For the uninitiated, Haikyuu!! is a manga and anime series about volleyball. It follows junior-high rivals turned high-school teammates Shouyou Hinata and Tobio Kageyama as they and the rest of the Karasuno High Boys’ Volleyball Team aim for the national tournament and beyond. And after years of deliberation and plenty of other options to consider, I’m now one hundred percent sure that it’s my favorite TV anime of all time.
I spent most of high school obsessed with this series, eagerly reading every new manga chapter and avoiding Tumblr and Twitter like the plague between when new episodes dropped and when I had time to watch them. I collected the first ten volumes of the manga, spent much more money than I should have on merchandise, and read and wrote hundreds of thousands of words of fanfiction. But like a lot of people, I fell out of it when the anime went on hiatus after its third season in 2016, and unlike a lot of people, I never went back and rewatched it, because I’m generally not the kind of person to rewatch things. And as soon as the first episode of season 4 aired on January 10th after a three-year hiatus, I knew not coming back earlier was a big mistake.
With the first two seasons on Netflix (first three on Hulu) and the fourth season airing every Friday afternoon, now is the perfect time to tell you a few reasons why you should give it a shot.
PC: IMDB
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The characters.
Haikyuu!! has a ton of characters. There are twelve players just on the main team, most of whom get regular screentime, plus two managers, their coach, and a faculty advisor. But then they need teams to play against, and all of those teams have seven regular players, all named. Add in other coaches and managers, family, friends, and alumni and you have a huge cast to work with.
But if you ask the fandom who their favorite characters are, you’ll get a ton of different answers, and you’ll hear every character in the series at least once. Most of them are fleshed out with little quirks to set them apart from the rest, and every single one of them is likeable and fun. There is no character in this series who I don’t like, not even the ones you’re supposed to hate. The great thing about sports anime is that the antagonists aren’t really villains, they’re just other kids trying to win the game, and as a result they’re just as, if not more loveable than the protagonists.
The characters also bounce off each other really well, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a relationship dynamic that isn’t fun to watch or think about. More on that when I get to fan content.
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The animation.
Look up any Haikyuu!! AMV on YouTube and you’ll find tons of examples of Production I.G.’s stellar animation. The action is fast and fluid, with camera angles that up the intensity and perfectly convey the down-to-the-wire emotions the characters are feeling. There’s really not much I can write about this, so you just have to trust me and watch for yourself.
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Character development.
I already talked about the characters themselves earlier, but how they grow and change over time is what gives this series its soul. If you’re wondering how a plot like “the team plays a volleyball game, and then they play another volleyball game, and then they play ANOTHER volleyball game, and then…” can keep someone invested for years, this is it.
No one wants to see their favorite characters lose, but in Haikyuu!!, losing brings with it the satisfaction of seeing them get back up again, stronger than they were before. The characters ask for and receive help from their friends, change the way they think about their situation, use the play styles of their opponents as inspiration, and just work really, really hard, and you find yourself looking forward to the little training-camp filler arcs just to see what they’ll learn that’ll pay off in the next match.
And they don’t just grow as athletes, either; they grow as people. They learn that it’s not a sign of weakness to care, that you can trust other people, that inherent talent doesn’t mean much without hard work to back it up, that you can always take that first step to improving yourself, the list goes on and on. As someone who started watching this series as a freshman in high school and essentially grew up with them, watching these characters grow is an absolute delight, and it’s by far the best part of the series.
PC: Crunchyroll
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The music.
Let’s get this out of the way first: Haikyuu!!’s opening and ending themes are fantastic. The openings are energetic and exciting, and there are parts you can easily sing along to even if you don’t know Japanese, while the endings are more laid-back while not being totally boring and skippable.
But not enough people talk about the in-series OST, so that’s what I’m going to do. Haikyuu!! was where I discovered composers Yuki Hayashi and Asami Tachibana, both of whom have done excellent work since the anime started in 2014. Asami Tachibana worked on the soundtracks to Seraph of the End (2015) and Darling in the FranXX (2018), while Yuki Hayashi is behind soundtracks like My Hero Academia (2016-), Death Parade (2015), Kiznaiver (2016), and Run with the Wind (2018-19) as well as being my most listened-to artist on Spotify last year. They’re both experts at what they do, and their work here is just as phenomenal as the rest.
When people ask me for study music recommendations, I’ll send them the Haikyuu!! soundtrack first. A lot of the tracks that play in more comedic moments are great for easy listening, as are the softer, more emotional and nostalgic pieces, but this soundtrack shines, as many anime soundtracks do, in its moments of action. These tracks are motivational gold, exciting without being overbearing, and there is no better soundtrack to write a last-minute essay to. And all of it is on Spotify for your listening pleasure!
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The fan content.
Fun fact: Haikyuu!! was the most popular anime fandom on AO3 for years, to the point where My Hero Academia dethroning it a year or two ago was a HUGE deal. Haikyuu!! fanfic just hits different, and if you end up loving the characters as much as I do, it’s totally worth checking out.
Are you bored of the same old volleyball plotlines? Check out one of the thousands of Haikyuu!! AU (Alternate Universe) fanfics out there, that put the characters in a huge variety of scenarios and environments from the typical colleges and coffee shops to the Pacific Rim franchise, feudal Japan, and a mishmash of mythologies from all around the world. Are you tired of everything in this series being so darn happy? There’s plenty of angst to go around. (“You used to call me Keiji, Koutarou” comes to mind.)
And it’s not just fanfic, either. There’s wonderful fanart and fan comics out there, and if you look hard enough for it, there’s plenty of in-depth character analysis on Tumblr, Twitter, and Reddit. (I’ve done some myself!) There was even a zine dedicated specifically to Haikyuu!!’s symbolism. The fandom is thriving, and I suspect that 2020 make it flourish even more.
PC: Crunchyroll
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You might end up wanting to play volleyball because of it.
I think I’m in the minority when I say that I played volleyball before I watched Haikyuu!!. (I played for all of middle school and quit during my freshman year of high school because of the time commitment, and found the series shortly afterward.) Because for a lot of people, they didn’t care about the sport at all when they first watched it, and then they got attached and wanted to try it out themselves. And I can’t blame them! There’s a character (my favorite character!) whose entire character arc is realizing just how fun volleyball can be.
After the start of Season 4, I got inspired to start playing again after five-plus years off, and if you feel the same way, here’s a reminder that the Brandeis Co-Ed Volleyball Club practices Tuesday and Thursday nights from 8-11.
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The atmosphere.
This show is a lot of things, but most of all, it’s positive and inspiring. You will feel better about yourself after you watch it, and that is non-negotiable. Even during its most heartbreaking scenes, there’s always a way to look up and keep going, no matter what, and seeing these incredibly relatable characters succeed makes you believe that you can do that, too. You might cry like I did, but I can promise that the majority of the tears are happy ones, and the time you spend tearing up will be miniscule in comparison to the time you spend smiling so hard your face hurts.