English Dub Review: Wind Breaker “Dialogue/New Classmates”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Dialogue

Admitting defeat, Tomiyama tries to pass Shishitoren on to Umemiya, to which Umemiya declares, “Instead of taking over your team, we’ll be friends!”  Bofurin and Shishitoren are dumbfounded at this turn of events, but talks progress, food is brought, and a celebratory afterparty starts.

New Classmates

With the fights against Shishitoren over, Class 1 enthusiastically welcomes Sakura, Nirei, and Suo’s return.  Their classmates, brimming with interest in the details of the fights, surround them, asking questions.  Sakura can’t hide his bashfulness.

Our Take:

The Turf War has concluded, but there’s still more stuff that needs to be wrapped up before the season concludes.  The Bofurin team came out on top with their flawless streak.  However, despite losing the competition, the Shishitoren clan was victorious in regaining their humanity and love for fighting.  As a result, the gang was rewarded with peace with the Bofurin team from none other than Umemiya.  This revelation shocks Shishitoren and even Sakura, but considering Bofurin’s goal, I don’t blame Umemiya for making that decision. 

It further emphasized Bofurin as a tough-as-nails yet loyal group that fights for honor and respect instead of their selfish gain. Before the Turf War, Shishitoren was seen as the complete opposite of Bofurin, although that was due to Tomiyama’s twisted obsession with “freedom” and strength.  Thankfully, that changed when Umemiya knocked some sense into the young leader.

The two episodes serve as the aftermath of the tournament, in which Bofurin provides their peace negotiations with Shishitoren and encounters new faces in Class 1.  However, these new faces are actually a couple of familiar classmates from Class 1 who didn’t get the spotlight until now.  Those two classmates are Taiga Tsugeura and Mitsuki Kiryu.  Taiga is a transfer student obsessed with muscular training and learning about people’s “virtues”, but he can also be very loud.  Additionally, Taiga always allows his opponent to throw the first punch before he knocks the stuffing out of him, which could serve as both his strength and weakness.  Mitsuki Kiryu is a former rich kid who likes to play games on his phone and is popular with the ladies.

While they may seem more dialogue-driven than the Turf War arc, that doesn’t make them less interesting.  With the show’s emotion and humor in check, both episodes continue progressing the storyline effectively even after Bofurin’s first big struggle. At the same time, “New Classmates” did decently well in making Taiga and Kiryu as likable as the main protagonists.  Of course, the most significant piece of their character development goes to Sakura.  Even though he’s still a hothead, Sakura is slowly but surely coming to terms with being accepted and even accepting the support from his new allies to reach the top.  However, it also resulted in him blushing most of the time, which he’ll have to get used to.