Run with the Wind

## Run with the Wind *Run with the Wind* (*Kaze ga Tsuyoku Fuiteiru*) is routinely cited as one of the finest sports anime ever produced — a show that takes the seemingly mundane premise of a university relay race and turns it into something genuinely profound about why humans push their bodies past their limits. Kakeru Kurahara is a former elite track star now running from his past — literally, caught shoplifting food, he's chased down by Haiji Kiyose, a fellow university student who clocks his speed and immediately recruits him to live at Chikusei-so, a rundown dormitory whose residents Haiji has a secret plan for: to enter them all in the Hakone Ekiden, Japan's most grueling and celebrated collegiate relay marathon. The problem is that most of the residents are not runners — there's a manga addict, a chain smoker, a twin pair, an academic focused entirely on job-hunting, and a quiet foreigner who can barely speak Japanese. Over the course of a full year, Haiji and Kakeru — one with an idealist's vision, the other with a runner's wounded ambition — transform these reluctant housemates into a team. *Run with the Wind* is exceptional at depicting the physical reality of long-distance running and the interior emotional lives of its ensemble; it earns every cathartic stride.