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Out of about 100 different manga, this is close to my favourite. The thing I think it does best is how well it fleshes out characters. All of them touch on different aspects of view on life and sport, and what their goals and priorities are, and how they have grown as an individual. If you enjoy a relatively realistic story that still manages to get you invested in relatable problems the main character faces, then I am sure you will enjoy this story.

Personally I love sport, and I enjoy romance too, and this really touches the sweet spot for the sport and personal growth ... aspect. Its romance is nice and fluffy, but in the scheme of things not really a big plot point.

As I said earlier, it's main strength is how well fleshed out its cast is, and how likeable the main character is. He is very relatable, and he has earnt everything he has achieved, and he is grateful of the opportunities he has had as well.

If it has a weakness, personally I find the tennis matches relatively boring sometimes, and I think that is because they can go for so long. I enjoy watching real tennis, and I've enjoyed the matches in Adachi's baseball manga, so I'm not exactly sure if its just because they are too long or something else.

Lets be real. Its more of a guilty pleasure than anything substantial. The plot isn't that great, and the characters are shallow, even the protagonist.

However, I do like the questions it raises:

If someone were suddely became us on earth, without our current relationships and experiences, and looked objectively at our life, would they live it better than us?

Would they look at our body and decide they need to work out? Would they look at our room and decide it needs cleaning? Would they look at our job and change into something they enjoy, or study to do so? Would they live a more fulfilling life ... than us? Conventional success is pretty straightforward in the real world for many of us, but due to trauma, messy relationships, lack of perspective, etc, we judgement can be incredibly clouded

Instead of going to Earth, he goes to a fantasy world that he is intimately familiar with, and knows how to climb the 'rankings' of that world better than anyone else, and using the metaknowledge of the game from his past life he proceeds to do so, amassing a harem along the way without any particular effort. It lacks tension and the MC always wins, but I still find it quite enjoyable

I really liked this anime, probably because I love sport, and I also enjoy romance. The thing I like least is characters acting inconsistent, and this story makes sure to justify all their characters actions, so I feel you could write it from a dozen different perspectives and you would still get a nice story and be able to empathise with that specific character, even fi you disagree with them.

I think the art and sound were a bit lacking, some of the transitions weren't great as well, but that didn't really take away from the anime, at least in my opinion. It is funny and ... light-hearted most of the time, but that makes the contrast when it is full of feeling all the more impactful. From me its a 10/10, along with a very strong recommendation.

Just a word of warning, while I also enjoy Haikyuu, this is a completely different anime to your typical shounen sports anime. This has a fair bit of drama, and some romance as well, and goes over a multiple year period at a relatively fast pace. At the same time, it has that realism and relatability that shounen often lacks, but the action, while less frequent, in many ways benefits from it not becoming overly repetitive or predictable.

First review, I wanted to be careful not to give any spoilers, and lastly please enjoy!