Decemberween: Other People Watching Haikyuu!!
Do you remember at all, how earlier this year, I talked about how Haikyuu!! is a really good anime about stories, and has really appealing male characters in it that could be important to romantic narratives? I really liked Haikyuu and I watched all of it I could, and then, because apparently I watched a bunch of clips on Youtube for the article, the Dread Algorithm threw some videos at me, suggesting I check out professional volleyball players or coaches reacting to Haikyuu!!.
And I’m a games academic.
So I was really interested.
First up, there’s Coach Donny at Elevate Yourself, and I hope by the time this article goes up he’s finished with season 3, but he at this time has no idea that it’s an entire season that’s one game…
And next up there’s Victoria Garrick, the USC Libero, responding to the anime with a special focus on Nishinoya, the team’s libero.
What I find amazing about these videos is how often these two people who know volleyball pretty well, can look at the anime depicting the sport, and have similar or the same reactions – how they can both give an informed reaction to the same content, which suggests that the anime does a good job of representing something real.
That’s really cool and it’s very interesting. If you liked Haikyuu and wanted to know more about it as a representation of a real sport, this is a way to recontextualise what you watched.