Haikyuu!! / Volleyball!!I'm not a fan of team ball games in general, or volleyball in particular. Usually, in this kind of review, people would say something like, "but volleyball isn't the main focus of this anime, so it doesn't matter." However, that would be a complete lie – on the contrary, volleyball is the most important thing in this anime, so the title, despite its seemingly simplistic nature, is perfectly chosen. And yet, despite my feelings about this sport, I really, really enjoyed the anime. Moreover, the anime is made in such a way that I experienced the strongest emotions when I saw some interesting or well-executed actions by the players, even though not so long ago, I wouldn't have understood their meaning, let alone admired them. How did the authors achieve such an effect on me?
From the point of view of the main plot, I would highlight a very simple, but important idea that constantly runs through the entire anime, starting from the first episode: simply believing in a miracle, having fighting spirit, and believing in yourself is not enough to win. This is, of course, obvious to an adult, but for a sports shonen, this is extremely original, and even for most other works of our time. At the same time, the importance of morale and attitude is by no means diminished – on the contrary, they show and emphasize very much that a team that gives up and lowers its hands has already lost before the end of the match. But in order for the fighting spirit to matter, you must first train and practice the movements, again and again, and it will not always work out, and even when it does, you cannot stop there, because in sports, for every tactic you have, the opponent will find a new answer. This is the first thing I can highlight as something I liked.
The second thing is that volleyball is a game played by people
don't laugh at the genius of the thought, which means that an anime about volleyball is inevitably an anime about people. These people can be completely different, diametrically opposed, and extremely similar, they can be so different that it is difficult to compare them with each other due to the lack of common ground, but all these people are united by one thing – they play volleyball. Each of them is motivated to play in different ways, devotes more or less time to the game, trains diligently or not very much, and certainly has their own character, but each plays volleyball. This is important not only from the point of view of revealing the team in which the main character will play, but also in general to feel, I don't know, the atmosphere or something? Paraphrasing the thesis of another wonderful animator about another wonderful work – each character feels like a real, living person, and this does not mean that they will forcibly dump his backstory, motivation, and blood type on you to boast about how well he is written, but he is simply
alive and he simply came
to play, like all the other characters. In many ways, these words apply to the opposing teams – different opponents have different significance for our heroes, so not all rivals will be revealed in all details, however, each team will be given at least a few minutes so that we can always remember – while the conditional "protagonists" win and move forward, this inevitably means that someone else's dreams and hopes for victory have been crushed. Although I highlighted this point in the list of liked things as the second, I think that this is perhaps the strongest side of this anime.
The third point is various little things that are difficult not only to describe but even to extract from memory, but they are still important – I liked how the various mini-moments, some drawings, jokes, funny animations, stop-frames, and so on were made. This is also very cool and greatly improved the quality of my experience.
Oh yes, there is no fanservice in this anime, and the presence of girls is strongly limited, although they are present and even play a certain, not insignificant, role in what is happening. In case this is important to someone...
And as a bonus,
Revan's reaction to my review
(he just won't apologize).
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