One of the most important things a spokon anime has to succeed at is to convince the viewer that the sport they are watching is interesting, to show the appeal of that sport. When I watched Haikyuu I was amazed of how enyojable volleyball seemed to be, but this show had a more difficult task.
Unlike football or basketball, athletics is a sport which lacks of excitement in some of its modalities, specially in long duration ones, as they consist of a person running for hours. Thats why, while the most important part of other spokons is the action and the games, this anime relies more on the characters, exchanging the electric scenes for internal speeches.
This show starts as every other spokon I know does. It has a promising protagonist, an underdog team and some cliche main cast.
One of my main issues with Haikyuu (and spokon in general), is that the characters only have their respective sport in mind. If you are not told that they are high school students, how would you know? They spend every minute in the court, training for several hours everyday. So, where are they examns? And their problems? Where are the injuries? There are no family issues, they dont think about love relationships, they dont care about exams, they are just there for the sake of playing volley.
However, Kaze ga tsuyoku fuiteiru is about college students, about adults. These guys are worried because they wont find a job, because they cant stop smoking or because they are gaining weight.
Everyone who has practiced sports in their life know that it encompasses a wide series of concepts so training isnt everything that concerns a sporty.
If you have seen some spokons, you will be used to the "I want to be better" plot device to develop characters. Well, you wont see that in this anime. Every character has his own arc to question themselves "why am I running?", and the show portrays the personalities and problems of every character in a perfect way. There are a lot of enyojable characters in this show but the most remarkable one is Kiyose Haiji.
Although we see the story from the perspective of Kurahara Kakeru, the protagonist is Haiji. He inspires Kurahara and the whole team, he moves the plot forward, he helps every character to surpass their problems while recuperating of a knee injury. In case you dont know, knee injuries are the most dangerous in almost every aerobic sport and depending on what type of structural damage you have, the recovery and rehabilitation can last for several months or even years. I relate a lot to this guy.
When I saw the first race and I noticed the CGI animation I was disappointed. Production IG always have great animation, but I guess that hundreds of athletes running was too much. Anyway, the CGI wasnt that bad (Im not an expert, but if it does not make me want to stop watching the show as Overlord or Re Zero did, I dont consider it bad).
Character designs are detailed, sharp and pretty well done overall and I bet some anime movies would like to have such detailed backgrounds. In the summer vacation arc, the scenes where they are running around the lake are so fucking precious.
The best tool for a spokon anime to hook the viewer is music. When you are watching Haikyuu and "Battle of concepts" starts to play, you know something big is coming and you start getting chills through the spine. This show doesnt have that great soundtrack, but it has pretty good songs too. The first opening is catchy and I love the first ed because it reflects PERFECTLY what injuries feel like. The seiyuus did a great job expressing how the characters felt (Haiji almost make me cry with his last speech) and for 20 episodes, I thought the twin's VA was the same lol.
In conclussion, it doesnt matter if you are a spokon fan or not, as the perfect balance between action and character development this anime offers will satisfy you anyway. One of the underrated shows of Fall 2018.
