[ prefacing that his contains no post nekoma game manga spoilers]
It's a very poor movie that pissed me off as someone who adores this match in the manga, and I'm glad I did not watch it in theatres and would've regretted it if I did. It has whole tange issues, mostly resulting from its extrenely short run time of 86 minutes. Very short runtimes don't necessarily ruin adaptations but when you cut something down by more than half of what it's supposed to be, you lose the essence of the source material.
Plot and Pacing:
The movie tries to make a superfast adaptation of a manga that relies on character interactions a lot. While this isn't an impossible task, it needs some sacrifice the primary one being a change in tone. The movie does not commit to changing the tone but is incapable of adapting the manga faithfully due to self inflicted issues of time.This dilemma resulted in arguably the worst haikyu movie ever which is an achievement considering that the previous movies were recap movies. In addition, the movie adds very little from a creative standpoint beyond the first person camera in the final scene. While it does execute everything well technically, the value of most of it is brought down because the movie hinders Furudate's creativity and fails to add any creativity of its own. Even the most technically well executed moments fail to leave a proper lasting impact due to the build-up to most of those moments being entirely removed.
Chracters:
Outside of Hinata, Kenma and Kuroo[the ones i consider the main characters of this movie] it doesn't do any major characters[in this segment] justice directly and as a result, it indirectly harms these aforemntioned characters as well.
The others did not get nearly enough , Kageyama felt so non existent compared to how pivotal he was in the manga, tsukki's moments weren't adapted well enough, Yamaguchi had more moments in the nekoma game which build up to the kamomedai game along with Tsukki, the less said about daichi and asahi the better, Noya was alright but again not enough.
The lack of quality inadapting these characters makes every character they're related to worse by extension, effectively dragging down nearly the entire cast , including the three main characters.Haikyu is a series centred around character interactions than spectacle, and this movie seems to prefer the latter a lot more .
Visually speaking, it's pretty good but that's irrelevant when it misses most emotional beats
The music wasn't great, could've contributed to many moments being weak alongside the writing and pacing
Conclusion:
If you like haikyu until now, read the manga. The future of the anime is not worth being excited for in the slightest given the success of the movie and thus the incentive to make more movies with drastic cuts that cannot enhance the source material reliably
Positive aspects of the movie that i do not want to exclude:
1 The flashback to Kuroo and Kenma playing volleyball as kids in the gym with Nekomata's guidance was adapted perfectly
2 Kenma's iconic cage scene[but not Shoyo breaking from it, that could've been better].
3 Tsukki's hi five hadto be betterin terms of build up but the moment was great on its own.
4 The PoV scene for the final point is a questionable decision but well executed
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