Before I start this I would like to say a few things:
First, I love Haikyuu, I've never read the manga, I'm strictly an anime only, but it's one of my favorite sports anime of all time, only being beaten out by Ippo in my books.
Secondly, this my first review I've attempted. Despite seeing hundreds of anime, coming up on 600 soon, I haven't found the need to make a review before now, which speaks more words then I can.
This movie on a production level is, without a doubt, top level. The direction, animation, sound design, score, and so on are really quite good, and I can see the passion put into this film. It's a shame then that I simply couldn't enjoy it as much as I could any previous season of the show, for one very specific reason: Run time. This movie ultimately feels like they attempted to fit too much within an hour and twenty minute run time, which results in many issues, from insanely fast pacing, to the lack of context around several key moments, to the random cuts in actions and sets, and what seems like an inability to explore any characters perspective outside of one.
In the previous seasons, each point of a match was given significant weight and feel, you could feel the flow of the match on a point to point bases. The movie opts to jump around to more "important" parts of the match, only showing us the bare essentials. We will go from the first point scored in one scene, and the next we will suddenly be 7 in 7 for both times. This really removes the flow in a match, and removes almost all the tension present in every other match of the show. No longer am I worried about the next point, who's going to score it, how, or what impact that will have on the overall match, but instead I see it happen, then move on.
This also leads to a very break-neck pacing, nothing is given time to breath in this match at all. It all feels lightening fast, and it's all the worse for it.
I wasn't given anytime to properly take in characters reactions to anything happening in the match. We would see an amazing moment, then get presented with the shortest possible reaction, then move on. Just as we don't get to see their reactions for very long, we also don't get to hear their thoughts much at all. Unlike matches past, where almost every character would get their moment, and some good insight into why that moment was important to them, we instead skip past that in favor of showing more of the match.
Now to be fair of the movie, it didn't remove this entirely, we get a few moments, a high-jump from Hinata, and a good serve play from Yamaguchi both come to mind, but they aren't given the same attention they would have been given in a full series, and aren't as emotional for it. Really, the only true glimpse we get into this aspect of Haikyuu with this movie is with Kenma, which is truly the only character that gets explored in this movie.
One final note about the pacing, Nekoma, as a team, is meant to be very defensive and sluggish to play against, or at least they were presented as such. This pacing really under minds that, This match feels quick, and over with before you know it, so it feels odd that the characters are tried and exhausted at the end, I can't be sure this is a movie thing, in-fact, I can't be sure that anything I said is specific to the movie, though I highly expect that it is, especially based on the chapters a minute this movie covers.
All of that being said, you maybe questioning how I could give the movie a 45/100 despite liking its production, the simple answer is this: the movie stole from me. I'm never going to be able to watch this match for the first time ever again, and we aren't likely to ever get a more proper on screen adaption, to this, or whats covered in the upcoming movie.. and that sucks.
While watching this, I had one thing come to mind that I think really sums up how I feel about this movie, it felt like I was watching a highly edited highlight reel of an amazing game. On paper, that may sound great, its only the "best" parts, but in reality, the best parts simply don't hit the same highs outside the context of the rest of a game.
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