Haikyuu!!
Haikyu!!

Edit

What would you like to edit?

SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links  

I actually don't have the words worthy enough to give to Haikyuu, while it has given me so much.

Just recently, the 8 long year journey has finally come to an end. I say long but it actually felt short now that it has ended. It is the first shounen and sports manga that I read and stuck with. I started this in college, and now I am also an adult like the characters.

Haikyuu made me laugh, cry and feel so many emotions. And until the end, the emotions were still there. It feels as if I was saying goodbye to a dear old friend. ... Such a story foretold with so many life lessons and memories, I can't thank Furudate sensei enough. The success and praise for this story is very well-deserved.

No moment was dull. No character was left unappreciated. The character developments of each character is by far the best. Furudate really knows how to tug one's heartstrings.

Honestly, this is not a review. This is a farewell to my beloved manga. Truly a masterpiece that I hope will be remembered forever. Hinata and Kageyama's story will always have a place in my heart.

"Rather than despairing and giving up because you're not a genius, believe that your strength is not limited to this and continue on the path straight ahead of you." - This line from Oikawa's scene has always kept me going. So if Oikawa can do it, so CAN you (reference from the future chaps).

Again, this is not a review. But a farewell to my beloved manga. TO MY PARADISE. THANK YOU FURUDATE SENSEI. THANK YOU FOR CREATING HAIKYUU. FOR GIVING US THIS MASTERPIECE. FOR NOT GIVING UP ON IT. FOR THE MEMORIES. AND FOR INTRODUCING TO US THE WORLD YOU SAW.

Until we meet again.

Haikyuu is a manga about volleyball. There, the hottest take of 2020.

But no, really: volleyball is the actual hero of this story, and the only one at that. The enormous cast of colorful, likable characters with all of their ambitions and rivalries are mere canvas for the author Haruichi Furudate to paint his limitless, unrelenting adoration for the sport. Former enemies become rivals, former rivals become teammates; the entire corpus of character dynamics is shown almost exclusively through the lens of their relation to volleyball. Consequently, characters who have none of such relation almost never even enter the frame—that's just how laser-focused Haikyuu is.

I could ... go on about how Furudate makes a point to make the protagonist short to help break the common stereotype that only tall people are good at spiking the ball, or how Hinata and Kageyama have a strangely captivating yin-yang kind of interpersonal dynamics, or how Tsukishima is the unsung MVP of the team, but it feels almost pointless to delve into these comparatively minor details. Or perhaps it would actually be missing the point, simply because everything takes such a distant backseat to this great overarching goal of spreading the love for volleyball—which is really what the author wants to express first and foremost. Not some fantasy take on volleyball, but the real thing.

In this respect, I'm sure that after some years Haikyuu will be seen as the second coming of Slam Dunk in terms of its lasting influence on the sport, and it will deserve every bit of praise it gets in this regard. After all, it genuinely lives and breathes volleyball; the way the sport is portrayed is so vivid and enjoyable all by itself that such appreciation becomes contagious. In writing it, Furudate sets out on an evangelical mission to convert as many people as possible into volleyball fans and players, and does so very successfully in my opinion. I don't normally enjoy sports manga, and I used to be completely averse to volleyball, but now I kind of admire it more than some other sports in which I used to dabble as a kid. If that's what this manga did to me, I can only imagine the magnitude of its effect world-wide.

All of that aside, Haikyuu is a really by-the-numbers sports manga that follows the typical shounen formula of setting a goal, encountering an obstacle, training, and overcoming the obstacle, and repeats it while throwing in an occasional loss to shake things up until it decides it's done enough. Naturally, there's your usual cheerful spiky-haired underdog-type protagonist to go along with it. The plot can be described as functional; it's really only there to make you follow the games. Their portrayal is somewhat embellished for dramatic effect but never leaves the realm of realism and common sense; there are no weird superpowers, misplaced mind games, custom rules, or any other silly shenanigans. There's pretty much no romance, tragedy, or interpersonal conflicts, either: the sport provides all the conflict, and all of it is resolved on the court. The life off the court is mainly spent recounting the past games and preparing for the next ones. Nothing but volleyball matters—which, depending on what you value in a story, may be a big downside.

If you enjoy this sort of simple and sincere sports series, Haikyuu is definitely one of the very finest specimen you can find, and it will take its rightful place in history alongside the likes of Slam Dunk and Captain Tsubasa. But if you prefer to have a deeper character study with sports/games serving as the backdrop instead, I'd rather direct you to Ping Pong, Kaiji, or The Boxer.

Do note that the TV adaptation does the series justice and helps greatly in following the dynamics of the matches, which can get a little confusing at times. If you're choosing whether to read or watch it, the anime is a safe choice and the definitive experience in my opinion.

Haikyuu is like one of those porcelain dolls that can surely be found at your grandma’s place – it might look nice, but ultimately it lacks point and only takes up space.

Haikyuu is a bit of unusual sports series, though not in a good way. You see, the major driving factor of most of sports anime and manga in terms of both plot progression and drawing the audience attention is either human drama, or insane over the top action, frequently one that non-drawn media could not hope to fully convey. Haikyuu does neither of those – it only has relatively regular matches. And that’s it. ... Practically speaking there is no story in Haikyuu, it’s just a string of matches with brief breaks in between mostly dedicated to training that is even less interesting as no matches. As someone who doesn’t care about volleyball at all, all of the matches felt the same. To be fair, there’s not much of a variety to volleyball unless you spice its fictional version a bit, but that is exactly what the author should have done, as the 45 volumes of unchanged formula with no points of interest are a drag to read.

At this point some might object that the reason that I didn’t like Haikyuu is because I don’t like volleyball and therefore it’s my fault, not the authors. I object – a good sports manga or anime makes you like it even if you do not care about the sport itself – as mentioned the sport is used as a medium for either a good story or adrenaline-filled action, preferably both. I think real life boxing is stupid, but I greatly enjoyed Ashita no Joe, Hajime no Ippo and Megalobox. I couldn’t care less about ballroom dancing but Welcome to the Ballroom got my eyes glued to the screen. I still don’t understand how people think climbing mountains is a good way to spend their free time, but Kokou no Hito was amazing and unique experience. In comparison, Haikyuu felt just like watching regular real life matches and as it would bore me in real life, so it did while I was reading this manga. The structure of Haikyuu reminded me of fanservice-driven manga, just instead of nudity and pantyshots there are ball shots – the lack of overall plot stays the same.

The art is nice and the best part of this manga, though the animation of the adaptation is actually better than the art of the manga. And it too can get a bit stale as you can only make so much various angle shots of Hinata jumping up before it gets repetitive.

The characters are amazingly shallow. The personalities of cast are just (not so much) various takes on “I love volleyball!”. There is no character development in Haikyuu, any development the characters go through is directly tied to their sport skills and how they play volleyball. At one point it did get my hopes up with the time-skip – even though time-skip is usually just a lazier way to shoe in character progress without actually having to show how said progress happened, at least there would be some development, right? For a change it had me actually reading instead of just consuming the text and the pictures. But no, soon enough it turned into another undistinguishable match and then and. The final chapter really felt like those ending credits of the final episode of an old tv series where the fates of various characters was briefly mentioned as this was much budget friendly than actually showing those fates, which was kinda laughable. While the previous plot off Haikyuu could be summarized as “Haha volleyball ball goes WHOOOSH”, the final arc is more like “Now that years have passed I am now stronger than I was before. Haha volleyball ball goes WHOOOSH”.

Overall, I cannot find any reason to read this and I’d go as far as to say this is just a waste of time, but I understand that it might catch the interest of sport nerds and sport players (let’s ignore the fujoshi that make up a huge chunk of the fanbase and it is since it caught the attention of those people that Haikyuu spiked up in popularity), so while my enjoyment of reading this manga was much lower, to be more fair my final rating is 5 out 10.