2.43 Seiin Koukou Danshi Volley-bu – 7/8/9

I’m back baby, and with more bitching about Volley-Bu! As you can see from the title this post is a triple header. Why? Because I don’t have enough to write about 1 episode of this show, so its easier to do 3. Don’t worry, it’s still mostly going to be me complaining about it, so lets dive in!

Starting off, lets shove 3 episodes worth of production issues into a single 150 word paragraph. There’s a lot we could talk about here: The framing of shots is off, the CGI volleyballs look like crap, the character models move like they are in molasses, etc. There is the occasional moment of decent animation but by and large Volley-Bu looks like crap. But the single biggest production flaw to me right now has to be the sound design. I understand what Volley-Bu is going for here, it wants the hits to be impactful and the jumps to have momentum. Basically it wants the Hajime no Ippo treatment where everything sounds like a jet engine and it all just works. But Volley-Bu isn’t getting that. Instead its getting the Berserk 2016 treatment where it sounds like a blown out microphone and someone hitting pans together. And I hate it.

This brings us to our episodic discussion, starting with episode 7, “The Ruling Hero of the Court”. This episode can best be divided into two parts: Shitty volleyball and Haijima causing problems again. The first is pretty self-explanatory, its just bad volleyball action. As a follow up to episode 6 this practice match exists to show us just how far ahead Fukuho is from our leads. To show off Subaru the captain, set the stage for the upcoming tournament and to give the viewer some fun. On that front its not bad. This is the strongest the production will be across the three episodes we are talking and we get some decent clips because of it. But even then it isn’t very good and the constant yelling of “Center” will get on your nerves quickly. Still while this may be shitty volleyball, it’s better than what is to come.

The second half of the episode is all about Haijima once again putting his foot in his mouth. In a way it’s nice to see that his social stupidity is still there when he asks that the captain, Oda, sit out the upcoming games. It’s not that his analysis is wrong, it isn’t, but the way he brings it up is just so incredibly… stupid. Its causing needless drama because he doesn’t know to talk about this sort of stuff privately. That he gets his way in the end, that Oda sits out and justifies his attitude, just makes it worse. Volley-Bu is trying to show us Haijima’s flaws here without having them actually be flaws. And it makes the second half of this episode insufferable because of it. Tack on some pointless “Grandma is in the hospital” drama that’s completely unnecessary and you have an ultimately poor experience.

Next up is episode 8, “Yuni and Chika Re-enter Battle”. Production wise it’s no surprise that this episode still looks like shit. Unlike the last episode, nothing about this one is particularly offensive or upsetting. Mostly its just mediocre. Take the Grandma hospitalization thread of last episode for instance. That seemed to happen purely to get Yuni and Haijima in the same room so they can talk about the Oda stuff. But you didn’t need to make up drama about a Grandmother to get that to happen. Instead Volley-Bu could have just had it’s character demonstrate some growth and seek out the discussion themselves. It’s enigmatic of one of the biggest problems with this show: Everyone is always reacting to events rather than proactively causing them to happen. The only exceptions so far have been Haijima being an idiot and its a bad sign when those are the best scenes.

Outside of that there were a lot of boring, confusing, but ultimately not terrible volleyball scenes. We got stuff such as Haijima over focusing on their next opponents and not the current one, Yuni starting to act like an actual ace, stuff you would expect would be more important but… weren’t. These both slot in weirdly to the Haijima “learn to rely on your team” story thread. But in the end its probably the least offensive content in the episode. There is one really weird scene near the end where Yuni is… threatening (?) to spike the ball at Fukuho? Which seems really out of character for him and I don’t understand at all what this scene was meant to convey? Again, this isn’t terribly offensive or anything, its just weird. Weird and boring. A far cry from what I wanted it to be.

Finally we come to this weeks episode 9, “The Unbeaten and the Dark Horse”. This was another boring do nothing episode with some really terrible, but not downright offensive this time, plot devices. The big focus on was Fukuho’s captain Subaru, his leg injury and basically how the team came together. Like usual with the Fukuho stuff, it was largely fine. I’m not a fan of the focus on Subaru’s leg injury because its clear that it’s going to act up and give our MC team the win rather than having them work for it. But as per usual its more of a disappointing plot development than it is an outright terrible one. That distinction is left to something like the manager kid breaking his arms trying to save Subaru from falling on his butt… in the snow. Why? What does this add to the story? Do I even care?

The answer to that last question is: No, I do not care. These 3 episodes of Volley-Bu continue the disappointing downward trend the series has been on since episode 3. What little character drama and relationships still exist have been sidelined for a focus on the Fukuho match. By abandoning the drama oriented narrative and instead focusing in on the “Go to nationals” narrative Volley-Bu has opened itself up for even more comparisons to Haikyu, ones that it loses. And the sad thing is that what drama it had is also inferior to Haikyu. Kageyama’s journey is much more compelling than Haijima’s, in part because Haijima’s shoots itself in the foot by undermining the suicide arc. Meanwhile the rest of the cast aside from Yuni might as well not be characters for how much we get from them. Its like… Volley-Bu had an idea, but nothing planed beyond that.

I realize I’m being very harsh here and to be fair I have a friend who still absolutely loves this show. So I want to open it up and ask all of you still following it: Am I just not seeing it? Is Volley-Bu actually good? Or am I sane and it really is a dumpster fire. Because it really looks like one, let me tell you. Let me know what you think down below and I’ll get back to you in a few weeks at the finale. See you then.