I am writing this review after 5 hours of finishing the movie in the cinema and I felt it was great and not that great at the same time. I finished the anime about 3 months ago and I'm used to the 8-12 episodes tournament style of story telling. They'll normally spend 2-3 episodes doing flashbacks and hyping the audience up for the finale. However, since this movie was only around 2 hours long, they don't have the luxury to include all characters' back stories, how their parents died, how volleyball was their way of life, their revenge arc etc. (That was obviously a joke). It does some comedic relief at the start of the movie, it felt like getting the audience warmed up for the story. In between these comedic skits there would be sudden pauses and the whole mood would get serious but it's back to comedy again. In the later half of the movie shit hits the fan and they get serious... yet they don't.

In previous matches Karasuno has played. It felt like a kill or get killed situation. The vibe was very tense, the mood was very sharp and the players were out for the taste of victory. But in this match (Karasuno vs Nekomata) it felt like a match to settle their long rivalry, and not as tense as the previous matches. Maybe this is because it's been a while since I finished the anime and my mind has overhyped the previous matches or whatnot but that's how I felt after I've calmed down and gathered my thoughts. I can't elaborate the details of what happened but for those who have watched the movie and would like to know my shit takes, I'll include a spoiler section very down below.

Putting that aside, by no means am I saying this was not a hype movie. The cinema does the anime justice with it's godly sound system, a lot of times I found myself in tears (not crying) because of how loud the sound of the volleyball hitting the ground is, it felt like I was really watching a volleyball match at the front row. Other than that, the animation quality also went up. Instead of wide shots (shots where the viewers can see the whole court and where the ball is going), they included more "follow the ball" shots, basically instead of showing a zoomed out view of the court, they zoomed into it and also tracked the ball to make the vibe more intense. I don't know if they used CGI or not but as far as I can see, it was all hand drawn. I couldn't notice any CGI being used. OH and also they included a first person POV shot of what it feels like to play on court, damn that was epic.

To conclude this review, the ending of the movie really caught me off guard. "That's it?" was what was left in my mind when I saw the ending and sat partly through the credits, letting the whole movie sink in. Maybe that's exactly what the director wanted it to be, a not so tense friendly match of long rivals as opposed to a hardcore game of call of duty. Whatever the case may be, I didn't like it that much.

Feel free to DM me anything. Though I'm not active on this site.

=== Spoiler section ===