2.43 Seiin Koukou Danshi volley-bu Anime Review 30/100

I normally try to start these reviews with some kind of cutesy lead in. Maybe a play on the sports anime genre and how it needs more drama focused series. Or a riff volleyball anime now that the recent season of Haikyu is over and the manga complete. Something about how the fans are looking for their next fix of Cute Boys Play Sports. Sadly 2.43 Seiin Koukou Danshi Volley-Bu, henceforth referred to as Volley-Bu, simply isn’t worth it. Looking for a decently animated sports series for your action fix? Denied. Perhaps a well crafted coming of age drama that tackles social pressures and suicide with grace? Denied with prejudice. The sad fact of the matter is that Volley-Bu, produced by David Productions and directed by Yasuhiro Kimura of JoJo’s Part 5 fame, is terrible. And I’m here to explain why. So without further ado, lets jump in.

Visuals

Starting off lets talk about the Art and Animation, led by Art Directors -Yoshiki Matsumura- and -Kentarou Akiyama-. This is a mixed bag and leaves a lot to be desired. Sometimes we get moments of expressive faces and reactions. Others the volleyball bounces around with all the impact of wet paper bag. More often than either though are the fades. Oh god the fades. Every single time someone hits a ball, jumps or does anything with any amount of meaningful movement on the court it gets blurred and dimmed to the point of being unrecognizable. It takes the few good volleyball scenes Volley-Bu has and throws them in bin. It’s a crying shame what has happened in post-production. As you can see from the screenshots, Volley-Bu doesn’t look terrible. Maybe a little bland, lacking an identity, but not terrible. Once it starts moving though it loses what appeal it had.

And as for the backgrounds? Well those are actually nice, Volley-Bu does a great job depicting the mountainous landscape of Hokkaido. Whether it be the fields of white snow in the winter or the rolling countryside in spring and summer, the backgrounds are easily the best part of Volley-Bu. Even this however isn’t very consistent. A large amount of the shows runtime takes place in doors or in gyms. Robbing the show of its northern landscape. And these are not very well made gyms either! So much so, and with such similarities between them that without the outside establishing shots you would have no idea which gym we were even in. Volley-Bu takes its greatest strength and fails to capitalize on it in any meaningful way. And the worst part? This is probably the nicest I’m going to be about Volley-Bu in this review, so strap in.

Narrative

This brings me to the narrative and oh boy do I hate this narrative. Spoilers for Volley-Bu below because I’m about to rip into it. If you don’t want to be spoiled then here is a quick one sentence explanation: Insultingly bad suicide plot gives way for boring Nationals plot. Good? Great. Click here if you’re ready for some spoilers.

Now in the effort to be fair: Volley-Bu didn’t start terribly. The series knew it couldn’t compete with the powerhouse that is Haikyu in action so it would focus more on the drama. A smart plan, a good way to differentiate itself and become more than “that Haikyu clone”. In fact I thought it was a rather engaging hook, a more serious take on Kageyama with more dramatic societal and personal consequences. This idea of demanding perfection from your team, of hounding them until one of them breaks. It was a compelling look at the other side of these bullying plots we see so often in anime. The way Haijima handled and reacted to the whole thing was great to, he was really effected by it. But then Volley-Bu took this compelling hook, this thing that set it apart… and shit all over it, throwing it to the side.

What was once about Haijima figuring out his feelings towards Volleyball and how to forgive himself instead made him a victim. This idea that a kid who was to much of a coward to practice or quit the team would fake his suicide, and that everyone would go along with it, was ridiculous and insulting. It retroactively ruins what growth Hajima had, effectively saying he did nothing wrong and that he was the victim in the situation. Simultaneously introducing a load of plot holes such as how he never found out or how no one told him, etc. Faking suicide isn’t something that goes unreported, surely he would have heard from somewhere or some one. But for it to take years and him revisiting the school only to learn from a passing comment? Terrible. And the worst part is yet to come.

The way Volley-Bu treats the subject of suicide is, to put it simply, insulting and concerning. It plays the whole thing off as a joke, a mean prank on Haijima. It makes the bully, the character who started the whole thing and who should have learned to grow, into the victim and downplays the seriousness of the subject. I’m not asking for some kind of harsh and in your face depiction of these subjects ala Wonder Egg Priority that aired this season. However a modicum of tact and respect doesn’t feel like to much to ask from a show ostensibly rooted in character drama.

Sadly though after this reveal the character drama largely disappears from Volley-Bu. Where once it sought to differentiate itself from Haikyu it instead winds up competing directly with titan. The whole show becomes a “Lets go to nationals” plot shoved into a single season with a single relevant competing team. Fukuho Tech, the reigning champions of the region, are introduced soon after the suicide plot is kicked to the curb. And honest to god? These guys are more compelling than our leads! Their drama regarding injuries and “Ill get you to center court” is ham-fisted but at least Volley-Bu sticks with it to the end. Sadly however because these are the rivals they are destined to lose. And not even for a good reason, they lose because they aren’t the MC’s.

Long story short, Volley-Bu’s narrative is a proper mess. There was a brilliant idea here. It had a compelling plot and character story. But it threw it all away to focus on nationals and in doing so abandoned what little identity it had.

Characters

This brings us to the characters whom I have already railed against a bit. Most of my major issues here have to do with how Volley-Bu completely and utterly botches the drama portion of it’s story. With how involved the characters are in that, it reflects on them to. But that isn’t to say there wasn’t a lot of other issues to be had. Take the Seiin team for example: As a whole unit you have maybe… 4 and a half characters across 8 “people”. I say it like that because outside of Yuni, Haijima, and the Aoki/Oda duo none of them really matter. Maybe Okuma for a scene or two but that’s the big issue here isn’t it? This is an 8 man team where only the MCs have defined personalities and everyone else gets 1-off scenes whenever they interact with them.

The only exceptions in Seiin really are Oda and Aoki, the captain and vice captain of the team. These two have personalities, they have scene’s, they just aren’t good ones. Mostly. Oda’s character is probably the best and is centered primarily around his height, the short captain of team. He involves himself a bit with Yuni helping him get over his cowardice and basically pulling everyone else along with him. The old “If I can do it as short as I am, you can to” approach. Aoki meanwhile is whatever the plot needs him to be. Early on he conflicts with Haijima because of his attitude and treatment of players worse than him. He is fiercely protective of his team. But as the story goes on and the drama gives way to Nationals he largely gives way and disappears. Only ever existing when the plot needs his brand of conflict.

This leaves us with the MC’s Haijima and Yuni. I already railed against Haijima in the narrative section so lets talk about Yuni: The most rushed character in the cast. Once again, almost like a pattern, Volley-Bu started with something interesting here and squandered it. His feelings of inferiority, his cowardice in the face of conflict and his fear of being blocked and letting people down are all good beats! His stuff in the first 3 episodes and how he slowly comes to resent Haijima was legitimately investing! But All of this gets resolved by around episode 6. His entire character arc is complete in every way that matters beyond “Going to nationals”. It’s as if Volley-Bu either gave up or only involved the drama long enough to convince people it was different from Haikyu. Instead what it got was half-baked arcs that taste of disappointment.

Finally we have Fukuho who are, in my opinion, better than the Seiin team in every conceivable way. In a single episode this team has more camaraderie and personality than our leads. Not as individuals of course, most of them don’t even have names. But as a team they have a clear identity, they joke, they shoot the shit, they have a goal and a history, etc. Where Seiin feels like a ragtag band of misfits brought together, which they are, Fukuho is a group that have been together for awhile. We can see this in their interactions and their motivations. It’s all rather one-note, but ill take solid and average over mediocrity. Sadly Volley-Bu once again squanders this by bringing them down to Seiin’s level through ridiculous circumstances and plot armor. It takes what was built up as a compelling goal and, without resolving it meaningfully, throws them away.

Across the board the best way to describe Volley-Bu’s characters are “Wasted potential”. Every single one of them could have been more, could have mattered, if only they had more time in which to do so.

OST/Sound Design

Lastly we have the OST and this is going to be particularly hard to write. Not because I’m the farthest thing from a musician or because I lack an arts education, though both of those are true. Rather because Volley-Bu’s OST is just… forgetful. It has everything from generic rock to soft strings and even the occasional weird piece for when things get heavy on screen. But not a single track caught my imagination, managed to suck me into the scene that way great OST’s can. Along similar lines though, I was never sucked out of the show by the music the way terrible OSTs do. It’s as if the music was there, and I was aware it was there, but I didn’t mind it. Think elevator music but for anime. Whatever track was playing fit the scene well enough. That’s just all it did. And maybe that’s ok.

Where It Went Wrong

Now we come to the personal section of the review. This has absolutely no bearing on the score, this is just me taking to you about my personal experience. If all you care about is score then feel free to skip. Otherwise if you want to try and connect, to really understand where this review is coming from, then please read on. Let me share a bit of myself with you.

To me, Volley-Bu feels artificial. It like something made for the market to appeal to a broad audience first and foremost. As if someone saw the success of Haikyu and wanted to the same but knew they had to differentiate it somehow. And the way they chose to do so was “Make it a character drama”. That wouldn’t be so bad if that was all it was. I enjoy plenty of media that exist for that and that alone. From the Marvel movies to last years Akudama Drive to weird stuff like Thunderbolt Fantasy. None of these are pretentious “works of art” but they are all still good entertainment. And the reason I think they work where Volley-Bu fails is this: They know what they are. They might touch on something deeper at a surface level, but ultimately they stay true to their core start to finish. Volley-Bu doesn’t.

It starts with this serious and upfront story of suicide, pain and consequences. Yet it ends in a stereotypical match about going to Nationals. There’s no ideological conflict there, winning doesn’t prove anything or represent the characters overcoming something. They already overcame everything halfway through the season! Rather it feels included to get the sports shounen audience. It hooks those looking for something deeper and tries to appease them in the first half before trying to do the same with the action crowd in the second. In doing this Volley-Bu loses it’s identity and succeeds at neither. The terrible thing here is that it was completely avoidable as well. The rival team Fukuho, nationals, the actual competition aspect, none of these are important for the initial story. Instead it should have focused on Haijima, Yuni and their growth as individuals rather than as athletes.

There are so many things that Volley-Bu could have done to save itself from this fate. It could have cut Fukuho and focused entirely on our Seiin team. It could have lingered longer in middle school and really shown us the fallout of what happened. Most of all though, Volley-Bu could have committed itself to the suicide. But in not doing any of these, in trying to please everyone, it ended up pleasing no one. Or at least it didn’t please me and I’m the one writing this review… so yeah.

Conclusion

All in all when I think of Volley-Bu only one word comes to mind: Disappointment. I have compared Volley-Bu to the standout hit that is Haikyu a lot in this review. Something many of you probably find off-putting as Volley-Bu is clearly not Haikyu and is clearly trying to do something different. But here’s the rub: In it’s quest to do in one cour what Haikyu did in five Volley-Bu abandoned everything that made it stand out. The compelling and down to earth character drama was left behind for “Let’s get to nationals”. The quiet moments in the mountains, the snow, walking home from school, were all cut for more volleyball matches in the second half. Volley-Bu tried to appeal to both crowds, to peel off some of Haikyu’s fans while still appearing different and in doing so fulfilled neither.

I don’t rip into Volley-Bu because its fun, I don’t enjoy insulting this show. I was hyped, I was invested in it after episode one. But then it let me down. And I don’t want you to deal with the same. So be forewarned: You will not get what you want from this show. Whether it be action or drama, it will fail you. As it has failed me.