Haikyuu!! Karasuno High School vs Shiratorizawa Academy (Haikyuu!! S3) is basically the finale of the rising saga of the Karasuno volleyball team. After two lenghty seasons presenting them and showing their evolution, it now culminates as they face the most powerful volleyball team of their region in their match to reach the National Tournament: Shiratorizawa.

This season has little in terms of slice-of-life though. This is, as the name suggest, simply about the final match between the two schools. This means there are ten episodes solely dedicated to a single best-of-five-sets match. At first it seems it will be a slow and annoying drag of a match, especially when the last match of the second season seemed a bit too long and it had basically half the amount of episodes. Yet, surprisingly, this ends up being the ultimate Haikyuu!! experience, perhaps the climax of the show as future seasons are bound to be held down by the typical shounen filler content we know.

Once again, Shouyou to the sidelines

The trend continues and, although Shouyou is the one challenging the overpowerful Ushijima, it is the Karasuno team that delivers. Once again you learn how mediocre and simple is the boring protagonist in comparison with everyone else. During this match you see each player being highlighted, their skills showing, and much more important…

this is Tsukishima’s match

Yup. Surprisingly, the rising star and the guy who robs the scene now is Tsukishima. The boring guy of the first season who appeared first as bully and then as a uninspired volleyball player now shows himself as perhaps the most cunning and focused player of the team and he basically robs the match to himself. Once again Haikyuu!! delivers a surprise approach. If ditching Shouyou was not enough, instead of having the spotlight to Tobio it goes to Tsukishima. A welcome surprise once again.

The match does drag too long

Well, ten episodes and nine of them entirely about the match. It is bound to be a drag even if it deliver some awesome thrilling experiences. This long-running match suffers the most, however, to its predictability. You know for the get-go it will be a five set combat, you know Karasuno will suffer to win, and you know it will always be dramatic for them to score set victories. As I watched every episode I was hoping to see Karasuno smash Shiratorizawa for one set, or for Ushijima to break down, or hope for a 3-1 victory somehow. But no. It is the five set match, Shiratorizawa gets easy points while Karasuno suffers, and so on. The typical underdog fight to victory, and in a show that won me over because it did unexpected courageous choices it felt bland to see everything going so by-the-script with the match result.

Anyway…

It is awesome regardless of its faults. Every point is insanely detailed, only one set is quickly rushed, and at every turn you get to see a point-of-view of a volleyball match that you don’t typically think about when watching from a TV or when just playing a friendly match in school or by the beach. Karasuno’s cast grew a lot in these three seasons and by now they, as a group, are the true protagonist of this show, and for that you get to see amazing matches with an animation quality on par with the best action shows around.

Well. It is over. Karasuno played against Shiratorizawa in a final match in their struggle to reach the Nationals. Although he experience is amazing, the end result is somewhat sad. Sad because the result would be unexciting regardless of who won. I mean, after so much effort and episodes put into Karasuno’s trainning, they were destined to win. Their win, however, was the most predictable and boring result. Their loss, in other hand, would be absurdly disappointing. Unlike Baby Steps, which deals with the failures of the protagonist for most of the time, there is not enough time to make Karasuno lose while having an entire 10-men team to work on. Anyway. It’s sad to see that, no matter the result, you would be left unfufilled.

Now, however, the climax is gone. The next seasons will be about the National Tournament, yes, but there was never a build-up in that besides the Tokyo schools. For this reason, the following episodes are bound to be blotted with new characters you never heard about and the drag can be overly explored as in Prince of Tennis, where the lack of reference to professional sports made the author just came up with any ridiculous excuse to match the players against anyone else. I just hope Haikyuu!! keeps surprising us and doing courageous choice for a shounen show.