Haikyuu!! To the Top

After their triumphant victory over Shiratorizawa Academy, the Karasuno High School volleyball team has earned their long-awaited ticket to nationals. As preparations begin, genius setter Tobio Kageyama is invited to the All-Japan Youth Training Camp to play alongside fellow nationally recognized players. Meanwhile, Kei Tsukishima is invited to a special rookie training camp for first-years within the Miyagi Prefecture. Not receiving any invitations himself, the enthusiastic Shouyou Hinata feels left behind.

However, Hinata does not back down. Transforming his frustration into self-motivation, he boldly decides to sneak himself into the same rookie training camp as Tsukishima. Even though Hinata only lands himself a job as the ball boy, he comes to see this as a golden opportunity. He begins to not only reflect on his skills as a volleyball player but also analyze the plethora of information available on the court and how he can apply it.

As the much-anticipated national tournament approaches, the members of Karasuno's volleyball team attempt to overcome their weak points and refine their skills, all while aiming for the top!

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Hinata, Shouyou Main

Murase, Ayumu Japanese

Kageyama, Tobio Main

Ishikawa, Kaito Japanese

Nishinoya, Yuu Supporting

Okamoto, Nobuhiko Japanese

Kozume, Kenma Supporting

Kaji, Yuuki Japanese

Tsukishima, Kei Supporting

Uchiyama, Kouki Japanese

Bokuto, Koutarou Supporting

Kimura, Ryouhei Japanese

Kuroo, Tetsurou Supporting

Nakamura, Yuuichi Japanese

Sugawara, Koushi Supporting

Irino, Miyu Japanese

Akaashi, Keiji Supporting

Oosaka, Ryouta Japanese

Tanaka, Ryuunosuke Supporting

Hayashi, Yuu Japanese

Maeda, Toshihiro Producer

Morihiro, Fumi Producer

Matsushita, Keiko Producer

Okamura, Wakana Producer

Reviews

Apr 3, 2020

SingleH

Recommended

Perhaps this is selfish, as I don’t interact with the community enough to know if this opinion is shared, but to me, the enduring appeal of seasons one through three of Haikyuu!!—putting aside, for now, its outstandingly high quality production—was in the fact it was the first and only shounen anime which did not feel like it was meant to go on forever. All shounen manga as serialized in Weekly Shounen Jump are literally, in-the-text, meant to go on forever. By design of the publication, volume sales and product sales are of secondary importance to by-vote audience reception, which would honestly be kind of cool ... from a creative market perspective if said piece of art wasn’t placed on such a ridiculously tight schedule as such which effectively forces all products produced under its purview to be trite, shallow, flavor-of-the-week time killers, and few works of its brand escape this fate. To me, Haikyuu!! was the only one of those exceptions which was worthwhile.

Its characters have always been archetypical, its theming has always been modest, and its narrative has always been standard, but to regurgitate what I’ve been saying for years now, Haikyuu!! knows the good tropes and executes them flawlessly. Haikyuu!! doesn’t take one-note characters and make them deep, it just makes them the most consistently well-written and empathetic one-note characters you can find. It doesn’t take power of friendship, hard work vs talent storytelling and make it any more complex, it just delivers it with such hype and humanistic catharsis your heart can’t help but be affected. It doesn’t take the highschool sports inter-high plot structure and make it any more unique or interesting, it just executes the stock mold with such expert pacing and pointed purpose you still feel every step of the way is a culmination. And the cherry on top of it all is exactly where I started this gushing rant to being with, its ability to do what none other in its genre can do: not feel like a waste of my time.

I’m not old, but if you asked your average anime fan, they’d think I’m old. Frankly, I find it extremely and progressively difficult to give a care about highschool anime. Unless you have a crazy high-concept and a million things going on at once like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya or incomparably genius writing and direction like Hyouka, I’ll probably drop you within five minutes. Haikyuu!! has an immediate advantage with me being a Production IG show, because it gets to be drop dead gorgeous, but I still just couldn’t help being anchored down by how good it made me feel. However, this was not nearly enough in the long run, and I figured I would just power through the first season and then respectfully refrain from continuing, but with the betrayal of expectations the first season ended with, the point became clear and I became invested. From that point on, season two delivered the most psychologically relieving and emotionally elating ensemble character arcs in any sports anime ever made, and season three delivered ten straight episodes of bracing sakuga and physically electrifying payoff after payoff.

And this is exactly why I thought it was the perfect time—to stop. I’m not about to sit here and spout pandering buzzwords and generalizations at you, like how long running series are destined to go downhill or any of that nonsense, because as I mentioned, I don’t interact with the community, I and don’t care about the trappings of their public consciousness. I just personally feel as if the concept is starting to exhaust itself. To no deep fault, mind you, but to exhaustion nonetheless. Season one felt aimless only in so far as it smartly played its cards close to the chest, but the moment it showed its hand, the series gained an alien sense of—not maturity, per se, but—reality, and seeing as I then instantly noticed the story hidden in the details which I had failed to appreciate, I was able to continue on in the correct mindset and consume it as the modest masterwork it was and always had been, plus the incredible animation and sharp design work it initially charmed me with. This season was the complete layered cake I described, only without that imperative cherry on top.

Simply put, it stayed as solidly constructed and consistently written as it ever was, but lost the subtle spark and fulfilling momentum which it had always enchanted me with. The characters have to regress to develop because they were so perfectly completed, the new principle antagonists feel random because those who came before them spent fifty to sixty episodes being built up, and the plot has to meander to progress because it was so perfectly concluded. Said regression fit said characters’ established mental hang-ups, and said meandering fit said plot’s logical stagnation following the tournament which season three ended with, but whether it makes sense or not and whether it’s competently made or not, the fact of the matter is it’s not nearly as gratifying as it has been historically, and that is a problem, no matter how picky. After all, just as a bad show can only change for the better, a good show can only change for the worse, especially if that good show is of the same nature Haikyuu!! is, that of an anime based on a manga pumped out weekly and with no time to improvise once the proverbial conceptual well ran dry.

And yet, what’s really the biggest hit to my own personal enjoyment is the downgraded directing and animation. The production values are just as kinetic and ambitious for the genre, but nowhere near as polished, consistent, and technically perfect as the prior seasons. You know it’s a dark day when Production IG themselves have to split-cour a production, whether it’s being done better by their B-Team than any other fullcore studio could ever do with their best or not. Haikyuu!! To the Top is by no means the “top” of what this series has to offer nor what this series has offered in the past, but it is still miles, miles, miles above the bottom, and any fan of the series will find themselves greatly pleased by its return. However, if you’re a crotchety old bitch like me or a sakuga nerd chasing that prepossessingly glorious shooting star of crafted brilliance, Production IG, you may find yourself somewhat disheartened, no matter how delightfully your favorite characters on screen can turn that frown upside down.

Thank you for reading.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Apr 4, 2020

0207xander

Mixed Feelings

Yo. So far I’ve written reviews for every season of Haikyuu! and figured I’d keep it going. Most of the times I have been critical, but it’s been hard for me to figure out why I haven’t liked Haikyuu without saying “I just think it’s overrated”. I think this time I actually know why: It tries way too hard.

The plot progresses in unnatural and extremely structured ways that doesn’t flow naturally, the new characters are introduced with such strong personalities that they don’t feel real, and the conversations between characters are either so unbelievably stereotypical that it makes me cringe or so inspirational that ... it makes me cringe. The humor is also wayyyyy too slapstick. I feel like they should add 1960s Loony Tunes BOING and WAHOO sound effects to all the epic goofy moments that Hinata and the other silly boys go through. It’s just way too over the top and makes me enjoy the show less.

So now to the latest season of Haikyuu!. Hinata sneaks into a freshman training camp and does his ball boy job so well that he starts to actually pay attention to what’s going on around him. I know they had to find some way to force his game to develop but I felt they could have done a way better job, this is just such a dumb plot point. People naturally learn to pay attention to their surroundings as they get better at their role in a sport. Once Hinata had played like 4 games he should have started this process. I was watching these episodes completely uninterested just wondering when we were gonna move on and Hinata finally stops being useless.

Then the Kageyama portion of these initial episodes where he goes to the select training camp. I thought it would initially be cool to see a display of some of the other good players in Japan and that it would be a great opportunity to showcase stuff that ACTUALLY takes place in sports, like detailing routines, work ethic, raw talent, and passion of top players in the country, and instead they use it as an excuse to introduce more quirky and non-relatable, uninteresting characters that I do not care about. They had an opportunity to have a great animation showcase in the scrimmage they had but even that was wasted because there was no fluidity at all in the animation and the entire thing played out in the minds of Kageyama and the other setter.

Then we get into the preparation for the tournament. These episodes were pretty good. You have to have some balance between character interaction, training, and intense games, so this middle transitionary period was completely fine for me. Just the usual issues of wacky humor that tries way too hard, too often and doesn’t land.

Then they actually start traveling for nationals. Literally the dumbest episode of the entire series so far was when their team manager had to go get Hinata’s bag and they turned it into a character development opportunity with her doing hurdles in track. This episode was dumb. They tried so hard to get us invested in this character that is so uninteresting by dumping an entire life’s worth of backstory in 10 minutes, and Hinata losing his bag was such a contrived, unnatural plot turn that just came off as forced and served no purpose other than to develop this character. And her backstory wasn’t even interesting, it was kind of pointless and I still didn’t care about her after hearing everything.

Onto the tournament itself. I know they are just gearing up for part 2 of this season so I can’t comment much on it because we have only seen one game so far. The depth perception thing was ridiculously stupid though, I’ve played volleyball tournaments in arenas with even higher ceilings and no stands, just 60 courts in a big cement rectangle. There is absolutely no difference in depth perception that 3 minutes of warming up won’t fix. You would be right to say “That’s such a minor issue, why are you even talking about it?” That’s because it was the subject of an ENTIRE EPISODE FOR NO REASON. If it had been mentioned in passing I wouldn’t even have to mention it.

Ok now for the actual production and quality of the show itself. It is very underwhelming. The music and animation has not improved since season 1 (which was made 6 years ago). For a show that staggers it’s seasons every other year to maintain production quality, you expect some sort of improvement. There are 3 second sequences that are breathtaking, of course, but 99% of the show is a slideshow with moving mouths and recycled hitting, setting, and passing animations that appear every episode. I’m just not impressed with the sakuga animation because it’s short and predictable and they try so hard to make it “epic” that it ends up being predictable and not as shocking of a visual experience.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts on this season, extending a little bit to the series as a whole. If you disagree, I’d encourage you to message me on my profile, I’d love to discuss it more. Thank you for reading!

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Apr 3, 2020

abystoma2

Not Recommended

Four seasons in and I still have no idea what the appeal of this show is supposed to be. And it’s getting worse.

You see, to make a sports appealing, one of two choices needs to be taken most of the time. Either let the human drama be the focus and use the sport as the way to channel the conflict, or go over the top with the sport to make it blood-boiling exciting. Haikyuu has neither of those. It just a bunch of high school guys playing volleyball. Neither the characters and their interaction nor the game itself is interesting. You might even say ... that it’s too realistic for it’s own good, as it really feels just like sitting on a bench in high school watching some randos play a match because you have nothing better to do.

And here comes this season’s special: training. Yep, most of the fourth season is training. Now I know some training is important as the most popular alternative to training is just straight out ass-pulls, but is most of the season really necessary? Watching the whole “Hinata accidentallies himself into the big boi training grounds” pretext is just painfully boring. I know the result will be “He got somewhat better at playing”, you know it, we all know it yet we’re all forced to watch a bunch of episodes to get the much predicted result. Nothing of interest happens during this part, though to be honest I couldn’t name you a single interesting scene in the whole season. I mean, stuff like “slice of life fans be like - bro the grocery store arc hit different” jokes become reality here as we get an episode that’s mostly about a dude forgetting his bag in a gym. This whole season could be condensed into 3 or 4 episodes and nothing of value would be lost.

The cast is pretty much basic action shounen cast just taken from battle and put into sport genre. Most of their personalities are “being really passionate about the game” and “causing 'humorous' scenes that will make the background simplified and everyone make a 'funny' face”. Some of them also possess the unique trait of shouting really loud. I’ve noticed that since this season offers nothing of interest anyway, the character designs were tweaked a bit so now almost everyone looks like the same person, just with a different haircut. Interesting artistic choice, but fitting.

The animation is still good, but not as good as the previous seasons. Considering the high quality animation was what made Haikyuu stand out and combined with the subpar plot of this season (even for Haikyuu standards) this easily makes it the worst season so far. One pet peeve I have about the animation through the whole franchise is the decision to make a hole in the volleyball net every time a character is standing behind it. Yeah, I get it, it’s so we can see the characters face, but really, would few lines of net hurt so much? Now it breaks any bit of immersion that could have been had every time it’s done.

The list ditch effort and simultaneously almost a sure-kill way to make a scene exciting is to throw in an epic soundtrack. You can make eating potato chips epic with the right choice of sound accompaniment. Yet, there’s no choosing from out of nothing and cool soundtrack didn’t really get an opportunity to show its qualities this round. Better luck next time.

Overall, this is just another dose of generic episodes of “fujoshi bait characters passionately slap sweaty balls, moaning about having to get better at it”.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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