Do you know that in hit game Final Fantasy 15 (2016) one of your party members is this cute lil' nerd and one of his Things is he's a photgrapher, so he's always taking pictures, there a whole system coded in to just randomly take in-engine screen captures of your party as they go about their day-to-day. And whenever you save you get to go over ten of those pictures and choose if you want to save any to your personal in-game album. This is obviously a feature designed for word of mouth fan promotion, because from your in-game album there's a ton of options for sharing your photos or downloading them to personal storage. Which is fun, games are allowed to do that, but. Ya know. Maybe not worth the effort of making a whole system to automatically do that.
Except it's also very baked into the world. There's a couple photos you have to get as you advance through the story, but mostly they're fun so you bookmark one or two as you progress through the game. And as you explore the world sometimes Prompto will ask to stop at scenic locations or tourist traps or whatnot and bam you've got a few more. And if you do this every time you save, you end up with quite a collection.
Anyways, fast forward to the end of the game, when you, the main character, are about to die. You know this. You are marching stubbornly to your own martyrdom, with no hope of survival. And the main character turns. And asks to see Prompto's photo collection.
YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE!!!!! YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE ONE!!!!! You have to pick, from those maybe dozens of silly goofy funny little screencappable moments, which one the main character is going to physically take with him into the last battle and clutch to his chest as he dies!!!!!! That photo you choose will show up in cutscenes!!!!! They make it your save files lockscreen!!!!!!! Is this thing on????
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Remember when Little Talks was on the radio all the time? Things were better then. Have we tried putting Little Talks back on the radio 18 times a day to see if that fixes things
I wanted you to know that your version of Furin High School has enchanted me body and soul. Even in fanfiction people tend to take one of two sides:
1) Vaguely mentioning their teachers and classes
Or
2) Furin is basically just a building for Bofurin to operate out of
You are the only person I've seen who is completely committed to "Well it's definitely not a school but not for a lack of effort! āŗļø".
I've gone back to your "teacher conference" post so many times and it always makes me cackle.
"What even is Furin high school legally?" somewhere in the wind breaker universe there is an exhausted government official trying to figure out the same thing. Who filled out these papers. (It was Hiragi. Be nice he's so tired)
At Furin high school you get two years of education (?) and one year of trying to figure out how to teach your rowdy underclassmen concepts you barely understand yourself. God help these boys if any of them want to go to college. Everyone in town is okay with this.
Anyway this is canon to me now
Every time I get an ask from you, I get very excited and I also think you're reading my mind. It's like you're in my google doc, you see the visions so clearly. How did you know that I ALSO theorize that some sorry government official came for school inspections and left completely bewildered by The Great Charade. Somewhere I have a snippet of Mizuki, Momose, and Hiragi rewiring the school phones to act more like an emergency response call center because this school is nothing but dedicated to community service first and Good Education, like, maybe eleventh. maybe. anyway I started answering this, realized I wrote an entire essay on this topic bc @jupiterisasiphonophore and I discuss it so often as a backdrop for our shared Wind Breaker fic ideas and in general, so here is it under the cut:
Wind breaker is an excellent study in narrative tradeoffs; basically, it is such a character driven story that it sacrifices a lot of world building and typical plot structure (such as an overarching villain, etc) for the sake of focusing on its characters. There are some who might call this a flaw, but considering how well it does characters of all kinds (even its minor side characters are memorable, and all of its strong characterization makes it very easy to write fic for), I think that's simply a facet of its story that the author is very conscious of and decides to handwave to the extreme. The advantage to this approach is that you have such strong characters to wrap the plot around and that leads to some awesome moments and arcs and interactions while allowing for things like fights and character development and a lot of plot versatility (as we have seen). But it does mean we don't get much on the actual world besides what is immediately relevant to understanding these characters. Like I said, some people see it as a flaw.
I see it as an opportunity. Ā
We never see any teachers? Ok, they all left the school before the Reforms began. No one goes to classes? Well, since there's no teachers, someone has to teach the kids Life Skills and it's gonna have to be the upperclassmen in off screen classes and the townspeople while they're on patrol. Here's how to mend a fence. Here's how you patch drywall. This is what plumbing looks like and no don't touch that pipe. The townspeople already love these kids and would be so on board for Ume's suggestions that they work with the school to give the underclassmen āwork studiesā which amounts to essentially community volunteer work which is what bofurin ALREADY does. Everybody wins. No need for any new teachers, the government (which assumedly funds the school) doesn't have to know, the school budget is appropriated and Mizuki is appointed treasurer with Ume as a signing power, the school starts to become more stable and integrated with the community, and the Fake A School Solution seems to work with a bit of organization and spreadsheets. Yay.
And then halfway thru Ume and co's freshmen year, the school safety inspector shows up.
Absolute pandemonium. One of the townspeople sees this guy in the street, recognizes him as an Official here on Official Business and is like. Uh Oh. Let me call the school. So the bofurin leadership (all five of them being 15-16 years old at the time) has maybe ten minutes to prepare for the Great Sham of a School Set Up to completely fail and be exposed by the government. But wait. Someone (eyewitnesses later debate who but it was probably Ume) has an excellent Idea: we commit to the bit so hard that the bit becomes The Bit which is to say the joke becomes the point.
Innocent citizens of Makochi are rapidly recruited en masse to make their way to Furin and pretend (but not really, Ume insists, they really do teach us stuff!) to be paid and licensed teachers. The baker from Cactus Bakery elects himself as principal to the great consternation and endless rivalry of the izakaya owner across the street. Nakamura probably shows up to help (bc that man is at least 25 years old when we meet him idc that the manga says hes 18) and he is assigned to be the recess monitor. All you need is a valid id and proof of being paid recently probably. Ume thinks. Wow they really should've done more research before they decided to take over a teacher-less school.
Ok let me let you in on a little secret about government inspections that I'm not sure is entirely relevant: I worked in the food service industry for a hot minute and something I learned about health inspector inspections is that theyāre not necessarily something to brush off, but theyāre kind of just there to go through the forms, check a few boxes, make sure no one is slaughtering live goats in the back or something equally as insane and gross, and write down a technicality or two that your manager missed in favor of sweating over a much bigger problem that the health inspector walks right past. I kid you not, the last time the health inspector visited the place I worked, he spent more time waiting for the owner to find a very specific document and measuring the pH of the sanitizer than actually poking around and thus never inspected hard enough to find out that one of the employees had an out of date Food Handlerās License. Crazy.
I bring all that up to present to you a scenario wherein a hypothetical School Inspection takes place. In reality I have no idea what school inspections look like in Japan much less gang neighborhoods and if they even happen like here in America. However. Imagine with me for a minute some poor schmuch, assigned to go inspect this famously delinquent high school full of (presumably) aggressive teenagers whose favorite outlet is punching, walking up to Furin with dread, fear, and resignation in his heart. The last records of this place that exist is a ton of reports from former teachers who were desperately sending administration pleading email after pleading email going PLEASE GET US AWAY FROM HERE and also MAYBE SHUT IT DOWN ALTOGETHER. There were also several (overlooked) notices from administration staff who were even more desperate, if possible. This was all from a few years ago too. Like a ship slowly sliding into the sea whose radio signal gradually fades out, the communications eventually stopped and no one has heard from anyone since.Ā
So into Furin this poor government official walks, somewhat surprised to see that there are still children going to school here, and also the graffiti isnāt as bad as his coworkers made it out to be and may in fact be pretty good. Artistically of course. Graffiti doesnāt belong in a school. But there are students here, and they do all seem to be wearing at least somewhat of the uniform. And there are clearly adults too, though why some of them have fake moustaches on he couldnāt understand for the life of him. The adult guiding him through the school (the grocery lady who we see Nirei helping in ep2) keeps redirecting the conversation towards community goals whenever he inquires about the previous and aforementioned Desperate Email Chain of Despair. She ends her tour of the school by introducing him to a student representative aka the most charismatic kid heās ever going to meet who does not let him get a word in edgewise and neatly steers him out the door without him even noticing. He stands there at the school doors, dumbfounded and somehow having written down everything on his checklist that would allow this school to stay in business. Somehow. He really doesnāt know please donāt ask him. Also can he leave now. He takes the report and the wild tale of a suspiciously calm and organized school with graffiti back to his supervisors, and adds that there was something off but not in a bad way but he really canāt put his finger on it. No goats were slaughtered in the back, so that's good? It haunts him for the rest of his career, too. The rest of his office is at a similar loss and youāre totally right they have string linked evidence boards concerning What Is Up With Makochi. Why does it feel like theyāre stepping into a play act whenever someone steps foot there.Ā
And thatās how Furin is still functionally and technically and legally a school. They have recess. They have block periods (kinda). They have extra credit for community work (there is A Lot of extra credit). They also have student-parent-teacher conferences that Suo in particular keeps dodging out of. See? Normal and perfectly ordinary school stuff. Nothing different from other schools going on here.
The next year, though, Ume and co are much more prepared. They have forged the paper trail. They have forced all the freshmen to keep a lanyard and student id in their school bags. The townspeople have rehearsals wherein the baker and the izakaya owner bicker over who gets the principal lines. When the inspector shows up, Hiragi gets on the announcements and says āCode Greenā and the entire school hops up to comb their hair, sit normally in their seats, and pretend to be real students who get graded on things like being a nerd and memorizing flashcards (probably). By the time Sakura comes to Makochi, everyone knows whatās up with the Great Charade, the Scam, the Fraudulent School Operation. Itās another thing he shrugs at and assumes is normal. When he gets to be a 3rd year, he'll understand haha
Thanks so much for the ask! I'm ecstatic that you see the visions with me!!!!!!
Okay look, if Suo wanted to disappear off the face of the earth without his classmates chasing after him, he totally could have. And no, Iām not talking about him simply resisting the temptation of one last goodbye, he could have disappeared and had his goodbyes too, no clandestine edginess required. It would have been as easy as:
Suo: Hey guys, bad news, [insert lie about an aging relativeās failing health here]. So, yeah, Iām moving to [insert plausibly distant location here] to help take care of them. Not sure if or when Iāll come back, and I have to transfer schools ;( <- eyepatched-sad expression
Ā Class 1-1, all his friends, the upperclassmen, the entire school honestly: Oh no! Thatās so sad (and yet relatable for this community) weāll miss you. Can we send you off with a care package?Ā
See? Easy.Ā
All that to say, yeah, Suo totally could have slipped out under every radar. So, Mr. Hayato Suo, why didnāt you? Are you, perhaps, under some form of duress? Is perhaps not all going well for you? Hmm? Tell us Suo ._.
Last week I found out that Christians in Buddhist countries say Ja Masih instead of Namaste as a greeting bc Namaste means "the divine in me bows to the divine in you" which is Not Based and Ja Masih simply means "Victory to the Christ" which is direct and to the point and metal as heck.
Imagine greeting a friend or even meeting a fellow believer for the first time, and the very first thing they say to you before anything else is "Victory to the Christ!"
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Iām sure a lot of us remember at least one literature teacher rambling about symbolism and all the eye-rolling emanating from the back of the classroom BUT NO WAIT. LISTEN. Symbolism is FUN. Look, ideally symbolism should be like seasoning, right? It should enhance the flavors regardless of whether the audience notices, but a discerning critic might pick up on the subtleties and better appreciate the end product.
All that to say Iāve spent the last year or so rummaging around in the Wind Breaker trenches like a delinquent sommelier trying to get a bead on its secret symbolism sauce. Is any of it on purpose? Unimportant, all that matters is it makes for a great numbered list. This is a work in progress and theoretical and for funāenjoy my field notes.Ā
Food = Friendship/Community
This oneās pretty obvious, and Umemiyaās backstory spells it out almost explicitly. Itās notable that every time our protagonists make a new friend, especially one thatās been isolated one way or another, it always culminates in a meal. Itās an invitation to and assurance of community, plain and simple. But while weāre on the topic, Iāve got a prediction that one day we will see Sakura deliberately share food with someone and it will be monumental. For how hungry (pun intended) he is for community, for how much heās grown in his ability to approach people on his own, and he has yet to actually offer to share his food with someone. A Sakura that offers someone food is a Sakura at ease in his belonging, aware that he has something to offer, and comfortable extending it to those in need. Thereās so much more to unpack here but for now letās just say Iām hopeful.Ā
[Sidenote: Iād argue you can wrap drinks up into this symbolism just the same as food, but, as an example of why symbolism is fun, think of what that means when Togame first appears. Heās holding a ramune bottle (he is a part of a community) and Sakura thinks he seems pretty neat. Then what does he do? He uses that bottle to brain Saruwatari (he uses his position in his community to hurt it). You donāt need the symbolism to get exactly why Sakura flips, but boy does it make the moment richer. ]
2. Wind = Pressure
Pressure comes in many forms and, sometimes, it can actually be for the best, a la pushing people in directions they wouldnāt otherwise go. But, too much in the wrong direction is destructive. Thereās a lot that's been already said about the fact that a bofurin is literally a wind break, a barrier of trees which shelter younger, shallowly rooted plant varieties from soil erosion and environmental buffering, allowing them to dig in and grow stronger in the meantime. What a perfect metaphor for all this, right? What a perfect name for the trees of Furin. Iām going insane.Ā
3. Rain = Letting GoĀ Ā
Okay, no, actually this is the one that drove me insane, so it's a bit more of a hear-me-out. I sat scratching my head over the rain symbolism for ages, because itās definitely a symbol of something, it shows up very deliberately in both the Shishitoren arc and the Noroshi arc, but the vibes are sooo different (Note: spoilers for the Noroshi Arc).
Rain has a tragic connotation in the Shishitoren arc, mirroring the moment of Tomiyamaās descent into madness with his fight with Umemiya and marring both with the sense of real unease. But then, rain has a peaceful connotation in the Noroshi arc, marking the end of Takiishiās fight with Umemiya and quelling Noroshiās violence against the town. How do we reconcile the difference? I think the strongest throughline is this sense of letting go, especially of oneās own desires. Tomiyama lost sight of the value in his community and Togame willingly gave up the same thing, both in the rain. Then the rain comes back when Togame lets go of his desire to shield Tomiyama to do whatās right, culminating when Umemiya admonishes Tomiyama to let go of his fixation and reconcile with his team. Then we have the Noroshi arc and Takiishi. Takiishiās desires are entirely selfish and deeply destructive; he just wants violence for the sake of his own satisfaction and personal fulfillment. Letting go of that to think about what someone else might want is a good thing, and it puts out Noroshiās fire.Ā
4. Bridges = Connection
This one might be a bit on the nose but hey, a symbol is as a symbol does. Go ask Sky (@insearchofsomething) for her Bridge Imagery thoughts. Her Brimagery thoughts, if you will. Sheāll know.
[Another Sidenote: Thinking about how Natori got his hooks in NagatoĀ beneathĀ a bridge. He was literally subverting his existing connections in order to reattach Nagato to himself. I get chills over how the anime had Natoriās shadow consume Nagato in that scene but a separate essay about the imagery in WBK would just be a lot of me jumping up and down and pointingā¦ more than I already am.]
5. Rivers/Train Tracks = Change
This is the one that feels like most like horoscope logic (it could apply to most scenes if you squint) but I feel like throwing it out there anyway. There are plenty of notable river/train track/(road?) scenes throughout WBK and all of them mark a turning point. The conflict with Shishitoren starts underneath train tracks and marks the change from the status quo, both in Bofurinās relationship with Shishitoren and Sakuraās reputation within both communities. The Keel arc begins and ends with Sakura and co. walking along a river (estuary? Idk. Idc.), marking the change in Sakuraās relationship with his class as its captain.Ā Etc. Again though, this is the one I'm shakiest on, feel free to offer counterpoints.
[Noroshi Arc Spoilers again: If we want to get really fancy, we could apply the above two symbols in tandem to analyze Hiragiās fight with Banjo. Hiragi approaches the fight on the bridge (his connection to his community and here in particular to Kaji) and Banjo throws them into the river (he wants to change Hiragi and remove him from his connections). Queue Boss Fight Phase Two: Second Health Bar edition, and Hiragiās uno-reverse-card forcing Banjo to change. Cinema. I love Hiragi.]
Wind Breakerās Flashback Methodology Needs to be Studied
So, I love a good Shonen Animeā¢. Honestly I even love a mediocre shonen anime. That said, Iām sure anyone whoās watched a few good-to-mediocre shonen anime is familiar with shonen flashback sequences. They often accompany some kind of emotional confrontation between characters, and we know that their literal and ideological clash will settle which one (*cough*the protagonist*cough*) has the right of it. Good stuff. But sometimes it's a bit ham-fisted, right? An antagonist will show up and monologue about how their Tragicā¢ Backstoryā¢ validates their murder complex, the protagonist with a suspiciously parallel and suitably distressing backstory will sayĀ Nuh Uh, they fight, and thereās an 85% chance they walk away unlikely allies or something. Itās fun, but a bit tried. And, typically, it relies on the audience having context for the protagonistās gistĀ first since they're the character we need to root for, and so that when the morally grey rival or definitely-not-befriendable antagonist shows up the audience can chuckle knowingly at the irony.
You know a shonen that doesnāt do that? Wind Breaker. And I bet it's on purpose. Hear me out: Ā
Early on, Wind Breaker (via Umemiya) posits that āa fight is a conversation.ā While not a philosophy to take into the wild, itās a compelling start for a fighting shonen. It acknowledges those aforementioned genre conventions of foes-turned-unlikely-friends via combat-bonding. Neat. But thereās more to it than that.Ā
That quote comes at the advent of the Shishitoren Arc. At the time, I remember watching Season 1 of Wind Breaker and being a bit confused by the Shishitoren Arc precisely because of how it bucked my shonen-honed expectations. That arc covers chapters 5-30 (ish), and we donāt get our main character's backstory until chapterĀ 202. So, it confused me when we got virtually no context for the protagonists in that first major arcāthe closest we get is Hiragi, but even he is framed through Sakoās flashbacks. Instead, we get flashbacks for the Shishitoren fighters while our protags sit back, still virtually strangers to us. We get to know them better, sure, butā¦ no flashbacks.Ā
The first protagonist-flashback is Nireiās in Chapter 2. We donāt get another one until the Keel Arc, when Tsuchiya and Anzai respectively tell Sakura about Nagato. All three of those flashbacks are, arguably, diegetic. Our protagonists are entrusting Sakura with a piece of themselves, and we get to see their stories while he learns about them. So those flashbacks, in a Watsonian sense, are just stylized conversations.Ā
The same is true of the antagonistās flashbacks in the Shishitoren Arc.Ā Ā
In Wind Breaker a fight is a conversation, but, like any conversation, it is one which the participants must choose to make. We donāt get Arimaās flashbacks because Sugishita has no interest in him, no desire to learn about him, no desire to converse with him, and honestly? Fair. Itās funny. We start getting Kanumaās flashbacks around the time he starts locking into Suoās game and the realizations Suo wants him to have. Those flashbacks are brief because Suoās interest in Kanuma only goes so far; he only learns what he wants to know. Sakoās flashbacks are extensive by contrast, which makes perfect sense because Hiragi cares so much about him and wants to know how he wound up here.Ā Ā
What really hammers the pattern home, though, is Togame and Tomiyama. The audience only gets Togameās flashbacks when Sakura contemplates wanting to know more about him. We get Tomiyamaās flashbacks as soon as he surfaces enough to internalize whatās even going on. And so on.Ā
Basically, what Iām saying is that Wind Breaker deliberately places flashbacks in the context of characters learning about each other. Itās a Writerās Gambit (thank you Sloan Stowe), in that it trusts the audience to endure its weird, bucked conventions so that we instead get behind the character at the same speed Sakura does. We learn about them and care about them at Sakuraās pace, and I think itĀ works. We donāt get the protagonistsā flashbacks at first preciselyĀ becauseĀ they are protagonists, because to be a protagonist in Wind Breaker means being someone who can treat people, even enemies, like human beings to be curious about. By that metric itās almost a prerequisite that we donāt get much of the protagonistsā flashbacks in combat, because that would mean their focus is on themselves, not curiosity about another person. A talking-conversation is a way for two people to be open with each other, and a fight-conversation is a way for one person to pour their focus entirely into someone that doesnāt want to talk to them.
Thatās not to ignore the protagonist-flashbacks we do get in combatāSakura and Kaji come to mind but letās focus on Sakura. We get a bit about Sakura at the very start of the story. I love that the anime opened with the tightrope scene, and we have flashes of how Sakura was treated before Bofurin when he fights the Spaltips. Sakura, at this point, is alone. He has no one to talk to, no one curious about him. But, he wants to have self-esteem. He wants to be on his own side. Heās still, humbly, curious about another human being, even if itās just that little kid in his own heart. Itās this bloom of pro-social hope that enables him to thrive in Bofurin and make for such a good protagonist.Ā
And it works because of Wind Breakerās Flashback Methodologyā¢.
hey psssst post thoughts on sakuras backstory ššš
TLDR: We Donāt Actually Know How Cherry-Mom Died
Hi, Sky :)
Okay so Iāll be the first to admit, Iām not always entirely sure what the fandom consensus is on things. I was burned by the BNHA and RWBY fandoms years ago and Iāve been a lilā internet hermit ever sinceāsue me.Ā
BUT, as one perched on a cliffside, zen-like, with only the whispers of the Pinterest winds and a small stream of blog posts hand-delivered by friends to cloud my visions (Sky, Star, Iām doing this for you), I have a few things I think worth pointing out about Sakuraās backstory:Ā
First off, elephant in the room, OOF. Itās so good. Wind Breakerās pacing, especially when it comes to character reveals, should be studied. Maybe by me, who knows, thatās another post. But Iām so glad they waited and gave it to us here and now, and its contents??? I had suspected/hoped that Sakuraās pain stemmed from more than just alienation over his appearance, and this certainly delivers. But thatās also another post.Ā
So, itās a good, compelling backstory, but what now? What do we do as we wait to see what comes next? I dunno. And thatās kind of the magic of it; thereās a lot we still donāt know and can look forward to possibly learning, LIKE:Ā
Yeah, we donāt actually know how Sakuraās mom died. Weāre not even told ifĀ SakuraĀ knows. All we know is that Sakuraās father told him that he killed his mother, specifically that āWhen [he] was born, his mother diedā¦ because of [him] his mother lost her life.ā Now, the obvious conclusion is that Sakuraās mother died in childbirth, and IĀ haveĀ seen people generally assume as much. However, if youāll forgive me for putting weight on the English translation of the manga, Iād argue weāre allowed to speculate a bit. Because, tragically, thereās more ways than one for a mother to lose her life after childbirth. For example, (and this is may be the angstiest version so, trigger-warning I guess?) severe post-partum depression exacerbating pre-existing mental health issue. Iām not saying sheĀ didnātĀ die in childbirth, Iām just saying it might actually beĀ worseĀ than that. Which is always funā¦Ā
We also donāt know what the relationship was between Sakuraās parents. Were they lovingly married, and his father lashed out in grief? We donāt know. Were they unhappily married, and his father wanted to wash his hands of the whole family? We donāt know. Were they unmarried, and his father wanted nothing to do with his illegitimate child? We donāt know. Did they want to have Sakura to being with? We donāt know. Thereās so much we donāt know. And maybe Sakura doesnāt know, either. We have some clues to work with (like how Sakura says, āwith no new home to go to, my father showed up just to hand me over to an orphanage,ā implying, to me, that the households he was bounced around were perhaps his extended family) but little thatās concrete.Ā
Weā¦ we donāt even know who named him. We donāt even know if Sakura is his fatherās name, his motherās name, or something he adopted on his own (I was always curious about how proud he was to introduce himself in that first scene, especially with the name he presumably shares with the family that abandoned him, but I digress).Ā
All that to say, Wind Breakerās storytelling is powerful because of what it does and doesnāt tell us, what it trusts us to understand, and what it leaves to the imagination. And I really like that.Ā
I wanted you to know that your version of Furin High School has enchanted me body and soul. Even in fanfiction people tend to take one of two sides:
1) Vaguely mentioning their teachers and classes
Or
2) Furin is basically just a building for Bofurin to operate out of
You are the only person I've seen who is completely committed to "Well it's definitely not a school but not for a lack of effort! āŗļø".
I've gone back to your "teacher conference" post so many times and it always makes me cackle.
"What even is Furin high school legally?" somewhere in the wind breaker universe there is an exhausted government official trying to figure out the same thing. Who filled out these papers. (It was Hiragi. Be nice he's so tired)
At Furin high school you get two years of education (?) and one year of trying to figure out how to teach your rowdy underclassmen concepts you barely understand yourself. God help these boys if any of them want to go to college. Everyone in town is okay with this.
Anyway this is canon to me now
Every time I get an ask from you, I get very excited and I also think you're reading my mind. It's like you're in my google doc, you see the visions so clearly. How did you know that I ALSO theorize that some sorry government official came for school inspections and left completely bewildered by The Great Charade. Somewhere I have a snippet of Mizuki, Momose, and Hiragi rewiring the school phones to act more like an emergency response call center because this school is nothing but dedicated to community service first and Good Education, like, maybe eleventh. maybe. anyway I started answering this, realized I wrote an entire essay on this topic bc @jupiterisasiphonophore and I discuss it so often as a backdrop for our shared Wind Breaker fic ideas and in general, so here is it under the cut:
Wind breaker is an excellent study in narrative tradeoffs; basically, it is such a character driven story that it sacrifices a lot of world building and typical plot structure (such as an overarching villain, etc) for the sake of focusing on its characters. There are some who might call this a flaw, but considering how well it does characters of all kinds (even its minor side characters are memorable, and all of its strong characterization makes it very easy to write fic for), I think that's simply a facet of its story that the author is very conscious of and decides to handwave to the extreme. The advantage to this approach is that you have such strong characters to wrap the plot around and that leads to some awesome moments and arcs and interactions while allowing for things like fights and character development and a lot of plot versatility (as we have seen). But it does mean we don't get much on the actual world besides what is immediately relevant to understanding these characters. Like I said, some people see it as a flaw.
I see it as an opportunity. Ā
We never see any teachers? Ok, they all left the school before the Reforms began. No one goes to classes? Well, since there's no teachers, someone has to teach the kids Life Skills and it's gonna have to be the upperclassmen in off screen classes and the townspeople while they're on patrol. Here's how to mend a fence. Here's how you patch drywall. This is what plumbing looks like and no don't touch that pipe. The townspeople already love these kids and would be so on board for Ume's suggestions that they work with the school to give the underclassmen āwork studiesā which amounts to essentially community volunteer work which is what bofurin ALREADY does. Everybody wins. No need for any new teachers, the government (which assumedly funds the school) doesn't have to know, the school budget is appropriated and Mizuki is appointed treasurer with Ume as a signing power, the school starts to become more stable and integrated with the community, and the Fake A School Solution seems to work with a bit of organization and spreadsheets. Yay.
And then halfway thru Ume and co's freshmen year, the school safety inspector shows up.
Absolute pandemonium. One of the townspeople sees this guy in the street, recognizes him as an Official here on Official Business and is like. Uh Oh. Let me call the school. So the bofurin leadership (all five of them being 15-16 years old at the time) has maybe ten minutes to prepare for the Great Sham of a School Set Up to completely fail and be exposed by the government. But wait. Someone (eyewitnesses later debate who but it was probably Ume) has an excellent Idea: we commit to the bit so hard that the bit becomes The Bit which is to say the joke becomes the point.
Innocent citizens of Makochi are rapidly recruited en masse to make their way to Furin and pretend (but not really, Ume insists, they really do teach us stuff!) to be paid and licensed teachers. The baker from Cactus Bakery elects himself as principal to the great consternation and endless rivalry of the izakaya owner across the street. Nakamura probably shows up to help (bc that man is at least 25 years old when we meet him idc that the manga says hes 18) and he is assigned to be the recess monitor. All you need is a valid id and proof of being paid recently probably. Ume thinks. Wow they really should've done more research before they decided to take over a teacher-less school.
Ok let me let you in on a little secret about government inspections that I'm not sure is entirely relevant: I worked in the food service industry for a hot minute and something I learned about health inspector inspections is that theyāre not necessarily something to brush off, but theyāre kind of just there to go through the forms, check a few boxes, make sure no one is slaughtering live goats in the back or something equally as insane and gross, and write down a technicality or two that your manager missed in favor of sweating over a much bigger problem that the health inspector walks right past. I kid you not, the last time the health inspector visited the place I worked, he spent more time waiting for the owner to find a very specific document and measuring the pH of the sanitizer than actually poking around and thus never inspected hard enough to find out that one of the employees had an out of date Food Handlerās License. Crazy.
I bring all that up to present to you a scenario wherein a hypothetical School Inspection takes place. In reality I have no idea what school inspections look like in Japan much less gang neighborhoods and if they even happen like here in America. However. Imagine with me for a minute some poor schmuch, assigned to go inspect this famously delinquent high school full of (presumably) aggressive teenagers whose favorite outlet is punching, walking up to Furin with dread, fear, and resignation in his heart. The last records of this place that exist is a ton of reports from former teachers who were desperately sending administration pleading email after pleading email going PLEASE GET US AWAY FROM HERE and also MAYBE SHUT IT DOWN ALTOGETHER. There were also several (overlooked) notices from administration staff who were even more desperate, if possible. This was all from a few years ago too. Like a ship slowly sliding into the sea whose radio signal gradually fades out, the communications eventually stopped and no one has heard from anyone since.Ā
So into Furin this poor government official walks, somewhat surprised to see that there are still children going to school here, and also the graffiti isnāt as bad as his coworkers made it out to be and may in fact be pretty good. Artistically of course. Graffiti doesnāt belong in a school. But there are students here, and they do all seem to be wearing at least somewhat of the uniform. And there are clearly adults too, though why some of them have fake moustaches on he couldnāt understand for the life of him. The adult guiding him through the school (the grocery lady who we see Nirei helping in ep2) keeps redirecting the conversation towards community goals whenever he inquires about the previous and aforementioned Desperate Email Chain of Despair. She ends her tour of the school by introducing him to a student representative aka the most charismatic kid heās ever going to meet who does not let him get a word in edgewise and neatly steers him out the door without him even noticing. He stands there at the school doors, dumbfounded and somehow having written down everything on his checklist that would allow this school to stay in business. Somehow. He really doesnāt know please donāt ask him. Also can he leave now. He takes the report and the wild tale of a suspiciously calm and organized school with graffiti back to his supervisors, and adds that there was something off but not in a bad way but he really canāt put his finger on it. No goats were slaughtered in the back, so that's good? It haunts him for the rest of his career, too. The rest of his office is at a similar loss and youāre totally right they have string linked evidence boards concerning What Is Up With Makochi. Why does it feel like theyāre stepping into a play act whenever someone steps foot there.Ā
And thatās how Furin is still functionally and technically and legally a school. They have recess. They have block periods (kinda). They have extra credit for community work (there is A Lot of extra credit). They also have student-parent-teacher conferences that Suo in particular keeps dodging out of. See? Normal and perfectly ordinary school stuff. Nothing different from other schools going on here.
The next year, though, Ume and co are much more prepared. They have forged the paper trail. They have forced all the freshmen to keep a lanyard and student id in their school bags. The townspeople have rehearsals wherein the baker and the izakaya owner bicker over who gets the principal lines. When the inspector shows up, Hiragi gets on the announcements and says āCode Greenā and the entire school hops up to comb their hair, sit normally in their seats, and pretend to be real students who get graded on things like being a nerd and memorizing flashcards (probably). By the time Sakura comes to Makochi, everyone knows whatās up with the Great Charade, the Scam, the Fraudulent School Operation. Itās another thing he shrugs at and assumes is normal. When he gets to be a 3rd year, he'll understand haha
Thanks so much for the ask! I'm ecstatic that you see the visions with me!!!!!!
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