Post — Aaron Ngo

Major Spoilers are included in this manga review. Please read with caution.

On August 10, 2020, I started reading Haikyū!!’s “Karasuno High Team Formation Arc”—the manga’s first story arc—and finished on August 12, 2020. At first, I was reluctant to start this manga due to the focus on volleyball and my lack of interest in sports manga. However, my interest in reading completed manga series—like The Promised Neverland and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba—compelled me to give Haikyū!! (February 2012 to July 2020), written and drawn by Haruichi Furudate, a fighting chance.

Synopsis: The story follows Shōyō Hinata, a first-year high school student who wishes to become the best volleyball player ever despite his short height. He attends Karasuno High School, where his idol “The Little Giant” went. After the “The Little Giant” era though, Karasuno lost its fierce volleyball reputation. Together with his first real teammates, Hinata works hard to restore Karasuno High’s reputation by making it to Nationals.

The story actually began when main character Hinata was in his last year of middle school, when he scraped together a volleyball team last minute to compete in a tournament. Unfortunately, due to lack of volleyball experience, Hinata was defeated by “The King of the Court” Tobio Kageyama.

Hinata vowed to defeat Kageyama when they reached high school, only to discover that Kageyama was also attending Karasuno High School. This made them teammates on the same volleyball team. The subvert of rivalry expectations was strong in the opening chapters.

Hinata and Kageyama weren’t the typical manga rivals, but they do make good foils and teammates. Hinata is dumb, headstrong, determined, and oddly needs to go potty a lot, but he knows his limits. While he is self-aware of his height and what he cannot do as a volleyball player, those flaws clearly don’t stop him from pursuing his dreams. Kageyama, on the other hand, has an unchecked ego about his natural talent that haunts him. When you learn the true meaning behind his nickname “The King of the Court”, you will garner much sympathy for his character.

The supporting cast—their other teammates—aren’t too shabby either. There’s the silly second-year Ryunosuke Tanaka and first-year naysayer Kei Tsukishima at the start during their team exercise match, but then later—throughout this arc—we’re introduced to more teammate characters like third-years Daichi Sawamura, Kōshi Sugawara, Asahi Azumane, and second-year Yū Nishinoya.

All their character stories gave us enough context on why they initially joined the volleyball team—they love playing this beautiful sport—and the disconnects they felt toward the game that affected the Karasuno High’s team formation. The centric theme of the arc was teamwork and coming together as a team to fully utilize their individual skills. This aspect was best displayed through Furudate’s artwork, keeping the volleyball matches interesting through fast pacing and stellar easy-to-read visualization.

The exposition for all the volleyball terms were handled perfectly through Ittetsu Takeda, the faculty advisor of the volleyball team. He has little-to-no volleyball experience, and the students must explain a lot to him, being the audience stand-in for all the information dumps in the beginning regarding what’s going on in the matches. The constant “not knowing enough about volleyball” also lead to a big character moment for Takeda, who took it upon himself to find a proper coach for the students and arrange practice matches with other schools in order to compensate for his “uselessness”.

The enemy volleyball high school teams—Aobajōsai and Shiratorizawa—were also established at the end of this arc going into the “Interhigh Arc”, and what Karasuno High will need to overcome in order to achieve victory. Also at the end of this arc, Karasuno High vowed to meet Nekoma High—their biggest school rival—at Nationals.

While this manga arc was amazing from start to finish, the only major critique I had was the lack of female characters. Kiyoko—Karasuno’s team manager—is the only female character in this manga series so far, but she’s barely around and sexualized whenever she does show up. Hopefully, this isn’t her only role in the series because gross…

Otherwise, I thought this manga was a great read. I would highly recommend this series, especially those who are into sports manga. I plan to hit the anime series once I complete my reading on all 402 chapters. What a good habit of mine, given my accomplishments with The Promised Neverland (181 chapters) and Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba (205 chapters).

Thanks for reading this manga review, everyone! I hope you consider giving Haikyū!! a chance! I’ll see you all at the “Interhigh Arc” next. Let’s keep it reading!

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