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The Meaning of Being a Delinquent: ANYC's Wind Breaker Panel

The Wind Breaker panel opened to a crowd of enthusiastic fans as the host briefly recapped the series before introducing Yūma Uchida, the Japanese voice actor for the protagonist Sakura. From there, the panel transitioned into some light Q&A with Uchida as he spoke about how he first encountered the series. He said that he had once done a voice commercial to promote the manga, and while that was no guarantee that he would voice Sakura in an anime adaptation, he really wanted to play him, so he was happily surprised when a Wind Breaker anime was announced and he got the role. His first impression of Sakura was that he found him very aggressive but quickly saw that Sakura is actually very sensitive and kind. Once he saw those traits, he felt it was important to convey Sakura's weak side through his performance, and how he grows through the kindness of others.

After asking Uchida some questions, the host then introduced Akira Shimizu, the president of CloverWorks to talk about the studio, as well as their work on the show. Shimizu spoke about how it's been seven years since CloverWorks was founded and feels as though the studio has put out a lot of high quality works during that time. He also spoke about how they have recently moved into a new studio with its own theater, and Uchida mentioned being able to sit down with all of the anime staff at the studio theater to watch the premiere of the second season together. When asked about how CloverWorks first got attached to the project, Shimizu mentioned that he first received materials from Aniplex, and was immediately drawn to the manga's high quality fight scenes. In order to make sure they could be properly brought to life, the staff decided to do a test run of some of the action scenes by animating some illustrations from the manga. Shimizu was also the one who decided to bring the director, Toshifumi Akai, onboard for Wind Breaker as the two of them have had a long working relationship, and he was impressed by his work on Fate/Grand Order: Absolute Demonic Front Babylonia. In particular, Shimizu was very impressed by how efficient both Akai and the show's character designer, Taishi Kawakami are at their work, and said that their ability to work so quickly gave the show a lot of room for trial and error with the animation.

When asked about what delinquents mean to them, Shimizu spoke about how there has been a long standing culture of delinquent manga ever since he was young, and that while delinquents may have a negative reputation, he doesn't believe it's as simple as them being bad. Since Japan is a very rigid society and it's seen as normal to conform, he feels there's something admirable about how delinquent characters are willing to stand up to authority and how open they are with expressing themselves. As for Uchida, he spokes about how it can be difficult for young people to cultivate their own sense of self as Japanese society tends to label those who are different as delinquents, but believes that realizing you're different from others is an important part of growing up, and hopes that Wind Breaker can show people that those differences are okay.

After playing a few clips from the second season Uchida and Shimizu were asked more directly about their work on the show. Uchida joked about how much action he has to convey through just his voice, since he can't do all the punching and kicking seen in the fight scenes, and noticed that Sakura tends to jump around a lot. He also mentioned that the battle with the delinquent group Shishitoren from the first season was very challenging to record, since having a character talk while fighting is tricky. As for Shimizu, he spoke about how much labor went into the battle against the group Keel at the beginning of season 2, and how they might have gone overboard on that scene, but is happy so long as the fans are satisfied.

As the panel drew to a close, Uchida mentioned that one of his favorite characters is Umemiya, and likes how he managed to rise to his position by being kind rather than strong. He also finds the character Tsubakino to be “cool and beautiful” and likes how far they're willing to go to be true to who they are (Shimizu also mentioned making the decision to extend Tsubakino's pole dancing scene from the manga to get more of their uniqueness across). When asked about the theme of Wind Breaker, Uchida said that he believes the series is about communication, and that communication is important for the goal of understanding others. Although the series tends to center a lot of its conversations around fights, he hopes that Sakura will get to a point where he can converse with others without using his fists. Shimizu then closed the panel by promoting some of CloverWorks upcoming projects including season three of SPY x FAMILY in the fall, as well as the new original project Grotesque from director, Atsushi Nishigori and hopes fans will check out those works as well.

Wind Breaker Season 2 is currently available on Crunchyroll.