I want to preface this review with the fact that I wanted to like 2.43. I went into this anime with the hope that it wasn't going to be a Haikyuu!! clone, but left it unfortunately quite bored and disappointed. From the lackluster art style, to the janky story pacing, and to majority of cast of characters who I forgot the names of halfway through... much of 2.43 was unmemorable and, frankly, didn't leave me impressed.
(Spoilers ahead)
The concept behind 2.43 seems a bit standard: underdog team forms together under someone who seems to have their shit together in regards to the sport, and aims to be #1 at the yearly competition. Kuroba and Haijima are Seiin's two main characters, with Haijima being the star setter and brains behind Kuroba's killer spikes. (Sounds familiar, right?)
In the beginning, I genuinely liked them, and was very interested in seeing how the anime would pan out. However, as the show dragged on, I started caring less and less about them as it felt like the majority of what made them interesting was dealt with pretty early on.
Unfortunately, they were two of five characters I could ever remember the names of or cared about. Kuroba, Haijima, Oda, Ochi, and Subaru Mimura. The other characters did not feel fleshed out, and for the case of the other Seiin players, I forgot their names literal minutes after meeting them as they were almost all introduced in the same episode. And because of this, I couldn't help but constantly compare the characters I did know to Haikyuu!! characters. Subaru is the most blatant comparison to Oikawa, with his knee injuries and set role of being a big challenge to Seiin's team. Haijima, as many have said, seems much like a Tsukishima and Kageyama love child. Finally, Kuroba has the drive to be Seiin's ace, much like Hinata, both of which growing in talent at remarkable speed.
Then there's the issue of pacing. Each episode felt, quite frankly, rushed together and yet they dragged on at a snail's pace. And then we add onto the fact that they would add incredibly important info that was rarely touched on in the following episode after the credits rolled (it took me about 5 episodes to realize I wasn't getting the whole story). One moment that annoys me was episode 9, where they end right before the credits with the idea of "we're going to go do 2 more games!", and proceeded to sum those games up in about a minute and a half max. Like, what?
Finally, the anime didn't know how to make the volleyball games interesting. By the end, I was watching through them at 1.25x speed because they just didn't know how to portray them. It was truly a let down; if they wanted to focus on the character relationships, I wish they had spent more time on them, and the opposite is also true.
This anime felt like a let down. Honestly, the only truly memorable thing about this anime is the opening, which I found to be incredibly enjoyable. I wanted to like this anime, but I felt that they did the novels an injustice in this adaptation. I didn't want to compare this anime to Haikyuu!!, but it's hard not to when out of the two, Haikyuu!! is just the superior choice in regards to memorable art style, story, and characters.
I hope to read the novels myself one day just to see if the story is better than what the anime portrayed it as, as I believe that 2.43 had promise, but fell short on delivering what the original writer had in mind.
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