The Spring 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Wind Breaker Season 2

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Haruka Sakura wants nothing to do with weaklings—he's only interested in the strongest of the strong. He's just started at Furin High School, a school of degenerates known only for their brawling strength—strength they use to protect their town from anyone who wishes it ill. But Haruka's not interested in being a hero or being part of any sort of team—he just wants to fight his way to the top!

Wind Breaker Season 2 is based on the manga series by Satoru Nii. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Wednesdays

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Christopher Farris
Rating:

An advantage to Wind Breaker's first season awkwardly ending just as a new story arc was getting underway is that this new season can pretty well jump straight into the action. Sakura gets the boys back in town to head down to one of those warehouses they film tokusatsu fights in for a big brawl with KEEL. There's only a bit of a preamble power walk and some trash talk before the biggest group fight yet seen in this anime erupts—and that's discounting the cold open which just throws audiences right into the most dire, dramatic moments of the throwdown that's going on. Wind Breaker is immediately back to doing what it does best.

Granted, if you were somehow coming to Wind Breaker for any reason other than snappily designed boys punching each other real good, this lack of an eased-in return might leave you wanting. The series has had other qualities, to be sure, but they aren't necessarily putting their best feet forward here. The sections of characters standing around sharing dramatic exchanges look noticeably stiff and rough—and even the big brouhaha is backed with clunky CGI extras shuffling back and forth with one another. Moreover, the dark interior of the warehouse put a murky filter over everything that doesn't quite pop with energy the way I hope for from this show.

All that said, the individual blows traded between named characters, including a whole host of new minibosses introduced for KEEL, still look pretty good and characters show off their distinct fighting styles, like my man Kiryu's graceful moves, as well as Suo getting to fight opponents on a bit more even footing. And even as it's easy to lose track of all these guys in the smackdown sauce, the general sense of how the tide starts to turn against Furin—and how the arrival of Kaji and pals re-turns it—is palpable.

The ideas powering that turn haven't quite crystalized beyond what the preceding few season one episodes spent time setting up though. Sakura's got an arc going alongside his first outing as grade captain—and learning to be responsible for his team subordinates are counter to his strong independent streak. This has to get drilled into him by Kaji, who basically swoops in to steal the spotlight for a bit this episode on Sakura's behalf. So Sakura kind of falls by the wayside in a premiere episode that's supposed to be a major marker on his own journey.

He's not the only one hit by the efforts at ensemble focus as this episode presumably tries to rope viewers back in from the last season—there's just a lot going on in general. Nire gets a moment to try stepping up too, but perhaps comes off more hilariously ineffectual for his efforts. I get the sense that this is plotting a bigger arc for him in the future. But for now it just speaks to how sacrifices like him or Anzai only seem to exist here to get dropped for the benefit of bigger, badder boys who are already competing for the spotlight themselves.

So it's a busy second-season start for Wind Breaker. It's still pretty entertaining, despite how down I may seem like I'm being on it. I think this is a symptom of putting this at the top of the new season after the trailing-off of the previous one. As an episode on its own, it's an engaging entry into the action portion of this new story—and there are at least some palpable signs of growth from these guys who can otherwise only communicate their emotions through their fists. The sense of escalation helps, and I'm interested in seeing how far it can go with that, and to meeting all the other good "punch pals" who will push the story along.