. The jumble at the start of the race. Looking ahead during. Deciding when to pick it up. The
scene at the end [of the race] where he is looking at his feet, dripping sweat especially brought back memories as I could almost feel the strain in his lungs as he is gasping for air."

-This whole series is nostalgic. Coming out everyday at the same time and realizing that some of the people you train with aren't there can be concerning. So when some of the tenants start making excuses for why they can't run, it was disappointing and saddening. But there is so much heart being put in by the animators to create an authentic experience (there are too many experiences of runners to make a one size fits all) or maybe an introduction into the world of competitive intercollegiate running. Seeing that Haikyu! and Kuroko's Basketball were similar in this sense, I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised, but it is still a pleasant thing to observe.

"There are some issues with this show though. The most annoying to me is how the teams treat each other. I have never seen anything like that especially in running and it seems kind of contrived to increase the drama of the show. The message of the show, which is that running is for anyone, I feel could be better displayed with an emphasis on beating personal times rather than the moment of the underdogs beating the mean other team."

-I completely agree. Teams can get competitive, but there aren't nasty words spread about other runners or blatant talk meant to put down someone else usually between teams.

"Overall, Run With the Wind is a great character driven sports anime. The matches may not be as flashy as Haikyu but I feel the interactions between the characters is more relatable...Run With the Wind has already made it into my heart and I can't wait for the rest of the season."

While I recognize the flaws that this anime has, I really appreciate it for what it is. A sports anime about one of the criminally underrated sports of all time - cross country, is hard to find, much less for it to be well-animated. This is a great anime for the season. It might be ignored next to series with zombie idols and Jojo's 5 and bunny girl senpai, but it stands tall amongst sometimes hollow sports anime. What I'm saying is that it's pretty good and you should still watch it even if you've been spoiled.

P.S. Don't these guys all look the same?

Characters from Run With the Wind, Free, Prince of Stride: Alternative, and Haikyu!