maria mison: integrated awakenings

Windbreaker is a shonen animanga the way you expect it except it’s not.

It has the reliable plot beats that the shonen genre often serves: cool ragged characters wanting to better themselves and finding friends, family and community. Epic fight scenes. Tropes around fighting, strength, mentors, admiration that often shape the allegorical boyhood full of bullying, self-doubt and isolation.

Except, Windbreaker understands the Heart of a fight, too much actually.

I’ve described Windbreaker to my friends as a Mars Exalted, as this severe and ultimate understanding, that Martian Love/Hate stems from our Physical Hearts which is connected to our Fists. That when words loose all meaning, and we’re too far to reach, then violence can reach, the truth can be beaten into you, come hell or high water.

There are many movies and series that have fights that are steeped in allegories, or are archetypal arguments. From Star Wars to Utena, it’s baked into the Action~Shonen genre that physical conflict is also a character argument, a plea to be convinced or heard. But what I find surprising in Windbreakers is that it’s highschoolers who are doing it, and they’re so aware that one’s truth and even Strength/Conviction can be understood within the context of a fight.

So many hyper-feminine healing circles don’t get why aggression or violence can be noble act. (Lol this is a healing blog) Men are usually typecasted as brutish and so simple-minded to prefer media with guns, fights and violence. But one look at Windbreakers and one is immediately stepped into the sympathy of an isolated delinquent, is endeared to him by his blushing-as-a-trauma-coping-response, and cheers for his discovery of what does it truly mean to be “Strong“?

Is it when you carry the dreams, and trust of others?

When one is a fair judge of one’s capacities? (not bloated, or self-centered)

Is it, when you’re the “most free”?

When is your conviction heavy, when do you swing a “Real” Weight?

I won’t get to much into the details of each character and fight (I do want this article to be generally spoiler free) but I do want to be able to express the energy this series has and how it’s left an imprint on me.

I love how they have a very queer presenting character be presented as a “King” and a mentor energy to the younger crew, their earnest struggles being the genuine reason they’ve grown stronger to fight. I love how male friendships are central not only to the main characters but also to the villains, for these things to be things they actually grieve, cry and carry regrets for. I love how Love is an unironic thing that they fight for, and not even in a cheesy fantasy anime love-light supreme kind of way, but in a I’ll beat your ass for trying to harm the Love we’ve fought so long to protect, kind of way. (OH HOW I ACHE FOR ACTION THAT SAYS THIS SO EARNESTLY)

THE CHARACTERS! ARE ALL SO EMOTIONALLY MATURE! AND ELOQUENT ABOUT THEIR FEELINGS. THEIR THESIS AND PHILOSOPHY ABOUT THEIR STRENGTH! is so outwardly spoken about thing, but it never comes off as lecturing you, but as these recursive beliefs that characters have and do their best to expound on. And they convince each other, expand one another, need one another. The non-fantastical setting of windbreakers also heightens the immediacy of the thesis on violence.

If you see a team bully and extort a member for money as gang violence, you watch and wonder: do real life gangs also suffer from such corrupt loyalty?

How much does your pride hurt when you see your teammate injured?

Can one really come to respect an enemy? How so? How did they teach you to mature as an adult? How does one beat one person to come to their senses?

All of Windbreakers answers to these questions are so visceral and immediate. No fight is “pointless” or done just for the sake of spectacle. It feels real in the way that, their real Love and camaraderie with the town they protect is real. It feels real in that so many students under bofurin are considered family, and children of the towns people they protect.

Windbreakers is unafraid to fight its heart out, and thus becomes a severely intimate shonen animanga.

There’s no drama premise for the sake of power-scaling, or a trendy fantasy backdrop/power system to urge for power fantasy. It feels earnest about what it wants to say, about what it wants to fight for and as cliche as it sounds: Love and your Conviction for it, is still awe-inspiring and will not go out of style.

Sometimes, that’s all the audience wants in a fight! (AT LEAST I DO)

FIGHT FOR SOMETHING! Make me believe and dream that the strong and the violent would know how to wisely wage war. Show me, how this kind of destruction and razor’s edge can be something so radically honest and gorgeous! Let me trust the exalted mars, this specific kind of war. I’ll be real with y’all I wouldn’t mind a younger generation to look up to these set of characters, no matter how violent it’s setting. That’s how airtight, and deeply wise the emotional plot-beats of the main characters are themes are that I think this would actually be a wondrous teaching tool/baby sitter.

But I mean regardless of age! I do hope y’all are enticed to enjoy this

NOTE: This manga is not done yet and I’m excited to have some of my favorite arcs and character moments animated. I have high hopes for the author and the team to keep this kind of caliber of work simply because of how it teems with sincerity. I haven’t written a full blog about anime in a while as well (my last is Mob Pyscho 100 a few years back) but I do want to write about some shows in relation to healing as I really do think they’re some of the most effective ways to come to think about things. I can lecture to you about Mars, it’s exaltation in war, heat and violence, or I could let you just experience it by watching windbreakers (hah!)

I’ll cross-post a blog about Freiren soon, and maybe write about Beastars or Horimiya if I feel compelled to.

If you also love windbreakers, or if this essay reminded you of another medium about mars themes/ the fight I would love for y’all to share below!

Til next time,

Maria