Definitely one of the best in its class.
Run With the Wind initially seems like a pretty obvious show to make in this day and age – sports stories starring hot guys are very in – but is kind of surprising in a few ways, starting with its source material. It’s not based on a light novel, like Free!, or a manga, like Haikyuu!, but instead a singular, normal-length novel published over a decade ago. (It was later adapted into a manga, for the record, which was concluded in 2009.) Having a finite work with an already-plotted beginning, middle, and end works wonders for the pacing – I tore through this show in three days – and, bonus, means that this is a finished story. There won’t be a sequel – we get the whole thing in one go, and that’s honestly satisfying in and of itself.
It’s also set at a college, not a high school, which is always fine by me – having seen so many of these works set in high school, the idea of following characters with more freedom and capacity is novel by itself, and it also solves the problem I sometimes have with the dramatic weight placed on things like a third-year’s final tournament – in a show like Yowamushi Pedal, the graduates could (and do) just move on to competing in college and starting from the bottom, but for our secondary protagonist Haiji, this is his last year of school. He’s not at the level of being an Olympian, so this really is it for him, and it gives extra meaning to his desperation to get a group together to run the world’s most grueling race.
Background: The race depicted, the Hakone Ekiden, is real, and it’s so brutal that it ends a lot of runners’ careers before they even reach the finish line. But it’s also the pinnacle of college-level track, and something many aspire to participate in, and so Haiji gathers up our cast of underdogs and sets off to whip nine newbies and one disgraced prodigy into a team fit to take on the champions.
What follows is a gorgeously-produced and very honest depiction of the sport of cross country running. Comparisons to Yowamushi Pedal are apt – Run With the Wind does not shy away from just how much of a task it is to get a normal person ready to run a 20k, and what kind of toll it takes on people.
But that plays pretty well to its advantage, too – we become more invested as we watch the characters train, and improve, and suffer, in order to achieve this singular goal. We get to watch their motivations develop into a team mentality – some of these characters have been living together for years, others are complete strangers – and ultimately form into a band of brothers.
All of this positive buildup probably leads you to think that I’m about to give Run With the Wind a perfect score, but unfortunately, there are elements that detracted enough from the experience that I can’t leave them aside. A few members of the team never quite actualize into memorable individuals – two of them are identical twins with a crush on the same girl, and it’s not until late in the game that the show commits to having them interact with other people individually to try and differentiate them, and even after 23 episodes, I absolutely could not tell them apart. Another – the glasses-wearing Yuki – never manages to develop a subplot, merely having him act against the optimistic Haiji for the first half of the show before he gives in and fights for the team’s goal.
My other big issue involves a bit of a spoiler, but in shows like this, it’s usually pretty obvious that we’ll get to see the team make it into The Big Tournament, so I don’t count it as too much of a spoiler that yes, Kansei does get to run the Ekiden over the final few episodes. My issue comes with a major adaptational change – the protagonist in the novel is Haiji, but the protagonist in the anime is the previously-mentioned prodigy Kakeru. Reframing him as the the hero works just fine, right up until the end, where the dramatic buildup of the race fizzles, because Haiji is the character who runs the final leg of the race. From a screenwriting perspective, this was the wrong choice – despite Kakeru being the main character we’ve followed the whole time, his character arc concludes before the deuteragonist’s, downplaying its importance because it doesn’t come last. When they changed the point of view character, the race should have been changed so that Kakeru ran the final dash to the finish against the reigning champion – it would have been similar to Yowamushi Pedal, but I still think it would have been better than not following through on the biggest change from the source material. As it stands, the end of the race is a little underwhelming.
That being said, the epilogue is satisfying enough of a finale that I’m more than willing to give Run With the Wind a 9/10 and a strong recommendation to everyone.
Also, it has SUCH A GOOD BOY.
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