Haikyuu Episode 1 Impressions/Review

Hinata

Kageyama

Haikyuu!! (Yes that's the real title) was something I decided to watch on a whim. I had been on a volleyball team at one of my past schools, and the reviews I had read for Haikyuu made it seem promising. These two factors combined made me decide to watch episode one. The show starts out with our ginger protagonist who I had to look up the name of since I have already forgotten since this morning when I watched it. Hinata, is in middle school. He finally has made it to his first real game, among his team are a bunch of people from his middle school who don't care about volleyball. This is due to the fact that he is the only person who is male and cares about volleyball at his school, so he is the only one in the male volleyball club at school. There is in fact a female volleyball team, but those people are unimportant, and we don't even learn any of there names. Hm, interesting. A character who wants to join a club but there are no other members. So yes, it's very similar to how Yowapeda started. I don't mind that though, as the show already proves to be exciting in one episode. Back to the beginning of the episode, he finally get's to have his first game, and his team get's super owned. One specific member on the opposing team is supposedly a king or something. I don't know what that's all about. He seems pretty cool, and he's really serious about volleyball, except not as lighthearted as Hinata. Boom, timeskip halfway into the episode.We are now 2 years later, and Hinata is moving on to high-school. He's super hype about moving onto high-school, as he expects tons of people will like Volleyball here. Again, very similar to Yowapeda in that regard. Except this time, it appears there are tons of males who like Volleyball here. In regards to animation quality and sound etc, I'll keep this short. The opening and ending are both outstanding, I really like them. The sound effects thus far and music used in the show fit and make sense. The characters all seem pretty cool so far but they obviously need time to develop but this is episode one so I was not expecting much. There appear to be four characters that are actually important in the first episode, (aside from the coach girl at Hinata's new high-school. Which I shall make a brief mention of right now. I almost forgot, but basically there's some weird scene where a guy is like "Yo coach what's up?" and she ignores him and he says cheerfully "When she ignores me it turns me on" I have no clue if this is just a bad translation or something, but it was strange to say the least. Shoving that aside and diving back into the characters, Hinata is obviously our main contender for importance. The king guy, or our main characters rival I guess? Is named Kageyama and he seems pretty cool. What's weird is he acts almost the same as Imaizumi, where he basically just loves the sport and nothing else, and acts like a jerk for the most part. Except I think Imaizumi is slightly nicer. Regardless, Kageyama is no doubt important. Further inspection has lead me to believe 2/4 of those characters are actually not important at all so nevermind. However, the coach girl seems relatively important. Her name is Shimizu and she is one of the managers of the volleyball club apparently. To keep this relatively short, I shall leave the scores below. In regards to the low rating for the story aspect, it's just because I have already witnessed this exact or almost exact story before, therefore it's not as interesting. The art is great, and I really like the character designs, but overall I think it's lacking a bit in the story department. But again, take that with a grain of salt. This is a sports shounen anime, I don't think we need a complex story. This was pretty great overall, and I'm looking forward to watching more. Again, I don't think you need to be a fan of sports to enjoy sports anime, or at least not this or Yowapeda, however my knowledge of volleyball did make me enjoy this a bit more than someone who does not enjoy volleyball. (At least I think so)

Story: 7/10

Art: 8.5/10

Sound: 9/10

Characters: 8/10

Enjoyment: 8.5/10

     Overall: 8.3/10

Shimizu