Haruichi Furudate’s masterpiece of a manga (Japanese comic), Haikyu!!, which has gone on to be a world-wide phenomenon of an anime (Japanese animation) series, premiered it’s fourth season on January 10th 2020. It had taken a break on April 3rd after it’s 13th episode was released and it was supposed to pick up where it had left off in mid-July. But due to the coronavirus outbreak and the subsequent lockdown, the animators were unable to finish the rest of the episodes before the deadline.
But it has been announced recently that Haikyu!! To The Top is set to return in Autumn this year. Fans around the world have been waiting anxiously as speculation regarding the rest of the season grew, with news outlets suggesting that we would have to wait until next year for the rest of the episodes to drop.
Haikyu (which means volleyball in Japanese), as the name suggests, is an animated series about high school volleyball. It is an uplifting story of a short boy from junior high named Hinata Shoyo who gets into volleyball after watching another short player dominate in Nationals on live TV. It’s a story about ambition, hardwork and the love one has for (any) sport.
The mangaka (which means artist/author in Japanese) Furudate, himself was an avid volleyball player when he was in highschool and decided to create a comic with volleyball as the theme, when he was in college. It has not been an easy road but he has pulled it off, making it one of the most successful sports anime of all time.
In 2012, the Japanese high school volleyball scene had been pretty dire, with the sport losing student interest. The number of students participating in the sport had been shrinking drastically and in that year alone, the sport lost 5 percent of it’s remaining players. But in 2013, for the first time in years, more students joined than graduated out of it. More students joined next year and by 2015, enrollment began to skyrocket.
There were two noticeable events which caused this sudden peak in interest. The first one happened on February 20th 2012, Haruichi Furudate’s comic Haikyu!! started serialization Weekly Shonen Jump Magazine and the second spike occurred on April 6th 2014, when Production I.G adapted the manga into an animated series and started airing it on Super Animeism block (A block setup by MBS to air anime) and Crunchyroll (An anime exclusive OTT platform). To the non-anime viewers, Haikyuu!! might be just another cartoon (which is sacrilegious to call an anime by the way), but this has been it’s influence in Japanese volleyball alone.
Haikyu!! is set to return in October this year on Crunchyroll but a specific date hasn’t been announced yet. Seasons 1-3 and the first 13 episodes of season 4 of the anime is available on Netflix.
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