BY ALICE FONTANESI
STAFF WRITER
With the manga ending and season five coming soon, how could I not do an article on Haikyuu?
Haikyuu is an extremely popular sports anime and manga among the anime community. The author is Haruichi Furudate, and the anime was produced by Production I.G and Toho.
Haikyuu is about a high school volleyball player named Shoyo Hinata. We start off with Hinata and his team going to their first tournament during their last year of middle school. Hinata meets Tobio Kageyama, aka the King of the Court. Kageyama is a genius setter from Kitagawa Daiichi, but he is extremely hard to work with because of his ego. After a scuffle with Kageyama, it becomes clear to Hinata that he doesn’t like this guy. When Hinata’s team gets crushed by Kitagawa, Hinata declares he will defeat Kageyama one day on the court. What he doesn’t know is that Kageyama and Hinata would go to the same school, Karasuno High.
Despite how it looks on the outside, Haikyuu is a brilliant anime that somehow gets everyone interested. Haikyuu teaches you strategy and a lot about volleyball while also adding its own themes.
It’s part of the beauty of Haikyuu with their messages about hard work. After Karasuno faced Inarizaki, we were introduced to a new perspective and how no one is born a genius. With the secret character development of Toru Oikawa, Shinsuke Kita became a fan favorite among the fandom because of his leadership skills and morals. Kita introduces the characters to how if you’re able to do something during practice, then you can do it on the court. He introduces such a simple and obvious way that he basically uses it for his daily routine. We learn that saying someone was born with talent is an insult because it neglects the hard work they went through. It’s not, “I wish I can get better,” it’s “How can I get better?” Viewing yourself as the top or viewing someone as the top means you have already lost because no one is the best. There will always be people better than you. There is no almighty trump card in volleyball or real life. We can see that with Hinata throughout the series.
Hinata is one of the shortest players at 164 cm (5’4”) and is known to have incredible jumping skills and spikes yet he is far from the top. During the first few episodes of season four, Hinata sneaks into a training camp, but ends up as a ballboy and never gets to play. Despite this, he observes all of the athletes and tries to use them to improve his own skills. We see that finally pay off once he successfully receives during the Inarizaki match.
No matter how you view Haikyuu, it grabs your attention in many ways. Haikyuu is one of those shows that is educational and actually good. Furudate was a middle blocker back in high school, and he clearly displays the effort that goes into volleyball in a way that everyone can understand. With loveable characters added, Haikyuu is an anime that many can enjoy.