Haikyuu! Quand le volley, c'est vraiment toute ta vie.

Hinata is a 15-year-old Japanese boy with red hair who is 20 cm shorter than everyone else in his class, which is highly unusual in Japan.

After seeing the local high school volleyball team win a championship, he swore to become excellent at volleyball.

He played alone for three years against a wall, demonstrating an obsessive passion for the sport.

Upon starting high school, he finds a group of guys who share the same passion for volleyball, which he considers an incredible stroke of luck.

The anime follows a group of ordinary high school students who play volleyball after school and consider it the most important thing in their lives.

• No fantastical techniques or flaming balls like in Inazuma Eleven. • Focus on realistic problems that teams face. • Emphasis on emotional and relational challenges rather than superhuman feats.

The anime concentrates on the emotional aspects of the players, which could have been boring but is well-written and holds the viewer's interest.

You appreciate all team members, not just the protagonist, and genuinely wish for them to progress together.

Thanks to the attachment developed toward the characters and their months of grueling training, the matches generate incredible pressure.

In a prefectural tournament semifinal at 23-24, with a one-point difference, the viewer experiences every moment as if their own family were in the stands.

There is gradual improvement of the team across seasons, showing their continuous development.

The anime succeeds in creating total immersion where every ball feels vital to the viewer.

• The characters sometimes take volleyball so seriously that it becomes hard to believe. • Example: a player refuses to touch a ball after a loss and it takes two entire episodes to convince him to return. • These dramatic crises happen constantly at the start of season 1.

The first 10 episodes are needed just to get the whole team assembled and ready to play, which slows the initial pace.

After season 1, excessive drama becomes much rarer and the anime gains in overall quality.

Despite its early flaws, Haikyuu is absolutely worth watching.