English Dub Review: Wind Breaker “Sakura Arrives at Furin”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

An admirer of strong people with a complete disinterest in the weak, Haruka Sakura, a loner and delinquent high school student, aims to be a fighter at the top of Furin High School. Coming from outside the city, Sakura enrolls in Furin High School, infamous for its delinquents.

Our Take:

Multiple schools have their students reaching the top of the class through education, perseverance, and good grades. However, in Furin High School, they have to fight their way to the top, and by that, I mean demolishing everyone until they’re the last ones standing.  The latest anime from the spring lineup seeks to punch its way into the hearts of the manga’s fans while attempting to get newcomers like me to join the battle.

The episode introduced us to the series’s protagonist, Haruki Sakura, a hotheaded and shunned delinquent unafraid to pick a fight with people more selfish than he is. Through its dream sequence, it showcased that everyone mistreated him for his strength, actions, and appearance, with the latter due to heterochromia in his hair and eyes. This sequence explains why Sakura hesitates to help others and accept people’s assistance. He arrived at the town of Furin hoping to become the top fighter, but his plan went in a different direction after saving the cafe owner Kotoha Tachibana from a vicious gang demolishing the city. Fortunately, he was backed up by the students of Furin High, known as “Bofurin,” tasked to protect the town from invading criminals.

In hindsight, this seemed like another modern underdog story about a nobody becoming a hero through strength and acceptance. It doesn’t appear that it’ll have anything refreshing to its formula based on the first episode, but execution-wise, I was pleased with what the concept offers so far in its characters and world-building. Sakura seemed like another hotheaded character with slight hints of generosity that could grow as the series progresses, similar to Bakugo from My Hero Academia. However, Sakura’s reasoning behind his behavior was enough to make me root for him to reach his goal, with Austin Tindle being a solid choice to reflect the protagonist’s untamed personality. I also would credit CloverWorks for the studio’s decent uses of 2D and CGI animation, mainly for the fight sequence between Sakura and the criminals. In short, it’s a riveting start to a series that had the potential to punch its way to the top of the anime department.