One Great Panel: Wind Breaker
Drop the fisticuffs. Like... put them down.
As you will come to find out when my bigger post about Wind Breaker goes live in, like, three days, this series has won me over in a way that few others have. It’s unexpected, fun, meaningful and packed with exciting characters. Most of all though, the lead character, Sakura, is a cut above traditional protagonists, and this panel we’re looking at is his complexities in a nutshell.
This is chapter 7, page 34.
Context: Sakura, the protagonist with his fists up, has just started high school at Furin. Furin is known for their delinquents and for being the best fighters. That’s why Sakura wants to go there, he wants to rise to the top. He has just had his first fight on behalf of Furin, stopping a rival school from beating up a middle schooler, and in this panel, he is expecting to face consequences for his actions as he confronts the leader of Furin, Umemiya, only for Umemiya to be a goofball.
This singular panel is a massive—albeit reluctant—turning point for Sakura. The world of Furin has been completely unlike he expected. He expected to have to fight his classmates, to earn a reputation, to beat people up in his rise to the top. Instead, he’s found his classmates supportive, and reserving the fisticuffs for moments when someone in the community needs protecting.
He also instigated the fight that lead to this moment. He saw a boy being bullied and stepped in to fight off a rival school on their turf. And just before this panel, Sakura spoke up about why he started the fight, and verbally slammed the opposing gang. Which could have led to any number of results because at this point, Sakura still hasn’t met most of his classmates, nor the head of Furin. There are still so many question marks about what Furin actually is. So as he enters this moment, neither him, nor the reader, knows what’s going to happen. Our fists are collectively up.
We hear from Umemiya a bit before this panel. He talks about plants, and seems light-hearted and fun, but it would not be shocking to see that turn into intensity when it’s revealed that Sakura started a fight. Could Umemiya present himself as a villain in this moment, and how would that ripple into Sakura?
The opposite happens. Umemiya solidifies the unity that we’ve seen at Furin and if anything, Sakura’s walls can fully crumble because of this moment, even if he still works over time to keep those walls up.
And while I know that this is “One Great Panel,” I do have to share the next panel because…
…it’s exactly what it needs to be. It’s all the tension let out of the balloon all at once. From this moment forth, there is no mistaking what Furin is, both for the reader, and for Sakura. Complete clarity. And the benefit there is we have a firm grounding in the story now. Everything can unify and move forward from this moment on.