If I said another sports anime was my favourite recently, then that didn’t
stand for long. Because I fell in love with Haikyuu!! at episode one and
basically watched the whole 25-episode season in three days.
I noticed Haikyuu!! figurines all over the place on my most recent
trip to Japan, and liking the designs – the main characters represented being
Hinata and Kenma – but decided against buying any (or taking chances on the UFO
machines for them) because (a) I didn’t know the characters and might have
ended up hating them, and (b) slightly embarrassingly, I thought they were
actually characters from Kuroko no Basuke.
Haikyuu!! does something
rather special, sitting in the middle of the cutesy passionate-boys-bonding
thing Inazuma Eleven makes so enjoyable and the rough, relatively
gritty, boys-with-issues-finding-purpose-through-sport thing that you find in
the likes of Rookies and Slam Dunk. It also has the best
rivals-who-become-allies story since Hikaru no Go, with which this
series shares much. Since HikaGo remains my favourite manga of all time,
that’s high praise.
Haikyuu!! has a classic
rival-story opening episode: at a school tournament, there is a gruff and moody
elite player, who goes up against a good-hearted, naive go-getter type. They
clash but the go-getter is actually a genius and very much impresses the elite.
The genius cannot carry the whole team, though, so they lose, but the episode
has a deep effect.
A year later, the boys begin high school and discover they are now in the
same club. They are chalk and cheese, so are soon at one another’s throats, but
it soon becomes clear that the shortcomings of each are balanced by the skills
of the other, so they begin to develop a real bond. However, will this allow
them to compete with much more established players?
This central relationship is brilliantly-done. Our main character, Hinata,
is short for a volleyball player, even mistaken for an elementary school boy at
one point, but can jump extremely well and idolizes another short player
recognized as brilliant. The secondary character is the tall, extremely intense
setter, Kageyama, who has undeniable skills but is seen as very arrogant and
hard to get along with. He’s the kind of gruff character I usually dislike, but
as he reveals more of his goofy side and is coaxed out of his shell by Hinata –
as well as shown that his way of playing is terrible for a team game – he
really grew on me, until eventually I came to realise I actually identified
with him more than I have with any character since Tomoya in Clannad.
That was deeply unexpected, as was how much I enjoyed seeing the interaction
between these two. They’re very like Akira and Hikaru in HikaGo, and
that’s certainly no bad thing. They spark off each other, and it’s brilliant to
watch, and by the time they start to rely on one another it’s like they’re in a
comedy routine together. Very sweet.
Very much helping this is the fact that the minor characters are extremely
strong. They come from stock, but they are extraordinarily well-developed. The
volleyball team also contains a typical yankee, an extremely tall surly bully
type, a dependable captain who has an extremely scary side, a wild child even
smaller than Hinata, a gentle giant who has great spiking strength but the
heart of a coward and an older setter who may not be a genius but has a lot of
clever ideas and is very relatable as the underdog.
I very much enjoyed the art style, which was pitched very well. Production
I.G. have done a lot of very flashy productions, but this one is more modest,
yet moves slickly and captures the manga’s aesthetic well. It is not cutesy or
pretty-pretty, and it is not ugly and scratchy, but can pull off elements of
both styles without them seeming incongruous. Thus, Hinata and the diminutive
libero Nishinoya are very cute, but the yankee types like Tanaka can pull faces
right out of Cromartie High School without it seeming bizarre. This
allows for both broad and subtle character-based comedy and the some very sweet
good-hearted childlike characters, which I very much enjoy seeing together.
The series is of course based on an ongoing manga, and ends at rather a
heartbreaking moment, though that makes sense for leaving the audience thirsty
for more. This isn’t a feelgood anime where the characters power up to win
every match like Inazuma Eleven, but a fairly realistic take on an
interesting sport where there aren’t any superpowers – only particular
strengths and weaknesses, none of which are infallible.
It’s perhaps telling that not only did Haikyuu!! make me want to try
out volleyball, it made me want to go and compete in the sports I’m good at
again. I don’t think that I’ll have a hot-blooded rivalry blossoming, but the
series captured something of the adrenaline rush of a close competition, and I
consider that praiseworthy.
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