Before I talk about the problems of this season let me give you my opinion on season 1 and 2. I don't think that Haikyuu!! is amazing or anything. It's a by the books sports anime with flat and uninteresting characters and a barebones underdog narrative. The only thing that kept it from being annoying were the matches. They are fun to watch and things that happen are exciting enough to keep me entertained even if they had frequent pacing issues. But all that 'hype' didn't justify everything else. That's a very short summary of my opinion on season 1 and 2 of Haikyuu!!
So with all that out of the way let's talk about season 3 of Haikyuu!! So Haikyuu season 3 is basically just one volleybal match in the course of 10 episodes between Karasuno (the team you are supposed to root for) and Shiratorizawa. And yes the match is 10 episodes long. And keep in mind that most of the important matches in haikyuu are roughly 4-6 episodes long. So you know what that means. Desperately stretching the running time so it will meet the ten episode mark. Because of this the anime felt like a chore to watch through.
The pacing in Haikyuu!! has never been that great. Sometimes it could be confusing to see what the standings were between the teams because there are not a lot of opportunities to cut to them. And somehow this season managed to mess that even more up by constantly slowing down the match for extra running time. This was done by using unnecessary flashbacks, constantly cutting to the coaches or the crowd who'll fill up screen time for the next three minutes (you're going to see that cliché a lot). They also achieve this by having some filler. One particular character gets a lot more screentime than the rest of his teammates. And apparently he didn't get that screen time in the manga (that's what I've heard correct me if I'm wrong). Even though a lot of people liked it, I've felt like it was something that should've been done at the end of season 2 at best. It would've worked with Aoba Jousai because they're technically their rivals not with Shiratorizawa because they were just a powerhouse that they needed to defeat and not their long life rivals (even though the anime acted like they were).
Speaking of Shiratorizawa that's another bad thing of this season. Shiratorizawa was very very bland and boring. They're your stereotypical bad guy team who think that the underdogs are not worthy of their time, but when they actually start playing they suddenly realise that the underdogs are good etc etc. I won't say that the opposing teams in Haikyuu!! are very rich and deep in character because that's basically not true. However there was something which made each team at the very least acceptable and not annoying to watch. Every team who faced Karasuno never thought little of them. Yes they mocked Hinata sometimes but the team as a whole were taken serious as soon as the match started. Even their rival, Aoba Jousai, did this. And the fact that Shiratorizawa is your stereotypical bad guy made this match more annoying to watch.
Now let's talk about animation quality. The redeeming quality of the anime for probably most people. And even though the animation is very good, I mean the animations themselves are very nicely done with great details and the 3d environments was well used and were not distracting. However I do want to note that a lot of earlier used shots are reused in the anime. And some of them can be forgiven, but some of the more impressive shots were repeated which takes away the magic that those shots gave when you first saw them. It seems very desperate to lower the production costs. And this is a problem that seasons 1 and 2 also have. But because this season is so unnecessarily long this stuff stands out more than usual. Not to mention that in a lot of flashbacks older shots from previous seasons were used too.
The sound of Haikyuu!! is nothing special. It's your average sports anime music. There is nothing wrong with it but it's also not the most amazing soundtrack you'll ever hear.
So what is haikyuu season 3? I would say it's a huge disappointment and could potentially be bad for the industry if this is accepted by a large amount of people. I won't say that I completely hated it. There were some moments that I did enjoy. And the animation quality is still good even though a lot of animations were repeated a lot. But those few moments that I enjoyed won't justify everything wrong with this season of Haikyuu!! And in my honest opinion it deserves a low score. Hype can't fix something like this. And if you somehow managed to read through all of this stuff and not looked at the score I have given this season and immediately hate me and disagree with me, well congrats.
I would not recommend Haikyuu!!: Karasuno Koukou VS Shiratorizawa Gakuen Koukou to your average anime fan. If you want to watch the Haikyuu!! series I would say watch season 1 and 2 and read some spoilers online so that you would avoid this and wait for the real season 3. The only people that would probably like this are die hard haikyuu fans.
