Cats versus crows!
Creative Staff
Story/Art: Haruichi Furudate
Translation: Adrienne Beck
What They Say
The training camp kicks off with a bang! Hinata and his teammates train their hearts out in preparation for the practice game against Nekoma, but they’ll need to polish their receiving skills if they want to win. Then finally, after all their hard work, the moment they’ve all been waiting for arrives — the revival of the long-standing rivalry between the cats and the crows! And Nekoma’s starting setter looks vaguely familiar…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
We start off this time around with a few odds and ends, with the main one being setting things up so that Kageyama can take over as the main setter for Sugawara without it feeling weird. It’s honestly probably just a bit of cleaning things up so that Kageyama can take center stage like you’d expect, though to be fair it’s actually played pretty well, with Sugawara actually becoming a more interesting character as a result. After that, we get a brief introduction to the cats, and they fortunately seem to be a rather quirky and fun cast of characters. Oh, and then the starting lineup for Karasuno is set, and they all get their jerseys.
With all that setup out of the way, we finally get to the main event in the form of the cats versus crows match, which is really the first full on match for our team of protagonists! Even before the match starts the characters play well off another for some charming gags, but of course things really heat up when the game begins. Essentially the central concept for the face-off is that the crows have much more insanely skilled players, yet they are a newly formed team, while the cats are much more underwhelming at a glance, but have been able to polish their teamwork to perfection. It’s a really interesting dynamic for a match, and it plays absolutely perfectly to help make the strengths and weaknesses shine brilliantly. And of course Nekoma’s players really are developed and become interesting characters that are sure to capture the reader’s attention throughout. In particular, Kuroo, Inuoka, and especially Kozume really come into their own here, making a great showing as rivals to our main cast with some interesting traits of their own.
Will our inexperienced crows manage to best the veteran cats in this tight match? And just how will they part when this practice game comes to an end?
In Summary
While the first few volumes were all about gathering up the team and getting to know them, this one is all about putting them in action, as well as establishing a serious rival team. And I’m happy to say that this is accomplished with some seriously great results in this volume. Nekoma makes for a great “real” first match for the team, playing off of them in a really intriguing way that shows off both sides brilliantly. It truly is a fantastic match with a ton of twists, turns, and awesome moments, and along the way the Nekoma team actually gets fleshed out into an interesting cast of characters as well. They certainly aren’t just a throwaway set of first opponents, instead proving an intriguing, quirky, and rather well developed group in their own right. In a lot of ways it can be said that this book is when the series truly kicks off as a full-fledged sports manga, as we finally get to see how it handles a real game. And it’s all done so well here that it’s easy to say that, as long as it can keep up this level of quality, this really is destined to be one hell of an enjoyable ride.
Content Grade: A
Art Grade: A-
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media
Release Date: October 4th, 2016
MSRP: $9.99
