How Haikyu!! Is Helping Me Cope

Ever since I saw the first two seasons dubbed on Hulu, I have been trying to get everyone that I know (and a surprisingly number of people I don’t for that matter) to watch an anime / read the manga of a Japanese high school boys volleyball team because:

It’s fantastic. It’s one of the few things keeping me tethered during these strange “not”-times, the endless march of what seems like an endless March.

And the thing is, on July 19, 2020, the 402nd chapter of Haikyu!! rolled onto my VIZ Media app. Hence, I scrolled the finale of the series on my phone that Sunday and the only thing that kept me from bursting out into a comical wave of tears was the knowledge that the back half of To The Top would be airing in October. And if you’re just learning about Haikyu!! for the first time in this article, here is the bare minimum you need to know about it to understand where I’m coming from (and if you are familiar, you should be aware that there are some mild spoilers in the form of out of context panels from later chapters of the manga below). Match Start Haikyu!! is a shonen series about the members of Karasuno High’s Volleyball Club, focused mainly on Shoyou Hinata, the red headed protagonist (because it’s a fundamental facet of reality that all shonen protagonists need to have readily identifiable hair). Despite Hinata’s short stature, he has incredible athletic abilities that – when paired with his former rival turned teammate Tobio Kageyama, a veritable volleyball prodigy – a…