Perhaps this is selfish, as I don’t interact with the community enough to know if this opinion is shared, but to me, the enduring appeal of seasons one through three of Haikyuu!!—putting aside, for now, its outstandingly high quality production—was in the fact it was the first and only shounen anime which did not feel like it was meant to go on forever. All shounen manga as serialized in Weekly Shounen Jump are literally, in-the-text, meant to go on forever. By design of the publication, volume sales and product sales are of secondary importance to by-vote audience reception, which would honestly be kind of cool ... from a creative market perspective if said piece of art wasn’t placed on such a ridiculously tight schedule as such which effectively forces all products produced under its purview to be trite, shallow, flavor-of-the-week time killers, and few works of its brand escape this fate. To me, Haikyuu!! was the only one of those exceptions which was worthwhile.
Its characters have always been archetypical, its theming has always been modest, and its narrative has always been standard, but to regurgitate what I’ve been saying for years now, Haikyuu!! knows the good tropes and executes them flawlessly. Haikyuu!! doesn’t take one-note characters and make them deep, it just makes them the most consistently well-written and empathetic one-note characters you can find. It doesn’t take power of friendship, hard work vs talent storytelling and make it any more complex, it just delivers it with such hype and humanistic catharsis your heart can’t help but be affected. It doesn’t take the highschool sports inter-high plot structure and make it any more unique or interesting, it just executes the stock mold with such expert pacing and pointed purpose you still feel every step of the way is a culmination. And the cherry on top of it all is exactly where I started this gushing rant to being with, its ability to do what none other in its genre can do: not feel like a waste of my time.
I’m not old, but if you asked your average anime fan, they’d think I’m old. Frankly, I find it extremely and progressively difficult to give a care about highschool anime. Unless you have a crazy high-concept and a million things going on at once like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya or incomparably genius writing and direction like Hyouka, I’ll probably drop you within five minutes. Haikyuu!! has an immediate advantage with me being a Production IG show, because it gets to be drop dead gorgeous, but I still just couldn’t help being anchored down by how good it made me feel. However, this was not nearly enough in the long run, and I figured I would just power through the first season and then respectfully refrain from continuing, but with the betrayal of expectations the first season ended with, the point became clear and I became invested. From that point on, season two delivered the most psychologically relieving and emotionally elating ensemble character arcs in any sports anime ever made, and season three delivered ten straight episodes of bracing sakuga and physically electrifying payoff after payoff.
And this is exactly why I thought it was the perfect time—to stop. I’m not about to sit here and spout pandering buzzwords and generalizations at you, like how long running series are destined to go downhill or any of that nonsense, because as I mentioned, I don’t interact with the community, I and don’t care about the trappings of their public consciousness. I just personally feel as if the concept is starting to exhaust itself. To no deep fault, mind you, but to exhaustion nonetheless. Season one felt aimless only in so far as it smartly played its cards close to the chest, but the moment it showed its hand, the series gained an alien sense of—not maturity, per se, but—reality, and seeing as I then instantly noticed the story hidden in the details which I had failed to appreciate, I was able to continue on in the correct mindset and consume it as the modest masterwork it was and always had been, plus the incredible animation and sharp design work it initially charmed me with. This season was the complete layered cake I described, only without that imperative cherry on top.
Simply put, it stayed as solidly constructed and consistently written as it ever was, but lost the subtle spark and fulfilling momentum which it had always enchanted me with. The characters have to regress to develop because they were so perfectly completed, the new principle antagonists feel random because those who came before them spent fifty to sixty episodes being built up, and the plot has to meander to progress because it was so perfectly concluded. Said regression fit said characters’ established mental hang-ups, and said meandering fit said plot’s logical stagnation following the tournament which season three ended with, but whether it makes sense or not and whether it’s competently made or not, the fact of the matter is it’s not nearly as gratifying as it has been historically, and that is a problem, no matter how picky. After all, just as a bad show can only change for the better, a good show can only change for the worse, especially if that good show is of the same nature Haikyuu!! is, that of an anime based on a manga pumped out weekly and with no time to improvise once the proverbial conceptual well ran dry.
And yet, what’s really the biggest hit to my own personal enjoyment is the downgraded directing and animation. The production values are just as kinetic and ambitious for the genre, but nowhere near as polished, consistent, and technically perfect as the prior seasons. You know it’s a dark day when Production IG themselves have to split-cour a production, whether it’s being done better by their B-Team than any other fullcore studio could ever do with their best or not. Haikyuu!! To the Top is by no means the “top” of what this series has to offer nor what this series has offered in the past, but it is still miles, miles, miles above the bottom, and any fan of the series will find themselves greatly pleased by its return. However, if you’re a crotchety old bitch like me or a sakuga nerd chasing that prepossessingly glorious shooting star of crafted brilliance, Production IG, you may find yourself somewhat disheartened, no matter how delightfully your favorite characters on screen can turn that frown upside down.
Thank you for reading.
Alternative Titles Synonyms: Haikyuu!! (2020), Haikyuu!! Fourth Season, Haikyuu!! 4th Season Japanese: ハイキュー!! TO THE TOP Information Type: TV Episodes: 13 Status: Finished Airing Aired: Jan 11, 2020 to Apr 4, 2020 Premiered: Winter 2020 Broadcast: Saturdays at 01:25 (JST) Producers: Dentsu, Mainichi Broadcasting System, Movic, Sony Music Entertainment, TOHO animation, Shueisha Licensors: Sentai Filmworks Studios: Production I.G Source: Manga Genre: Sports Demographic: Shounen Duration: 24 min. per ep. Rating: PG-13 - Teens 13 or older Statistics Score: 8.361 (scored by 577,921 users) 1 indicates a . Ranked: #2152 2 based on the top anime page. Please note that 'Not yet aired' and 'R18+' titles are excluded. Popularity: #172 Members: 938,995 Favorites: 5,247 Available AtResources |
|