SheasonDuerulo

To be honest, I'm guilty of being biased and judgemental, and more than once to boot. A few years ago I had seen my friend's collection of Naruto manga. I scoffed and even teased him a bit, having seen what appeared to be ridiculous anime promos on TV aimed at children. Within a year, I had discovered anime and manga myself. I have since apologized. Then, a year ago in the fall FAL league, I found myself incredulous at how popular and highly praised the sequel to Kuroko no Basket was. Subsequently, I stumbled across a volleyball anime with what seemed to be an interestingpremise. Therefore, I believe apologies are in order. I'm sorry, sports anime genre. I'm sorry I looked down on you. I'm sorry I didn't give you a shot sooner. I'm sorry I wrote off Kuroko no Basket and Yowamushi Pedal and the several other of the genre I have since added to my plan to watch list. If you want to give thanks for my change of heart, you need look no further than a wonderful little gem called Haikyuu!! Quickly becoming one of my favorite anime, Haikyuu!! was the show I looked forward to most each week. It is a well-rounded work that made every Sunday a little better. As today is the day it finished airing, I'm a bit surprised that more people haven't completed it and/or written reviews. Hoping to help others that may not have given Haikyuu!! a chance, here I am now expressing my humble opinion. Adapted from a Shounen Jump manga, the story could be boiled to to pretty typical shounen stereotypes. It contains an underdog, teamwork, perserverance, etc. However, in my opinion, Haikyuu!! integrates these themes incredibly well, and also sets itself apart from your run of the mill Jump product. The protagonists are relatively inexperienced and are far from being the best volleyball players out there. Crazy quick 'level up's don't exist, and you will find no inexplicable victories here. Instead, we receive a well crafted story with good pacing that follows the formation of the Karasuno to their foray into the high school volleyball circuit. Another issue people typically have with the shounen genre is flat, 2-dimensional characters that have little or poor development. I like to think this problem does not plague Haikyuu!! In fact, I'd say this is a strong point in relation to many other anime/manga. Haikyuu!! mainly focuses upon the exploits of the two main characters and the team as a whole, but does take the occasional detour to explore backstory, relationships, character development, comedic moments, and minor characters. That last item especially separates this show from the rest. A recurring theme throughout this sports anime is, not surprisingly, losing. I was very impressed with Haikyuu!! on how it depicts the emotions and point of view of nearly all minor characters, whether they appear again or not. For me, the level to which they were explored is rare among any story I've come across. On a side note, having not experienced not much from the sports genre, I am no authority on how others deal with losing games. However, subjectively, I think it handles the concept fantastically, and possibly better than the above-mentioned basketball and biking anime. It spends a fair amount of time presenting how the characters react and cope with loss. As far as technical aspects go, Haikyuu!! does not disappoint. The artwork is clean and the animation fluid. Production I.G. did a wonderful job putting together a great visual work. In addition, the OST is superb. Personally, the background tracks helped set the scene and kept me emotionally invested throughout intense, comedic, and dramatic scenes. I cannot compliment the audio side of this anime enough with how well it worked. As a bonus, I fell in love with all of the openings and endings. Hopefully, you're as lucky as I was. I pray you give Haikyuu!! a chance. If you are new to the genre, this might be a gateway to a new horizon for you. If you have enjoyed sports anime before, Haikyuu!! will continue your enjoyment of the genre. Inevitably, this show is and will be compared to Production I.G.'s other sensation, Kuroko no Basket. In the interest of bipartisanship and brevity, I will simply say that the main difference is that Kuroko no Basket relies more on spectacle, whereas Haikyuu!! integrates more realism. Regardless of opinion, I believe that you will really enjoy Haikyuu!!and, quite possibly, like me you will be eagerly awaiting season 2.

0207xander

[Spoiler Warning] Uh oh, I'm about to do something not many have done: bring up problems with Haikyuu! Disclaimer: I do play volleyball, so please understand where I'm coming from. Don't get me wrong, I liked Haikyuu! and will be watching the second season, but in this review I'm going to talk about what I didn't like because everyone else gushes over it. Remember, I did genuinely like it. When I first found out there was an anime about volleyball (and not only that, it was really popular and well-liked) I kind of got really excited and placed it near the top of my "Plan to Watch"list. I'm not quite sure what I expected, but this wasn't it. I had expected something intelligent, engaging, and meaningful, what I got was a typical shounen. [b]Story: 7[/b] Let's start with the plot. Nothing really special about it. A band of unlikely heroes come together one year to form a volleyball team that just so happens to be really good, they set their goals to be in the Nationals, they go through certain hardships to get there only to come up short when they near their goal. But fear not! There is a second season! The plot was pretty generic sports anime for me. Not much else I can say about it. Here's where the problems I, personally, have begin. Everything feels dumbed down, like it was made for someone who knows absolutely nothing about volleyball to watch. Now I'm not saying "You should only watch sports anime if you've played the sport", on the contrary, in fact. But they shove down explanations of the most basic moves into your throat, even down to the second to last episode. They always try to mask it (by explaining to other people the rules), but they never do a good enough job at it. It should be implied that your viewer is smart enough to be able to pick up on certain things with the sport after watching, rather than having everything explained in crystal-clear clarity. Take [i]Ping Pong the Animation[/i] as an example. They lay everything out to you clearly, but don't tell you specifically what it is you're supposed to see. It's your job to figure it out. That's a smarter show with more subtlety and more respect for the viewer's intelligence. There were so many weird volleyball technicalities. I didn't understand if volleyball in Japan was that different, or if Haikyuu just honestly thought nobody watching would know anything about volleyball so they could cheat a little? I tried to look up the rules for Japan, but could only find certain things, nothing decisive. Here are all the little, weird, things happened: Kageyama is supposed to be a genius setter and yet he's never set a back-row attack up until this point? And he's never even attempted to do a jump-float? Those are things we learn to do in club volleyball when you're like 12. And it also seems like he never dumps despite it being an easy strategy to get 2-3 points per match (also, he's tall and can jump high, it'd be even easier for him than most). They don't use any conventional terminology when being set. They just say "set me". This doesn't tell the setter how fast or where you want it. A Go ball, a Shoot set, and a 4 set are very different sets, but all to the same person. There's never any indication anything changes. They also have a position called an "Ace", which I have looked up, but cannot confirm to exist. I know that Japan has "Wing Spikers" instead of Outsides and Opposites, so no problems there, but I don't know if Ace actually exists. It seems to just mean their best player? How is there always a triple or double block on every hit? Most of the time, you're lucky if you can get a double block on a outside hitter, but they get triple blocks, even on quicks! Even at the Olympic level they don't do that. And when every hitter goes up to hit the ball, they always hit straight down the line. I honestly saw 3-4 cross hits the entire series, no joke. They always hit straight, which leads to them getting blocked. Then when they do get blocked, they don't go "Hey, next time roll/tip it over the block, put pressure on the back row to get that", they just say "[b][i]Hit it harder![/i][/b]", like that's not how it works. They also never intentionally aim out so the other team accidentally blocks it straight down out of bounds, and they never wipe the ball off the block. There's never any strategy in their hits. And there's almost zero free balls (or "chance ball!") in the show. Even if it's a bad first dig, they somehow manage to get a full attack almost every single time. That's just not how it works. And one of the one times the opponent's had to just pass one over, everyone was downright amazed with how smart it was to pass it to the setter. That's not that clever at all. A common strategy to break teams with really good setters is to hit, pass, and block everything in their direction to either force them to have the libero set or to get them out of rotation to compensate for it. It's something almost every team of every skill level does, surely a team that has a chance to go to nationals would know this stuff. This is more of a minor detail, but the portrayal of the females in this show was slightly derogatory. I'm not going to go full SJW and preach to you right now, but this stuff was kind of obvious. The females were all strung over the hotshot athletes, the female volleyball team was the weak and helpless team that needed the boys' team's strength to pick them back up after the loss, and all the explaining that got done to help the audience was 80% of the time done to some "helpless and confused" girl watching from the sidelines. Sure, the main girl (if you can even call her main) had some strength, but it was just stereotypical, shounen strength, nothing resembling a real personality. [b]Characters: 7[/b] I'm going to be honest with you, I just absolutely couldn't stand Hinata, the MC. He was the stereotypical genuine, happy-go-lucky protagonist. His motivations were extremely one-dimensional and weak. You lose 1 game in Junior High to a good team while you have a shit team so you swear revenge for life? And that's your driving motivation for the rest of the series? To beat him in a 1-on-1? His personality was so bad. Every interaction he had with other people was a "feel-good" talk, something to pick another guy back up on his feet, which got really stale after about, hmmm, 2 episodes. This problem existed with lots of other characters as well. Interactions that just started with someone feeling down and ended with them magically being inspired again, after like 2 sentences. Super cliché, shounen nonsense. Kageyama and Asahi were the only ones who went through any type of development (although Asahi's was condensed within about 4 episodes), which isn't [i]too[/i] big of a problem, if I actually liked any of the other character's personalities. Honestly, the only 2 I liked were Tsukishima (because he has the same kind of "wtf are these people doing" attitude I have) and Nishinoya because all liberos are cool. [b]Art/Animation: 9[/b] The art and animation were definitely great all-around, but I did have some issues with them as well. For one, some character's necks were really long or really weird, which honestly made some characters look like literal dickheads (Oikawa I'm looking at you). Also, there were tons of reused and recycled animations. Because everyone hit line, all they had to do was switch the character who was "receiving" the ball and reuse the animation over and over. There was no variety with the hits so they cut corners on animation. I don't know if this was due to limited budget, but it was quite noticeable. One thing I do have to commend them on are the volleyballs themselves. They were well-detailed and looked almost exactly like the ones we use in real life, down to the little tiny ridge details on the ball. [b]Sound: 8[/b] I have no complaints, but I honestly don't think sound matters that much (unless it's awful or amazing). [b]Personal Enjoyment: 7[/b] I genuinely did like this show and I will be watching the second season as it airs. I'm just confused as to why so many people heap praise upon this show. It's a good shounen, absolutely, but it's too much of a shounen. Thank you for reading my review and if you have any feedback (positive or negative, I don't mind) feel free to message me.