Individuals vs. Numbers
What They Say:
Based off of the original Weekly Shonen Jump manga series from Haruichi Furudate, Haikyu!! is a slice-of-life sports anime revolving around Shoyo Hinata’s love of volleyball. Inspired by a small-statured pro volleyball player, Hinata creates a volleyball team in his last year of middle school. Unfortunately the team is matched up against the “King of the Court” Tobio Kageyama’s team in their first tournament and inevitably lose. After the crushing defeat, Hinata vows to surpass Kageyama After entering high school, Hinata joins the volleyball team only to find that Tobio has also joined.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Coming off a win, Karasuno finds their opponent, Shiratorizawa, isn’t shaken by their loss. They are ready good, especially their setter, and won’t take another loss so easily. The third match zooms by with a Shiratorizawa win.
The fourth match features a refocused Karasuno. Tsukki continues to work on shutting down Ushijima, but it’s Hinata that shows he can not only score, but also can use his height to win. The match score goes back and forth by one point through the rest of the episode. Coach Ukai’s grandfather (Karasuno old coach) makes an appearance as well as Oikawa and Iwaizumi from Aoba Josai to watch the match.
In Summary:
This was another awesome episode. It wasn’t as exciting and intense as the last episode, but it was so great to see Hinata fired up again. It was definitely the highlight of the episode along with seeing Oikawa and Iwaizumi watching the match. I’m curious to see how the rest of the season will play out with at least seven episodes left and only one and half matches left of the game.
Grade: A
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
