Hello everyone and welcome to a new season and a new year! Lets hope this one is better than the last, eh? Now, with Haikyu over you may have thought you could escape weekly volleyball coverage, but nay! I have found a replacement and its name is 2.43 Seiin Koukou Danshi Volley-bu! But I’m just gonna call it Volley-Bu cause that shits long. So without further ado, lets dive in to Volley-Bu! Heh… it rhymes.
Starting off, I always have to talk about the production. Sadly though it seems as if Volley-Bu has taken a step backwards from the first episode here. The animation wasn’t great there either, with most of the actual hits and blocks lacking a lot of weight and impact. But the snappy direction made up for a lot of that and gave most of it a sense of momentum. This second episode doesn’t have that though. Most of the shots, the cuts, it all felt pretty standard and didn’t do enough to make up for the animation. Its understandable, volleyball is a very active and hard to animate sport after all, but it is a little disappointing. One thing I can praise Volley-Bu for though are the backgrounds. Maybe its just because I have a thing for snow, but they really are stunning, especially the early morning or late afternoon shots.
Moving past production, Volley-Bu has a big problem: The actual sport part of this show isn’t very good. The games so far have very little build up or execution, burning through 3 in a single episode, and the animation makes what we get lackluster. There’s no tension in the matches and no characterization given to the opponents either. And I get that this is a small region, so no qualifiers and few matches, but just 3 to get to Nationals? I guess that’s one way to fit this into 1 cour. Basically what I am saying is that if you came here for a standard Shonen sports series, you will be disappointed. And if Volley-Bu wants to succeed then the drama, the individual character narratives, have to be good. Luckily for it, so far, they are.
The core of Volley-Bu’s narrative seems to be very similar to Haikyu’s. The genius setter who alienated his last team flees to a rundown/weaker school and builds it up. What sets Volley-Bu’s apart though is the tone with which it takes this story. Haikyu approaches it as a more uplifting, inspiring story of rivalry and everyone pushing each other forward. But here in Volley-Bu it appears more concerned with the lingering effects such events can have on a young players mind and reputation. How the consequences of their actions can follow them even to Hokkaido. I said in the first impressions post that I quite liked this, and I still do, but that its long term health would rely heavily on the seriousness with which it handles these topics. After all, suicide isn’t a light subject. But it seems as if Volley-Bu is aware of this.
Take the MC, Yuni, for instance. I fully expected him to become like Haikyu’s Hinata. Kind of dumb, stubborn, but with a heart of gold and always giving the benefit of the doubt. So it was a very pleasant surprise to see him start like this, for him to see himself like that… and to have it come crashing down. Its very rare that people are actually what they view themselves as. And watching him realize his self-image was wrong, that he did the exact same thing his friend did? That the other school did? It worked really well, Volley-Bu really sold the crushing disappointment Yuni had in himself. And the best part was how Volley-Bu communicated this through small actions and scenes, and the fallout of it all with Haijima.
For instance, I like how the resentment he had for Haijima grew. He started off strongly, dominating the game, only for their opponents to adapt. To shut him out and really prey on their inexperience as a team. Only to then see Haijima basically single handedly win the game, pulling out of all his tricks. That would be a blow to the ego for anyone, not to mention an inexperienced player with doubt already sown in his head. And after that, seeing him find an excuse to avoid the game, of trying to rationalize it to himself, sold it to me. He actually feels like a young teenager who lacks confidence and experience, rather than adults in a child’s body that we often see in anime. Some might find Yuni annoying, or pitiful, and I totally understand that. But I like watching characters suffer from their own actions. Its cathartic.
Meanwhile with Haijima, I like how personally he is taking this. Clearly his past experiences in Tokyo have taken a toll on him. Clearly he thought Yuni was better, that it wouldn’t happen to him here. So to receive the same treatment must be crushing for him. Its a classic case of miscommunication, of characters failing to really talk. But unlike most cases, these feel like actual difficult emotions. It reminds me of a personal favorite of mine, Run With the Wind. An outcast genius with a troubled past based on their own actions and how they treated their team. Struggling to fit in with those that cant quite match up. The difference though is Run With the Wind had a respectable cast to branch out to, filling out its 23 episode run. I’m curious what Volley-Bu plans to do to with its time.
So all in all, how was Volley-Bu? Well I think that so long as it can manage to ride this line, that it can avoid becoming the “edgy” volley ball series, it will do fine. It can find its niche among the sports anime sphere. And I think that had it chose to try and compete with Haikyu directly, head to head, it would already have lost. To stand out it needs to bring something new to the table and so far its trying to do that. Its trying to focus on the characters, rather than the sport. Hopefully it pulls it off, cause for all its production issues, this was still a pretty solid episode.
