Haikyuu!! To the Top

Welcome to a new chapter of “I could never have imagined a volleyball anime could be this good” “Haikyuu!!: To the Top” picks up more or less at the spot where we were left when S3 ended, meaning that Karasuno has just defeated Shiratorizawa to qualify for nationals. Even if it was an unavoidable event for the story to keep progressing, that along with other circumstances such as the sidelining of Hinata for much part of the Shiratorizawa match might have made the third season the weakest -though it was kind of useful to demonstrate that Karasuno wasn’t a 2-man army-. Still, it set the stagefor a huge future narrative event in the nationals championships, and it seemed clear that Shoujo was going to play a more important role these following seasons. Up until now, Haikyuu!!’s formula had always been the same: Train hard, improve, play some friendly matches here and there and enter the competition of the Miyagi Prefecture, where Karasuno’s team would fight their way through the league chart against some already known rivals to reach the long-desired status of National qualifiers. However, this season marks a turning point in the franchise path; our beloved crows have a new goal in sight, win the nationals, and in consequence, new and harder challenges to deal with. The indicated set-up gives the creators the chance to make two phenomenons possible: Dig deeper into the development of this volleyball universe -showing us new players and teams to keep in sight as well as more aspects of the game- and displaying a different perspective of the series -more character-driven than the past 3 seasons- as it strongly focuses on the development and evolution of the main cast, preparing and hyping us for the enormous challenge that our friends from Karasuno High School are just about to face. And this brings us up to Hinata’s situation. His only power is ambition. Sooner or later, the ability range of Hinata had to expand and this season called for it. His character had always walked across the thin line separating greatness and powerlessness due to its short range of abilities, but he had managed to survive in spite of that. Therefore, and far from making it as your typical shounen evolution where characters improve their abilities out of nowhere or learn a skill after practicing once, Haikyuu to the Top shows us a main character who finds himself forced to envision volleyball from a different point of view to what he’s used to; this gives Hinata the chance to analyse and scrutinize other great volleyball players game, making it easier for him to realise what was dragging him down, and how could he put a stop to it. This results -for the delight of us, Haikyuu fans- in a considerable bust to his volleyball potential. So, as we all know, one of the elements that make this franchise stand out is its realism and characterization of the players. This has not changed a bit; every single character feels special in its on way, as we still see how both our main cast and their subsequent rivals evolve as players and as human beings throughout games and hardships, forced to change their approach to the game and to life due to the adversities they encounter along the way. However, due to the lack of games -or, at least, meaningful ones- during this season, the intensity and anxiety that matches provoked on the viewer and that had become the seal of identity of this anime this past 3 seasons, has somewhat been obscured, making this course a little more boring than the last ones. Maybe this framework is not the most enjoyable, but guess what? All good stories require a good foundation, and without this one, Haikyuu!! might not have been able to move forward. Leaving all this behind, this fourth season is the first to see significant changes in staff –we have both a new director and animation director. Nevertheless, animation quality has not dropped at all -or at least, not that much as people thought it would-; Satou has achieved to safeguard the spirit of the last 3 seasons, though slightly redesigning some of the characters in order to make them closer to the manga which, in fact, was one of the objectives they had at the beginning of the process. When it comes to Haikyuu!, the depictions of movement is probably unparalleled. This series has always been masterful at illustrating the human form in motion –muscle definition, facial expressions, joy, fatigue– making good use of vivid colors and fine structures, and it looks like none of that seems to have changed. Last but not least, sound. Besides counting again with a great sound director such as Hiromi Kikuta, which has been able to create absolute magic throughout the whole series -this season was no different from the previous ones-, and with the same voice cast we’ve been enjoying lately (rest in peace Tanaka-san),we also could enjoy ourselves with the absolute banger which BURNOUT SYNDROMES delivered. I.G production knows that a lot of responsibility is placed in their hands -you know, they produce one of the most acclaimed sports animation shows- and, as it was expected, “Haikyuu!!:To the Top” did not let us down. “With sweat, blood and tears - those shining wings will take you wherever you please”

Four seasons in and I still have no idea what the appeal of this show is supposed to be. And it’s getting worse. You see, to make a sports appealing, one of two choices needs to be taken most of the time. Either let the human drama be the focus and use the sport as the way to channel the conflict, or go over the top with the sport to make it blood-boiling exciting. Haikyuu has neither of those. It just a bunch of high school guys playing volleyball. Neither the characters and their interaction nor the game itself is interesting. You might even saythat it’s too realistic for it’s own good, as it really feels just like sitting on a bench in high school watching some randos play a match because you have nothing better to do. And here comes this season’s special: training. Yep, most of the fourth season is training. Now I know some training is important as the most popular alternative to training is just straight out ass-pulls, but is most of the season really necessary? Watching the whole “Hinata accidentallies himself into the big boi training grounds” pretext is just painfully boring. I know the result will be “He got somewhat better at playing”, you know it, we all know it yet we’re all forced to watch a bunch of episodes to get the much predicted result. Nothing of interest happens during this part, though to be honest I couldn’t name you a single interesting scene in the whole season. I mean, stuff like “slice of life fans be like - bro the grocery store arc hit different” jokes become reality here as we get an episode that’s mostly about a dude forgetting his bag in a gym. This whole season could be condensed into 3 or 4 episodes and nothing of value would be lost. The cast is pretty much basic action shounen cast just taken from battle and put into sport genre. Most of their personalities are “being really passionate about the game” and “causing 'humorous' scenes that will make the background simplified and everyone make a 'funny' face”. Some of them also possess the unique trait of shouting really loud. I’ve noticed that since this season offers nothing of interest anyway, the character designs were tweaked a bit so now almost everyone looks like the same person, just with a different haircut. Interesting artistic choice, but fitting. The animation is still good, but not as good as the previous seasons. Considering the high quality animation was what made Haikyuu stand out and combined with the subpar plot of this season (even for Haikyuu standards) this easily makes it the worst season so far. One pet peeve I have about the animation through the whole franchise is the decision to make a hole in the volleyball net every time a character is standing behind it. Yeah, I get it, it’s so we can see the characters face, but really, would few lines of net hurt so much? Now it breaks any bit of immersion that could have been had every time it’s done. The list ditch effort and simultaneously almost a sure-kill way to make a scene exciting is to throw in an epic soundtrack. You can make eating potato chips epic with the right choice of sound accompaniment. Yet, there’s no choosing from out of nothing and cool soundtrack didn’t really get an opportunity to show its qualities this round. Better luck next time. Overall, this is just another dose of generic episodes of “fujoshi bait characters passionately slap sweaty balls, moaning about having to get better at it”.

To start off this review, I'd like to say that I've seen quite a few people complaining about this season. The main complaints seem to be about the animation and the lack of action. I normally never write reviews, but, because of what I stated above, I'll try to express my opinion this time. While I don't think starting with the animation is that relevant, I'd like to address the complaints here. The animation is absolutely gorgeous, it's the art style (yes, it's not the same thing) that has people complaining. I believe people just don't like changes, and, when something is indeed changing, they immediately reactin a bad way without taking the time to think about it. To me, the animation is great. Furthermore, the art change was made to stay true to the manga, so I think that's a good thing. It does take a while (like 5 minutes) to adapt, but if you try to enjoy it, you'll see the animation and art style is pretty damn great. I personally like this art even more than the older season. It resembles the manga more, and seems more "modern". It is simpler, mostly because the animators weren't the same I believe. But it's still beautiful and satisfying to me. Adapting to a different art style and seeing animation evolving shouldn't be such an important topic of complaints when it's done greatly! It's anime, OF COURSE the animation or art style is gonna evolve. Secondly, the lack of action. I don't understand this statement either? Do people believe a good series is only matches with no character progression in between? This is what makes Haikyuu! so great : how we see the characters grow. Complaining about this is understandable if no big matches were played for some time, but this season follows the biggest match we've seen till now. Not to mention we still did get a quick match at this end, and we know the second cour is gonna be all about action. Furthermore, if there weren't these moments where we see characters evolving, the show would become repetitive and boring, so I personally enjoyed it. Of course there's gonna be some training arcs, but if well made, they're interesting! The focus on the first half is divided between Kageyama and Hinata, and it's incredibly interesting. I personally didn't see time passing when I watched each episode. I was engrossed in each of them! To conclude, apart from some small pacing problems and some things being resolved too fast, it was still very good. I don't think this season is worse than the others. The characters are still lovable, the story leading to nationals is interesting, and the evolution of everyone's play (particularly Hinata) is great. If you've loved the first 3 seasons of Haikuu and don't fixate on the art style just because it has changed, you're gonna love this season as well.

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!

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