Haikyuu!! brought plenty of interesting stuff to the plate of the sports genre a few years back. It was one of the best of its season because it safely put the annoying protagonist aside, gave more value to the team members instead of teamwork, and got really exciting when it needed to be.

Its last season ended up at a high note, with 10 episodes of a single, long, yet very amusing match against Shiratorizawa. It got a couple of OVAs to show side-characters later, but what we were really expecting came out just recently with Haikyuu!! To the Top (Haikyuu S4).

Now, my questions at the end of the last season were about how the anime would behave as its characters became more skilled and faced stronger opponents. If similar sports anime are a baseline, it seems authors start to lose the line dividing sports and super-power shounen at some point, turning matches that would be about teamwork, training, and willpower into show-offs of really weird superpowers.

Well… does Haikyuu!! go down this way too?

No, at least for now

This new season is, fortunately, more of what made Haikyuu!! interesting. We have training camps, characters trying to find ways to improve their game, insight into the upcoming foes, and a presentation of the next big tournament. It is still a safe show about volleyball where the only exaggeration is with its protagonist being completely random in terms of skill and mood.

It’s a bit slower

The last season was at full-speed, delivering powerful match moments at every turn. What happens here is a sudden, abrupt stop, almost as if smashing itself against a concrete wall. The early episodes of this new season are much slower in pace and excitement, so it takes a while for things to get back track and gain momentum once again.

The first half of this fourth season is more about Shouyou being a dick and trying to understand more about volleyball. The story tries to make a divide between him and Tobio, yet it becomes obvious that it is much more preoccupied with Shouyou this time around. If there is one episode for Tobio, there are three or more for Shouyou.

And when he is at the spotlight…

The show loses power. Shouyou is a boring traditional shounen lead with all the “willpower”, “hype”, “sudden power ups”, etc. Tobio is a bit more interesting, and many of the other teammates are as well, but we only get glimpses of them for half this season, even Tobio just gets a bit of spotlight. It is a weird choice though, as Tobio is clearly in a place where more interesting events are happening, with the most skilled players that Karasuno will have to face. Instead of digging into those guys, we instead get tons of time with Shouyou being a ball-boy and learning how to “read” movements. A bummer.

It gets back on track

Fortunately, when the matches start, the show once again puts Shouyou where he must be: in a support role. The matches this time are not as intense as the one against Shiratorizawa, but certainly work to build up momentum. Sadly through, the big moment is left for another season…

Well, Haikyuu!! strikes again. This new season is more of what one would expect from the show, yet its shorter duration somewhat undercuts the buildup that made the first two seasons great. Right when things start to get interesting we are cut off and must wait for the next season to come up.

This sudden cut right before a big match worked against Shiratorizawa because it had a LOT of build up to it. This time, however, the only foreshadowing of this big match is made in the very last episode, which doesn’t really work to build hype for an incoming season, but at most just for another episode.

Anyway, a reduced duration for the traditional Haikyuu!! formula undercuts the value a of the show a bit, but everything else still works wonderfully, from the outstanding animation to the good characters and interesting matches. Can’t wait to see more of it.