I remember thinking "if you told me they were gonna stretch out ONE SINGLE VOLLEYBALL MATCH to cover an entire season, I'd laugh in your face and say that's horrible!"But I was so wrong. Season 3 has every reason to fail, stretching a volleyball game over 10 episodes just sounds like a bad idea, but Haikyuu manages to pull it off perfectly and for that I have to give them credit. I realized that I'm glad they didn't just tack on this final match of the tournament as say the last 2 episodes of season 2. Here we have an extra long game of 5 sets (instead of the usual 3) and for the first time exhaustion is a factor in Haikyuu, as we see players low on stamina literally unable to move their legs at times. Giving this game a full season allows us some breathing room to get to know the characters on the opposing side a bit better.
I miss Oikawa from season 2 (he's my favorite character) but I must admit Ushijima is a damn good rival character for this season. This dude is a total beast with monstrous serves that are so powerful they rebound off the floor almost up to the ceiling! Ushijima is so damn powerful and he's able to push through pain and exhaustion through sheer willpower to such an extent, he feels like he could be a shonen protagonist in another show that's just visiting this one, y'know? Flashbacks are used sparingly during the game but they give us good enough glimpses into certain characters' backstories. I'll also mention the red haired weird-looking dude, who became a lot more sympathetic once you saw some of his past. On Hinata's team I have to make special mention of Tsukishima, who has really come a long way since season 1. This cynical dude used to put in the minimum amount of effort but this season he's so concerned with winning the game he even plays with an injured hand! Tsuki has this whole plan of how to block the previously-unblockable Ushijima spike, and when he finally pulls it off and shuts down Ushijima, it's soooo damn satisfying.
Haikyuu's sound and art continue to be some of the best this medium has to offer. Just when I think we've hit the peak of Haikyuu's OST, the Burnout Syndromes return with the OP Hikari Are, which is so mindblowingly epic that it puts even their last OP Fly High to shame. That image of the white bird attacking the crows made my jaw literally drop! The artwork and animation of this show continually astound me, and I have to make special mention of the scene where Tsukishima sees the volleyball reflected in his sports glasses right before he blocks Ushijima's spike? Yeah that was so gorgeous I replayed it like 5x lol. I feel like the artwork had especial attention to detail this season, though, like the part after the end of the match when you actually see characters' eyes are red and puffy from crying so much? Can't remember the last time I even saw that in an anime! So yeah Haikyuu S3 is perfect DLC to an already perfect S2.
