Haikyu!!

Haikyuu!!, or High Jump in English, is about Hinata and Kageyama, two players who originally stand at the opposite side of the volleyball net – plus are personality-wise polar opposites too - and are, due to the fact that they attend the same high school, forced to work together. During that process, they learn the importance of a team and that you don’t lose or win alone. The show eventually does focus on the entire Karasuno volleyball team (and on other teams too), but it’s still obvious who the main characters are.

 
As with most sports anime, the plot starts with Hinata and Kageyama meeting (and fighting), then joining the Karasuno volleyball team, and the team battling others all the way to the Inter-Highs. The volleyball aspects are well explained though and nicely weaved into dialogues. We learn about the libero when the libero appears. We learn about Quick As when Kageyama and Hinata perform a Quick A. The viewer is pretty much spoonfed with information, one term explained at a time. The plot isn’t very original and average at best, but to be fair, Haikyuu is an anime where it’s more about the characters than the story.

Haikyuu was animated by the wonderful blokes over at Production I.G and was adapted from a Shonen Jump serial created by Haruichi Furudate.  It aired during the spring anime season of 2014 with 25 episodes, was directed by a guy named Susumu Mitsunaka, written by Taku Kishimoto, and falls under the shonen-sports-comedy genre.

Being a show made by the same production company as the ever-popular sports
anime, Kuroko no Basket, naturally there is quite a tumultuous expectation for Haikyuu