An Opportunity To Knock The Wind Clean Out Of Their Sails

Run With The Wind Episode 7 Review

The boys finally participate in an actual track meet and this early in the season there are no surprises, except perhaps that Prince finished at all. Seriously, Prince is still my absolutely favourite character in this series and his calm manner before running as he reads manga is just absolutely priceless. I think what I particularly appreciate is that he isn’t kicking and wailing about not wanting to run. He has just kind of resigned himself to doing it and just wants it all to be as painless as possible.

However, for Kakeru this isn’t a laughing matter nor one he can take lightly. While we’ve seen a bit about what happened before there’s still plenty we don’t know about him and while he is definitely more in support of the team, he’s still pretty much emotionally unable to deal with how they end up performing and even his own performance. Still, despite starting like a fairly blandish protagonist, Kakeru is turning out to be surprisingly interesting even if the path he’s on seems pretty predictable.

I’d turn my attention to Haiji, and I would like to at some point look at the personal strength he must have to come back from an injury like he has and to drag everyone along in his wake, even if I do find him obnoxious, but I’m kind of hoping for a little more about the information about his injury so I’ll hold off on that.

Instead, I’ll focus on the sound in this week’s episode (well it was that or how many buckets of sweat the characters had rolling off them). Realistically it makes sense that these guys would be breathing hard, and even harder than the other runners who had been training more diligently for longer, and yet the gasping sounds as we progressed through the race were more than a little off-putting. This is perhaps one of those cases where striving for realism is great and all but did we really need it? I think all it really did was minimise the impact of some of the other sounds that came through the race and that is a shame because Run With The Wind is an anime that kind of gets the importance of using sound as emphasis of critical moments and doesn’t feel the need to just get louder but actually makes individual sounds stand out from the crowd and draw the listeners in.

Anyway, another week of Run With The Wind is done and I will say this one has more or less settled into the middle of the pack of shows I am watching. I enjoy it well enough and some of the early episodes were very solid, but we’ve definitely kind of settled into fairly standard territory and while as a whole this anime is still pretty well made, I’m just not interested enough in running to have this one as a must watch.

• Run With The Wind Series Review
• Episode 1 – Another character dragging others along in pursuit of their dreams.
• Episode 2 – The hard sell
• Episode 3 – As the wind blows
• Episode 4 – A wind of change
• Episode 5 – Scattered by the winds
• Episode 6 – No need to be frantic; It will all blow over soon
• Episode 7 – An opportunity to knock the wind clean out of their sails
• Episode 8 – The Downfalls of the Pursuit of Perfection
• Episode 9 –  You Really Have To Step Back To See What’s There
• Episode 10 – How Run With The Wind Shows Us To Celebrate Effort Rather Than Achievement
• Episode 11 – Why Run With The Wind is an Oustanding Example of the Use of Sound
• Episode 12 – The Change of Seasons Welcomes a Changing Wind
• Episode 13 – Clearing the Air With The help of Friends
• Episode 14 – Facing Forward is Easier When You Know Someone Has Your Back
• Episode 15 – How Did They Make Me Start Caring? 
• Episode 16 – The Moment Of Truth From All That Training
• Episode 17 – Should They Follow The Course Before Them?
• Episode 18 – May The Wind Be At Their Backs
• Episode 19 – They Are Three Runners Down With Seven To Go
• Episode 20 – Blowing Past Your Limits
• Episode 21 – Finding Your Own Wind
• Episode 22 – Running With The Wind And With Your Team
• Episode 23 – The Final Wind
• Images from: Run With the Wind. Dir. K Nomura. Production I.G. 2018.