Contains spoilers for the anime and manga!Â
While admittedly I was rather late to watching (& reading) Haikyuu, now that I have, I’ve found myself rereading and rewatching the show in my free time. It is a story surrounding boys’ high school volleyball in the fictional town located in the Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, with our protagonist being a fiery and passionate kid called Shouyo Hinata. He has a zeal larger than his body for this sport, and the anime surrounds his journey towards professional volleyball, alongside his high school team, Team Karasuno. We follow their journey on how they regain their older glory by qualifying for nationals after many years.Â
Whilst we do have our protagonist, the author, Furudate, is open to introducing and carefully crafting arcs for most, if not all, the characters we see frequently. Each individual is the protagonist of their story, and we get a glimpse of it through them. He has a wonderful ability to layer and construct characters that all have meaningful, paced, and important arcs.Â
One of these characters is Kita Shinsuke, the captain of a team called Inarizaki, a team in the top 3 in the country, which comes up against Karasuno in the nationals. This match is a turning point, not just for the main character but for the members of Inarizaki as well. Team Inarizaki isn’t like Karasuno; they weren’t a team with a legacy, but rather an upcoming, slightly reckless team that aims to carve a name for themselves. This match has a lot of foreshadowing for the future and, in general, is considered to be a pivotal point in the manga and anime.Â
Team Inarizaki consists of a strong roster of players, four notable ones, the Miya Twins: Atsumu and Osamu, Aran, Suna, and then we have Kita. Unlike the rest of the captains we see throughout the series, he isn’t on the main rotation, he’s a substitute player, and he isn’t a character with an intense love and passion for the sport. He doesn’t even have that long of a story within the main story itself, but his ideals are what stand out; through one singular match, it is so perfectly delivered to us.Â
He is introduced into the game at the perfect time, while Karasuno has been successfully gaining points against the slowly slacking Inarizaki, Kita is brought in to substitute one of their key players, Aran. Kita is calm, disciplined, strict, and far ahead of his peers in maturity. While he isn’t a brilliant player, he’s good at what he does. He doesn’t stand out, but he holds the team together.Â
There’s an instance in the match where we see the team slacking off a bit, and we hear the Karasuno coaches saying they hadn’t heard or seen him in the clips they were studying before the match, so everyone is a bit apprehensive. Kita’s thoughts are then shared with the audience. Then, in the very next point, just when we think Karasuno has grasped the point, Kita comes in and saves it, allowing Atsumu to set it to the next spiker to spike it right into Karasuno’s court. Grabbing the point! This breaks Karasuno’s streak and secures Inarizaki back-to-back points.Â
This happens during the second set, and they are two points from claiming the set for themselves, with Karasuno trailing back 8 points. One of Inarizaki’s players then says, “How does Kita pop into the court and play flawlessly like that?”. While this isn’t the match point of the last set, the confidence he has in his abilities to save the balls and ensure they are given to the setter every time completely throws Karasuno off. Add that to the fact that they haven’t seen him play before, and the psychological stress getting to the team, and we see how Kita’s unwavering presence begins to slowly chip away at Karasuno even more.Â
When he enters the court, swapping the substitute card with Aran, we are taken to a short flashback of Kita when he was younger during the Karasuno vs Inarizaki match. It opens with a scene of his grandmother and him cleaning the floors, and she tells him that he must live diligently and honestly because the gods are always watching. It then continues into his routine that he so meticHe doesn’t necessarily follow those principles for the gods, but rather for himself. He works diligently, creating a routine for himself that is striking to his team members. He’s known to be a good kid, always helpful and hard-working. These qualities pay off when he’s given the title of captain in his last year of high school, reiterating that his philosophy of consistency and hard work pays off.Â
He is a leader, taking care of his teammates and reminding them of the importance of self-care, especially as sportsmen. His qualities make him a bit of an anomaly to his fellow teammates, most of whom are a year or so younger than him. But there is also an admiration for his discipline because they see firsthand how this consistency pays off in the end. It is this admiration that drives his teammates to be better themselves. He successfully creates a foundation for his teammates to build upon. Despite being outshone by his juniors, these qualities make him a core member of the team.Â
A quote that has stuck with me since I first heard Kita say it is, “I am built upon the small things I do every day, and the end results are no more than a byproduct of that”. It’s such a profound statement coming from a high school boy, but it is characters like this that inspire people to be better. He doesn’t need to have outstanding talent or be ambitious enough to conquer the world. He just needs to continue to be consistent.Â
We see the continuation of this philosophy when all the boys in the manga have grown up. By now, some of his team members have gone professional, and he graduated from high school and became a rice farmer. The significance of this career is that farmers are considered the backbone of society, and that is the role he continues to play throughout his life; Someone hard-working and reliable.Â
The author, Furudate has put in a lot of work into crafting each of his characters, there holds significance to their birthdays and names. Kita Shinsuke is one of them, with Kita meaning “north” and Shinsuke meaning “Guidance” and “Trust”. His name together refers to the North Star, the guiding light in dark times, a name apt for a character like his.