Review of Haikyu!! Movie: The Dumpster Battle
THIS IS A SPOILER-FREE REVIEW „Haikyuu“ was one of the first big Anime franchises that i properly got into after shows like “My Hero Academia introduced me to the medium back in 2016. To this day, i still believe that Haikyuu is not only one of the greatest sports anime of all time, but also one of the best overall anime shows that I have ever seen. Every season was consistently upping the stakes and emotions. 3 Years have passed since the release of “Haikyuu – To the Top” and the community was eagerly awaiting the first of the two movies that are supposed to bringthis franchise to an end. But does “Haikyuu – The dumpster battle” live up to the hype?
Story – 8/10
Right from the start, the movie introduces you to it´s main theme, which is the famous rivalry between the crows (Karasuno) and the cats (Nekoma). Both teams have been introduced way back in season one. We have seen some character interactions and even some training matches, but the two never faced off in a tournament bracket up until now. Karasuno, coming of a spectacular upset win against the tournaments second seed, Inarizaki, is now poised to finally reignite the old rivalry and beat the cats in Japans national tournament. The build-up over four seasons easily makes this one of the most anticipated duels of the series so far. The game itself was an example of classic Haikyuu-storytelling. Great character moments, suspense and highly interesting tactics makes this game a blast to watch. Everything that is great about Haikyuu is in this movie, so even if you´ve been out of the franchise for a long time, you can easily jump back into it with this film.
Still, this movie is not without it´s flaws. I thought the pacing seemed a little bit off. I honestly think this movie should have been a little bit longer to fully flesh out the tactics, as well as some of Kenmas backstory.
However, the biggest let-down of the movie was the ending. I won´t exactly tell what happens because of spoilers, but the ending itself felt very abrupt, and unsatisfying. Which is surprising because as far as I can remember, Haikyuu always ended it´s matches on some kind of special play or decision-making. This however felt a little bit of, which hurts the movie in the long run.
Art – 9/10
This is easily the best that Haikyuu has ever looked. Seeing these characters on the big screen is a great experience in of itself, but even the quality of the animation has stepped up a lot. The big movie budget definitely helped, so a lot of the very rough artstyle changes during the course of season 4 are completely gone now. The movie also makes use of some fantastic and creative uses of animation. The biggest wow-moment in this movie came right before the end of the match and was one of the best and climatic long-shots in sports anime history, which left the whole cinema speechless for a while. Great stuff here.
Sound – 7/10
The voice-acting in Haikyuu remains some of the best in the whole medium, no questions. But other than that, there is not much to talk about in this category. There is no opening, because this is a movie. Also, to set the atmosphere and tone of a volleyball tournament, the director decided to leave a lot of the scenes completely without music, which is a very interesting stylistic approach in this day and age, because a lot of recent sports anime rely on music a LOT (Especially new-gen shows like “Blue-Lock”). But I think it worked really well for the type of grounded story they wanted to tell here.
Characters – 8/10
They did something really interesting in this movie. During the whole course of the show, Karasuno was always our main team, and Hinata was always our main character. This movie flipped the tables completely. Kenma is the definitive main character of this movie, and we literally see the match through the eyes of him and his team, trying to manipulate, outplay and adapt to Karasuno, and most importantly, to Hinata. It was really interesting to see Nekomas unique approach to the game. Everyone has time to shine but the absolute highlight was the relationship between Kuroo and Kenma, which gets the most screen-time of all the little subplots here. The pool of characters in this show is amazing, and we even get little cameos from earlier seasons like Tendo from Shiratorizawa and of course, fan-favourite Bokuto.
Enjoyment – 9/10
This was a highly enjoyable movie with great characters, an interesting new main character dynamic and fantastic animation. If you like Haikyuu, this is a must see in cinemas. The second movie has already been announced, and if it comes close to this one, it is a definitive must-watch as well.
- Marco_Yooo
FINAL SCORE - 8/10