Anime Review: Haikyu..!!
I wanted to write a honest review on Haikyu! and got a chance now to do it as an activity from my college .
Haikyu in the way that it shows what a good sports anime can be if given the right characters, chemistry, setting, platform, and art direction. Haikyu was released in April of 2014, and has been running since, with the show currently completed the fourth season. There was a long gap after the third season ended in December of 2016 — while the previous three seasons had released one after the other, fans had to wait a full three years for the first episode of season four. Season four debuted in January of 2020, and was set to be split into two parts . The second part was set to begin in July of 2020, but due to the coronavirus pandemic, it was postponed until October of 2020 and after waiting complete two months of October and November , the part 2 of season 4 was released in mid of December . Yes ! After watching all the seasons completely I am writing this review . So let’s begin from the scratch.
The main character , who appears from the start of the series , is Hinata Shoyo. His dream to become a great volleyball player at Karasuno High School after seeing one of their games and witnessing one of their players, The Little Giant. Volleyball net is pretty high and you need to be tall or have a great jump to reach the top of the net . Here Hinata is super short for a sport like Volleyball . He was inspired by watching Little Giant, play volleyball on television and he was also short like Hinata . Little Giant was from Karasuno and was an amazing player , watching him Hinata join Karasuno. If I can roughly mention Hinata’s height would be around 5 feet 3 to 4 inches only . Moving ahead , the story sets up a lot of possibilities for later in the story, and introduces a unique struggle for the main character to overcome. It also is a complex enough backstory to allow the viewer to connect Hinata’s current actions to his previous experiences, which is a huge bonus in anime. Hinata has great reflexes, that highlights him in the series.
Hinata was in middle school , but could not find a volleyball club , which made him play along with the ball. Later in final year of middle school, he convinces some of his classmates to form a volleyball club with him so they can enter a tournament, and they lose , of course. But this loss introduces Hinata to Kageyama Tobio , who will serve as Hinata’s rival for the match. The rivalry in sport always drives the story forward.. When Hinata graduates and joins in Karasuno High School, he discovers that he’s on the volleyball team with Kageyama. The story revolves around Hinata and Kageyama’s growth as they work with the rest of their team to pursue the ultimate victory: The National Championship.
Haikyu has a special thing that, it just not focuses on the main character as the hero of the story or just make the whole series on that particular character , here we see that the story is scripted in such a way that their always balance in between the roles of characters , so that you just don’t sit and wait for the main character to turn up everything is something which Haikyu doesn’t follow and that is the main thing I love about this series .
Another thing which I like about Haikyu is, from the sports point of view, it totally grabs the focus. You just don’t get bored and would be eagerly waiting for the next part as the story has matches and Haikyu script has some intense moments where you probably need to hold your nerves for a while.
We have seen many series where in a typical sports anime, the main character’s team cannot lose kind of feel, but it feels different when Haikyu does it. Instead of the characters seemingly being handed win after win on a silver platter, the show does a great job of making the wins feel very high. We see the characters grow and change, and develop their skills and styles as the main focus of the show. Because of this gradual development, it’s much more satisfying to see one of the characters pull off that new technique they’ve been practicing We know the work that went into it, and finally seeing it pay off is very fun to watch. This payoff isn’t the only major point for Haikyu, though.
Every sports series will have a partner or a team, each and every character is so real enough , not giving that extra drama that usually we see in most of the Anime series , where the high-school guys behave rude enough or just rise the childish nature to grab the attention. Well, the script gives Haikyu characters enough maturity and responsible for their roles . The story plays out most of the characters in the team in a way that it features them all with a fair serving of screen time for each, most of them having some fairly decent background info. We get to look at their motives, their abilities, their qualities, their defining strengths and weaknesses, and how they interact with other members of the team. That last point is what makes the whole team a well-rounded character on its own.
In my view , if I would list a few things why Haikyu is worth watching , they’ll probably be the positive vibes they show , lesser drama, more relating to sport, learning new lesson and gradually increasing with time and mostly importantly you’ll find it more realistic. If you watch properly, you’ll get to know about volleyball too.
Overall Haikyu, is a gem for anime lovers . Usually the stories tend to show super-powers taking us into fantasy world. Here you’ll enjoy watching the series and if you don’t know about volleyball , you’ll surely end up knowing something about the game . It is more real and time worthy.
Hope I have provided some worthy content and a review, good enough for you to go and watch the series. I have watched the complete series till Season 4: To the top part-2 . Haikyu has many chapters in it , I can go complete the manga, to know further about the series. But I still prefer to watch it, even if it takes months/years to get released. Let’s hope that the next season which is Season 5, gets released soon.
Thank You..!
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