Review of Haikyu!! To the Top

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 thatit 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!