Categories
Anime Reviews

A light inside the darkness: The Great Passage (Fune wo Amu)

The Great Passage (Fune wo Amu) is about creating a dictionary. The people involved invest decades of their lives into its singular craft, which is no small feat. The series begins as Mitsuya Majime joins the dictionary’s editorial team. He’s a weird guy, introverted, but fascinated by words. Switched from a different job that he was struggling with, it’s like something has finally clicked for him. This is the job he was born to do, but every now and then, he has nightmares about being lost at sea. The water rises about his legs as a flood of words threatens to sweep him away.

Categories
Anime Reviews

Manga, sweat and tears: Run with the Wind

Run with the Wind is at a point now where every episode explodes with such a cathartic resonance. The boys are a mere qualifier away from the Hakone Ekiden and to get even this far, they’ve all had to work so hard: some more than others.

Categories
Anime Editorials

Winning & losing, running & writing – Run with the Wind

If the end goal is to win, how easy is it to enjoy doing a thing?

Be it playing table tennis, running in a marathon or just writing for your blog, we do things for complicated reasons that don’t always mean having fun.

In Run with the Wind, Kakeru is a talented runner and the best in his team, but whilst the others are happy just competing in a race, he’s gutted that he wasn’t able to win. So after the race when they are sitting around drinking and eating fried chicken, he’s breaking up inside, furious at himself for losing.

If he isn’t winning, then the whole race is tainted.