Sports shows are certainly divisive. They broadly approach things in a hyped manner similar to super-power shounens yet their attempt to feel educational and motivational can sometimes harm the experience. In general, however, sports shows tend to be thrilling, if not overly generic with how they treat growth and adversity. Haikyuu!! is no exception. Fortunately, it has more ups than downs than most others of the genre.

This is the rise of Shouyou Hinata. After suffering a massive defeat with his first and only official volleyball match in middle school, he becomes determined to truly be able to enjoy the sport when he joins the Karasuno High School, where the once prestigious volleyball club is breathing fresh air and showing true promise. There he meets his rival from his lost match, Tobio Kageyama, and must befriend him as a teammate in order to be able to improve as a player.

It’s about school clubs

Sadly, Haikyuu!! is a hundred percent about school clubs. It draws a formula akin to Prince of Tennis, where the professional world of volleyball is something too far off. Instead of showing us the path to become a volleyball player and the struggles that comes with it, Haikyuu!! prefers to keep things limited to school club activities and local competitions, and it makes sure at many points that this is just about people enjoying their last moments in school, not as individuals trying to pave their way into professional volleyball or anything similar. Although this is kinda of expected, watching the contemporary Baby Steps and seeing how their characters think from the get-go that becoming a tennis player is an option, it makes Haikyuu!! feel blander or unimaginative if nothing else.

Fortunately, it has focus

For a shounen sports show, Haikyuu!! seems quite organized. Instead of slamming us with random things in order to promote a crazy evolution of the Karasuno team, what we have here in this first season is a solid presentation of the charismatic team, how they interact with each other, and how their individual skills as volleyball players shine on their own. Tournaments are nearly absent here because they are not the focus of this first saga. We get a solid understanding of the situation, we have volleyball rules explained, we have a team decently detailed, and ultimately we have a dedicated season that never derails, delivering everything it wanted to.

And it’s charming

Studio Production I.G managed to give Haikyuu!! a cunning and beautiful production. The characters are expressive, the art syle has a charm that turns boring student templates into something better, and the animation and smart close ups manage to grant the volleyball experience without any struggle. It’s sound direction feels just right, although many voices can be annoying with the much unwelcome shounen yelling. Anyway, it’s hard to see a shounen sports with the production value of Haikyuu!! these days.

The protagonist though…

Shouyou Hinata sadly brings down much of what Haikyuu!! could’ve been. The energetic small guy in the middle of giants is boring in his Luffy-inspired clumsiness-leading-to-success. This one-dimensional protagonist with absurd raw talent and nothing else makes for the struggles of the team to feel off. While some players face traumatic match experiences or issues with their families, the protagonist is just there happy, jumping, yelling, and capable of overcoming any trouble by himself after simply recalling that he “enjoys playing volleyball”. A pity. It seems there is no hardwork for the protagonist at all, he simply needs to be hyped again when feeling down and everything works automatically from there.

Haikyuu!! is charming, funny, and enjoyable. Sadly though, it does nothing new in this first season besides an interesting season finale. Its flaws get even more evident when we have Baby Steps releasing along with it, a series that took the lessons from sports shows and rose above the average to speak about professional players, the path leading there, and treating individual characters as if they had their very own complex lives and not only be regular boring student-templates playing in the school club.

The focus of the show, more than anything else, can make us hope for improvement in future seasons. If they start dealing with failure as in this first season finale and manage to use such events to deepen characters and enhance their settings beyond the simple “school club vs. school club”, perhaps this can breach the sports shounen mediocrity barrier and be something more.