Haikyuu is the sports anime. Others may occasionally reach its heights - Koroko's Basketball and Ace of Diamond, to name a couple - but none of them are as consistently great. And this season has surpassed all before it, by a fair margin.
Haikyuu's ability to have multiple significant character arcs occurring on Karasuno's team and their opponents is remarkable. Their competitors are the "antagonists" of the story - you wouldn't know that if you just tuned in to watch this cour.
Both teams are fully fleshed out, and they still have a narrative budget large enough to include characters from past seasons and future "villains." Really, I can't gush enough about how well handled the small army of side characters are in this anime; it puts major Western TV series to shame.
Volleyball is, by its very nature, a straightforward sport. Not difficult to watch and understand compared to sports with more complicated rules (like American Football or baseball). Haikyuu's action scenes mirror this relative (do not hurt me, volleyballs) simplicity, but that doesn't mean they're "simple" in the artistic sense. The "camera" angles and animation are sharp and really capture the physicality of the sport with the respect it deserves.
Haikyuu really comes into its own - as do most sports anime - when things are turned up to eleven. When everything's on the line, and there's nothing left but live or die. The frantic nature of volleyball rallies really plays this up in a way that few other sports can mimic. Trying to hustle in position while also keeping your eye on the ball, trying to anticipate which attack is real, all while having the mental fortitude to remain calm.
It's quite the high - one that lingers as a buzz even though this is a fictional high school team playing for no stakes other than pride, directed by an author who could make them win 25-0 just because he wants to. Haikyuu got me invested in a way that I rarely am with anime. I genuinely care when Karasuno scores a point, or loses a tough set - I like seeing the characters struggle and grow on court in ways that Slice-of-Life anime struggle to match in dozens of episodes.
There are no glaring flaws in Haikyuu. No little annoyances that keep rearing their head, making me lower the score. None of the characters are annoying, the plot isn't irrational, the story doesn't try to be profound in some ridiculous way. It's high schoolers competing in an ultimately meaningless tournament, playing a sport which is niche and extremely unlikely to lead to a professional career of any description (outside of the Olympics).
And that's all it needs to be. It doesn't need a protagonist with some emotional and extremely over used "My parent(s) died and I use insert sport to cope" sub plot. Or a wishy-washy teen romance that never goes anywhere (though I will admit that is present, to some extent, this is anime after all).
This season of Haikyuu is the best cour of the best sports anime. It isn't even the finale, there are seasons more of content that'll just ratchet up the tension. I cannot wait for more.
I beg you to watch the show, to get invested like I have, to enjoy it as it deserves to be. You won't regret it.
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