To celebrate the release of the first volume, we sat down with the creator of WIND BREAKER<\/em>, Satoru Nii-sensei, to talk about what they think makes a guy \u201ccool\u201d and their favorite aspects of WIND BREAKER<\/em>, as well as how it came to be and some juicy behind-the-scenes info!<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2015\u2015Could you tell us what made you decide to become a manga artist? Were there any manga that influenced you when you were a kid?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Satoru Nii: \u2015\u2015When did you first submit a manga for a contest?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Satoru Nii: \u2015\u2015What kind of manga did you end up creating?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Satoru Nii: \u2015\u2015Were you particularly attached to the dark fantasy genre?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Satoru Nii: \u2015\u2015Were there any aspects of Rave Master<\/em> or SAMURAI DEEPER KYO<\/em> that you took inspiration from?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Satoru Nii: \u2015\u2015Could you tell us how WIND BREAKER<\/em> came to be?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Satoru Nii: \u2015\u2015Was the badminton theme picked based on your own experiences?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Satoru Nii: \u2015\u2015Ah, so that\u2019s how they all became \u201cbad boys\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Satoru Nii: \u2015\u2015Are there models for each character from Bofurin?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Satoru Nii: \u2015\u2015What\u2019s the reasoning behind Sakura\u2019s eyes?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Satoru Nii: \u2015\u2015Were there any difficulties you faced when coming up with Sakura?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Satoru Nii: \u2015\u2015How did you come up with the idea for Kotoha?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Satoru Nii: \u2015\u2015 Is the shopping street that\u2019s part of Bofurin\u2019s turf based on a real-life location?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Satoru Nii: \u2015\u2015The cafe with all those plants also left a really distinct impression.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Satoru Nii: That’s the end of part 1! Come back soon for part 2!<\/p>\n\n\n\n This article was originally published on May 7, 2021. WIND BREAKER tells the tale of Haruka Sakura, a young man who arrives in town to enrol in Furin High School, famed for its rough-and-ready delinquents. What he doesn\u2019t know is that these delinquents are beloved by the residents and known as Bofurin, the protectors of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[49,48],"kmanga_work_term":[],"kmanga_creator_term":[],"class_list":["post-403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","tag-satoru-nii","tag-wind-breaker"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/wind-breaker-thumb1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652,"href":"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions\/652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403"},{"taxonomy":"kmanga_work_term","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kmanga_work_term?post=403"},{"taxonomy":"kmanga_creator_term","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/kmanga_creator_term?post=403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u25cfRaised on Weekly Shonen Magazine<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>Ever since I was a kid, we\u2019ve always had Weekly Shonen Magazine in the house. My dad was a regular reader. I think it\u2019s because I grew up reading it, you know. Of all the manga that I read in it, I really loved Rave Master<\/a><\/em> by Hiro Mashima and SAMURAI DEEPER KYO<\/em> by Akimine Kamijyo. As I was reading them, I started thinking I\u2019d like to create manga myself someday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>When I was 19 years old. During spring break before I moved up to my second year of university, I drafted the story and then submitted it for the spring Newcomer Award. That\u2019s the first manga I seriously tried my hand at. Everything else I\u2019d tried to make before then, other responsibilities like clubs or exams got in the way, and I just couldn\u2019t quite get there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>I submitted a dark fantasy called Uramarey<\/em>a. At that point, I hadn\u2019t drawn anything other than dark fantasy… my previous serialization was my first time drawing anything to do with modern sports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>I used to love Fullmetal Alchemist<\/em> [laughs]. When I entered the Newcomer Award, I drew a lot of stuff that took heavy inspiration from the dark fantasy genre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>I think what I liked was that these were stories about \u201ccool guys\u201d doing stuff. I wasn\u2019t really conscious of it at first, but during my last serialization, my editor mentioned that I was really good at drawing those parts, which made me realize [laughs]. Even now, I have the most fun drawing guys who I think are cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u25cfThe desire to draw something cool<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>When I was thinking about what to create next after my previous serialization ended, my editor suggested that I create another sports manga so I tried drawing another badminton story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>I played badminton all the way from elementary through high school, so because I had that experience, I thought it might be easy to create a story based around it. I couldn\u2019t get it quite right, though… When I started wondering what I was going to do, I watched a lot of movies and anime with cool male characters. That ended up being the base for WIND BREAKER<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>Yeah. But, rather than them being \u201cbad boys\u201d, I think the image of them being \u201cboys who fight\u201d is stronger [laughs]. I wanted to make something people can enjoy reading, where all of the characters are cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u25cfDrawing your main character should be fun<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>There are not. For Sakura, I wanted to make his internal conflict easy to understand from his appearance, so I gave him his distinctive hair and eyes. I designed him so that his monochrome style sets him apart from the other guys and makes it easy to understand that he\u2019s the main character.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>Heterochromia is really cool [laughs].<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/\u30b9\u30af\u30ea\u30fc\u30f3\u30b7\u30e7\u30c3\u30c8-2026-06-02-172524.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>We actually talked about whether or not to make Sakura handsome in one of our meetings. We discussed whether making him too cool would make him unlikeable, how to make him relatable to the readers, whether or not to make him look more like a country bumpkin… and so on. Sakura\u2019s personality and expressions were already linked though, so in the end, I told my editor that I wanted to go with something that I had fun drawing, and they accepted that [laughs].<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>Originally, there were no plans for any female characters. That made it kind of hard to develop the story though, so I thought about opening the series with a scene where Sakura helps a girl in a tough spot, and that\u2019s how she came about. Someone who\u2019s weak and timid wouldn\u2019t be able to survive in this town, so she ended up being a strong girl who doesn\u2019t back down even when surrounded by rough guys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/\u30b9\u30af\u30ea\u30fc\u30f3\u30b7\u30e7\u30c3\u30c8-2026-06-02-172647.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>It is based on a shopping street from somewhere in Tokyo. It\u2019s an area with a lot of old buildings and a strong retro vibe, and one of those big signs at the entrance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"f:id:magazine_pocket:20210428140110p:plain\"](\"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/20210428140110.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>Bofurin\u2019s team color is green, so the area reflects that by featuring a lot of greenery. I thought it would be good to have that link. Shishitoren\u2019s colors are based on the red lanterns you can sometimes find outside bars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/\u30b9\u30af\u30ea\u30fc\u30f3\u30b7\u30e7\u30c3\u30c8-2026-06-02-172914.png\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\u25bcClick below to read WIND BREAKER on K MANGA!<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/kmanga.kodansha.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/wind-breaker-simul-thumb.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"