Haikyuu!!



Shouyou Hinata is a young boy very determined to become a great volleyball player, like his unnamed idol "The Little Giant". Despite suffering with lack of support (the male voleyball club of his school is practically a fan club instead of a sports one), he manages to get other five students to create a team along him to compete in a volleyball tournament. They are utterly defeated in the first round, but Hinata's abilities impress his opponents and especially annoy Tobio Kageyama, the setter of the other team, regarded as a genius of volleyball even at such an early age. Not that Tobio's realism, to not say cynicism, doesn't annoys Hinata as well. To the surprise of both, they end up on the same high school on the next year and must work together if they want to achieve greater success in their careers.

Haikyuu!! is an ongoing Shonen Sports manga written and illustrated by Furudate Haruichi (Japanese order). Individual chapters have been serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump since February 2012, with the first tankobon volume -- titled Hinata and Kageyama -- being released in June the same year. It has been licensed in North America by Viz Media.

An anime adaptation by Production I.G aired from April 2014 to September 2014, which has been licensed for digital and home release in North America by Sentai Filmworks. The first season comprised 25 episodes (and one OVA!). A second season of the anime aired from October 2015 to March 2016 and had the same format. The third season, however, was only 10 episodes and lacked an attendant OVA. It aired from October 2016 to December 2016.


 * The Ace: Tobio is very good at what he does. It is deconstructed in the fact this talent makes him very self-centered and dismissive of other players.
 * Ascended Extra: Keishin Ukai is introduced as a shopkeeper in chapter 10 without even being named. A few chapters later he becomes the team's coach.
 * Beauty Mark: Shimizu has one on the left side of her fact, just below mouth level.
 * Cigar Chomper: Keishin Ukai is seen constantly chomping on a cigar, and is presented as very abrasive.
 * Curb Stomp Battle: The match between the team from Shouyou's school and the team from Tobio's school ends on a 3-0 result where Shouyou's team don't even makes half of the points of their opponents in the third set, and that's what we only see.
 * Determinator: Shouyou don't understands the meaning of the word "improbable". He trains volleyball in a place where's there's no volleyball training for boys, and his determination to win isn't extinguished when the opponent's team have over 10 points of advantage over his team and a set point.
 * Fighting Your Friend: In chapter 9, Kageyama defies the trope, saying the fact most of Aoba Joshi's players being his teammates from middle school will not stop him of fighting as hard as he can.
 * Foil: Tobio and Hinata are both good at volleyball, but while Shouyou have determination fuelling his abilities and is a nice boy, Tobio has natural talent and a mean streak.
 * Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Downplayed, but Tsukishima is clearly the more cynical and cold-hearted member of the Karasuno's volleyball team, and he is the only one to wear glasses.
 * Hard Work Hardly Works: Chapter 6. Kei Tsukishima personally does not believe in this and says so to Hinata, saying his efforts can't pay off being so short.
 * Headphones Equal Isolation: An early hint of Tsukishima's cold personality is his use of headphones.
 * It's All About Me: Kageyama's main flaw is how much he thinks he is right all the time and how everybody should just obey him and play as he pleases, which is very counter-productive in volleyball.
 * Jerkass: Tobio is very, very harsh towards everyone we see him interact with at first. Even though he shows a shade of niceness towards Shouyou at first, he seems more interested in attacking his team-mates for their pride than anything else.
 * Literal-Minded: Chapter 8. Hinata takes Kageyama's command to "to not look at the ball" literally, and avoids looking at it, to the extreme of hitting it with his eyes closed.
 * Ms. Fanservice: Shimizu is considered one in-universe. The first thing we hear what other schools think of Karasuno by chapter 11 is how sexy their manager is. Outside it she is very pretty but averts it, always covering a lot of her skin.
 * Right Behind Me: Chapter 11. Aoba Johsai's students being to insult Tanaka when he is just around the corner.
 * Pilot: Haikyuu!! was initially published as a one-shot in Shueisha's seasonal Jump NEXT! magazine prior to serialization. A few details are consistent with the later series, but others are cases of non-canonical Early Installment Weirdness. Example: Tsukishima is 4 cm. shorter than his 188 cm. canon self and a second year. Hinata is not a starter. Most of the Karasuno volleyball team doesn't even appear in the one-shot.
 * Proper Tights With Skirt: Shimizu wears pantyhose over the skirt of her school uniform.
 * Sempai-Kohai: Chapter 12. Tanaka makes Hinata call him "Tanaka Senpai" while motivating him after a particularly disastrous set from the latter. Observers notice he is probably just want to be called "senpai".
 * Stealth Insult: Chapter 10. Yamaguchi reacts loudly when Kageyama proposes a game's plan involving "big, dumb" blockers "just like Tsukishima", saying it's a insult towards the latter. Tsukishima himself promptly tells him to shut up.
 * Take That: . In international sports, foreign players playing for countries they have no connection to is very controversial and said athletes are widely hated, where they are treated like traitors even outside their native countries. To give an examples of athletes that did such thing during the time the series was published, Diego Costa which refused to play for Brazil and went for Spain during the FIFA World Cup 2014, and several players of Qatar during the 2015 Handball World Cup, where even foreign fans threw their support towards France so a team of "mercenaries" would not win the biggest honor of handball.
 * Underdogs Never Lose: Like many other japanese sports' genre media, averted. Shouyou's improvised team is massacred by the more experienced team they to have to face at the first round.