HAIKYU!!

Haikyu!! is a volleyball anime made by Production I.G. It is based on the manga by Haruichi Furudate, which ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from 2012 to 2020 and sold more than 75 million copies. This first season has 25 episodes and aired in Japan from April to September 2014. It was directed by Susumu Mitsunaka, with scripts by Taku Kishimoto and music by Yuki Hayashi and Asami Tachibana. Many critics later named Haikyu!! one of the best anime of the 2010s.

Volleyball is a sport where tall players have a big advantage. Shoyo Hinata is short, so most people think he should give up. But as a kid, he once saw a small player from Karasuno High School, known as the "Small Giant," fly above much taller players on TV. From that day, Hinata wants to play just like him. His middle school has almost no team, so he begs friends from other clubs to help him play in one tournament. In that match his team meets Tobio Kageyama, a brilliant setter. A setter is the player who lifts the ball up so a teammate can smash it over the net. Kageyama is so skilled and so bossy that people call him the "King of the Court." Hinata's team loses badly, and he promises to beat Kageyama one day.

Then comes the surprise. When Hinata starts high school at Karasuno, Kageyama is there too. They fight from the first minute, so the team captain, Daichi Sawamura, makes them prove themselves in a three-on-three match against two other first-years, the cool and sarcastic Kei Tsukishima and his quiet friend Tadashi Yamaguchi. To win, the two rivals must learn to trust each other. They find a strange and very fast attack: Hinata runs and jumps with his eyes closed, and Kageyama sends the ball exactly to his hand. Hinata cannot block well or pass well yet, but his speed and jumping make him a powerful weapon.

Karasuno was once a strong school, but now other teams mock it as the "flightless crows." As the season goes on, the team slowly grows. The kind vice-captain Koshi Sugawara supports the younger players. The loud second-year Ryunosuke Tanaka acts like a big brother. The small but fearless libero Yu Nishinoya, a defense player who cannot attack, comes back to the club, and so does Asahi Azumane, the team's shy ace hitter. The teacher Ittetsu Takeda knows nothing about volleyball but works very hard for the team, and he convinces Keishin Ukai, a young man who runs a shop near the school, to become the coach.

Karasuno plays practice games against Aoba Johsai, a strong school led by the charming but scary setter Toru Oikawa, and against Nekoma, a Tokyo school that has an old rivalry with Karasuno. Later the team enters the Inter-High tournament and meets tough teams such as Date Tech, whose tall blockers are called the "Iron Wall."

The show is loved for its energy and its warm, funny characters. Matches feel exciting even for people who do not know volleyball, because the show explains the rules and roles in simple ways. Every player, even on the other teams, has their own worries and goals, so you often care about both sides of the net.