May 24, 2021
I know people say not to compare it to Haikyuu but it's hard not to haha.. Haijima is made so achingly similar to Kageyama, being a genius hardworking setter who excels on ball control and aggressive attack strategies, but suck at communication and working with team mates.
The one thing this anime is good at, though, is making more realistic characters and scenarios. Kuroba's struggles in the beginning, with performance anxiety, succumbing to peer pressure etc - feel quite human. And the captain not getting Hinata-esque miracles... even the communication problems Haijime has just straight up playing out in front of our eyes; they all feel
...
more realistic than the ones in Haikyuu because a lot of characters in Haikyuu are established to be volleyball-obsessed and may not act like normal high-schoolers.
I thought the show in the beginning will be more about human problems, just using volleyball as the chosen stage, and I'm okay with that. But then they started focusing more on volleyball, but didn't have as much time as Haikyuu to delve into the strategies (back attack, A-quick, B-quick, C-quick, straight and cross spike, etc) or to make Seiin's victory against Fukuho (the Aoba Jousai combined with Shiratorizawa of the show) more believable. Mimura basically has the explosive power of Ushijima and the charming personality of Oikawa - funnier still because Mimura is voiced by Kageyama's seiyuu - but anyway, I digress. I think 2.43 performs better as an anime of human problems with a side dash of volleyball, rather than a straight-up anime about volleyball.
The show seems like it has 2 MCs, but really, Haijima steals the show most of the time? It wasn't quite clear how Kuroba managed to solve his issues. His biggest development seems to be deciding to devote himself to volleyball. Haijima struggled with his problems seemingly by himself in the beginning... must have been quite a blow to a prideful guy like him, what he had to do in the beginning when he transferred middle-school and had to raise a team from the ground up.
Some scenes left an impression. The one I remember most is strangely in one of the early episodes, Haijima sets to one of the mob character who hates Haijima and the mob spiked successfully and scored, but the mob character just pumped his fist and grinned as though it was through his own effort only, and Haijima just turned his back to that character and wiped his sweat. I was struck with the impression of 'wow, Haijima has such a thankless job'.
The art feels unexceptional and the soundtrack didn't stand out, either in a good or bad way. Overall I still enjoyed the show like I do any sports anime...
If asked would I recommend it? Only if you have extra free time... and like watching anime because of the seiyuu. I like how Kenshou Ono used his 'classic' voice here... similar to the voice he used for his earlier anime like Kuroko and Magi. Not the tone, but the voice quality... I like that I can just hear Haijima voice 1 line and can recognise that it's Kenshou Ono's voice. Recently Kenshou Ono had varied his voice so much that sometimes it wasn't recognisably 'Kenshou Ono's voice'... if you understand what I mean. I also enjoy the Fukui accent.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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