Making an emphasis on the term ‘people’ rather than ‘characters’ makes an important distinction in how well a show has built up believable human-beings. Any fictional being with a bit of art and dialogue is a character. To create a character is easy. To create a person is hard. Making people means that the author(s) have a steady grasp on what makes a person, a person on more than a surface or physical level. Humans are complex things, each one has their own experiences that shape them, their own personalities that dictate how they react to their environment, and on top of all of this, they are ever changing. No person’s mind stays the same forever, it is continuously molded by life and other people. To build a character that takes all of this into account requires understanding and creativity. Making characters that lack key elements of humanity will create an issue in the level of investment a person can put into a show.
Character investment is key. It is a prime mover in how immersed a viewer can get in a story. Character believability drives character investment which drives immersion. If you cannot believe that a character is real, you cannot get invested in them or their actions and a wall is formed between fiction and reality, immersion is broken. Some shows may not need to rely on character investment as much as others, again it depends on what kind of story is being told, but for a show like Haikyuu, it is absolutely critical.
Luckily for Haikyuu, its characters are well developed and easily believed. To say Haikyuu is lucky is actually a disservice to the the show’s writers and the original mangaka. Luck has nothing to do with how each of the main characters is well developed enough to convince a viewer that they are real people. They are more than drawings on a screen, they are three-dimensional persons each with their own motivations, experiences, relationships, emotions, etc. A show like Haikyuu needs and thrives on good characters. This is a show about high school volleyball, portrayed in a somewhat realistic manner. It follows the standard sports-anime format of tournaments and practices without much else in between. As far as plot goes, that sums up the show, while at the same time sounding completely mundane and uninteresting to most potential viewers.
Haikyuu does not exactly have the most unique, or interesting premise to the majority of the anime fanbase. It is an animated show about a sport that most probably have little interest in. Even in the world of major league sports, and the huge business in making them spectator sports, volleyball doesn’t exactly draw in the big crowds. To reach a larger audience, Haikyuu needs its great characters to drive its story, because it can not rely on its sport-based-plot to do so.
The characters are the hook which in turn draw viewers into the sport. Once drawn in, a viewer will find themselves engaged in the sport. The connection is another layer of investment. Part of the reason that good characters can get viewers immersed in a show is because of empathy. The ability to feel what other people are feeling is a very basic ability shared between almost all of humanity. Empathy only works with other people though. It is highly likely that if a viewer cannot believe that a character is human, they will not feel empathy for them, or it will be reduced relative to how far from real a character feels. Through empathy, a viewer becomes invested in a character, but beyond that they also become invested in whatever that character is doing, and that is how Haikyuu manages to draw you into the sport.
Being empathetic towards a character means the viewer feels their emotions. In Haikyuu, the characters are fully invested in volleyball. They pour their hearts and souls into each match, and you can feel it. The characters’ investment in the sport seeds viewer investment in the sport, even if said viewer has little actual interest in volleyball outside of the anime.
This is the root of the show’s hype, not the action, but the characters themselves. Haikyuu is widely regarded as a show that can--and will--pump up your excitement. Every point has you on the edge of your seat in anticipation. You may have no interest in watching a live, professional, volleyball match on television, but these fictional matches between made-up Japanese high schoolers has you rooting for the Karasuno High Volleyball Club every step of the way as you eagerly await new episodes.
Unlike real life professional sports, in anime, you get to know the players on a deep and emotional level. Those watching the anime are given views into their personal lives and frequently into their their own thoughts. This builds a stronger relationship between the characters and the viewer which can be exploited to create interest by association in whatever it is that the characters put effort into.
As a story, Haikyuu does not do anything fundamentally different from many other sports anime. As a genre, sports-anime are fairly niche, but Haikyuu, with a plot that doesn’t truly stand out, manages to draw people in, even if they aren’t sports fans at all, let alone volleyball fans. It builds fantastic characters and relationships in order to prey on human empathy and connect viewers to the sport indirectly thus building hype in a setting most would not consider to be engaging.
