Manga 35243 Haikyuu

Haikyuu as a manga sits in a very strange place of having strong messages and ideas that one can resonate with and being a corny nick jr manga that offers nothing in most story elements.

Let it never be known that I am disrespecting Haikyuu. I think most matches are incredibly tense and have a lot of feel good moments from our developing cast. Some matches during the latter end of the manga have moments that genuinely left me speechless. Haikyuu also has some of the best presentation and composition I have ever seen in manga. It is up there with Berserk, Vagabond, and Bleach. ... Hinata, as a main character, is extremely enjoyable and evokes a good feeling with the audience like "yeah thats our guy, dont look down on him!" I especially like how the author sets things up quietly. The author will foreshadow something in the same volume with just a small glance or action; that is super cool and plays into the presentation praise I gave earlier.

Despite all this, in my opinion, Haikyuu is horrendously bad at character writing. Unless you dive into the very shallow framework of the series and extrapolate the most benign ideas, this series has almost 0 QUALITY characters. I would not want to use massive names for comparisons but look at any other shonen, hxh, csm, even jjk have a cast of captivating characters. Kurapika's needs and desires or Gojo's intention and obstacle. The cast of Haikyuu, if you can stomach engaging with them for so long, fundamentally lack the charisma and modern writing behind them to actually bode well with. I am not a volleyball person like 99% of Haikyuu's readers. I have not played the sport outside of a P.E. class. I can verify if any technique or any rule said in Haikyuu is legit but I do know that any piece of media is suppose to respond to their target audience. I am not going to make a political mystery thriller with high tech machinery and weapons framed on a national sport for children (unless its cars 2).

Despite being depicted for younger male audiences, Haikyuu's character interactions and overall dialogue is GARBAGE. The author panders so far to literal children that when a character says "ass" there is a full page dedicated to character reacting as if the person just said a slur. So many character say the same thing that get so old so fast it is insane. If you took a shot every time the word monster was said during the 300s, you would not wake up tomorrow. I get hyping up characters and obstacles respectively, but Haikyu throws in the word "scary" or "frightening" or "horrifying" at every single turn.

I still rate Haikyuu a 7 because despite it's flaws I think it is a really well done manga for what it excels at. I was more critical in this review but that is a given; while the depth of flaws to praise favors the latter, the width prefers the former.

Story: 3/4. Some matches were less interesting than others and perhaps took more pages than needed, but the plot as a whole was still fun to experience. Effort to continuity was apparent with nice, fulfilling callbacks. The moments created, however, was far and away the manga’s strong suit in this department.

Characters: 2/2. While the manga was adequate in this respect at baseline, obvious efforts were made to flesh out backstories (excessive at times!) and establish individual quirks. Fantastic character development as its saving grace.

Art: 2/3. Flow was imperfect due to awkward page breaks (editorial issues?), and the perspective in select panels were suspect. Nevertheless, ... within the genre in question, art that’s easy to understand should be considered good art.

Enjoyment: 1/1. Very much so! I do hope that we could’ve seen Hinata go on more of an ascent pre-timeskip, but what we got, I loved. Mostly.

Great work.

If you, like me, are considering starting to read the manga of Haikyuu because you are tired of waiting for the anime to conclude or you are concerned that the movies won't adapt it correctly, I would suggest that you wait. I haven't seen the movies, but I can assure you that without the music and the animations, you will lose a significant part of the epicness of the story, and that's a shame. Also the pace is slower when you read, which also doesn't help to maintain the same level of emotional intensity.

Nonetheless, it's still alright; you won't be too disappointed if you read ... the manga, but if I could go back, I would definitely wait.