Lesley's Anime and Manga Corner

I’m going to start this out by saying that it’s interesting to note that this episode never focused on Kageyama’s training camp. The primary focus is on the first-year training camp that Hinata crashed, with the secondary focus being on Karasuno.

Hinata receives several lectures during this episode: one from Coach Ukai, one from the team’s advisor, and one from Daichi. The lectures from the adults are more serious in nature, while Daichi’s is on the comedic side.

We see Hinata serving as the ball boy at the training camp, and that the Shiratorizawa Academy coach (who’s hosting the camp) is being harsh on Hinata. Of course, Hinata doesn’t help his case when he hears that spiking drills are taking place and tries to join the line. But after the main practice is over, we see Hinata trying to train on his own, and trying to do things like jump serves.

Things come to a head when on one of the days of the camp, third-year students and alumni from Shiratorizawa come in for a practice game against the boys participating in the training camp. Among them are Wakatoshi and Tendo, and Tendo is surprised to see Hinata as a ball boy. Tendo laughs at Hinata, but the thing that finally gets to Hinata is when Wakatoshi asks him why he’s even there.

The final scene of the episode sees Hinata going into a supply room and thinking over everything he’s heard or been told over the past two episodes, as well as a line of dialogue Kageyama said to him in the past. Poor Hinata spends some time agonizing over what his role is at this training camp and what it is he needs to do. After a bit of torment, he seems to come up with an answer… but what exactly that answer is, the audience doesn’t know yet. The episode ends with Hinata standing in the doorway of the supply room, with a determined stance. It’ll definitely be interesting to see what Hinata has in mind.

From the preview for the next episode, it appears the focus will continue to be on the first-years’ training camp. I wonder how Kageyama’s camp will fit into the narrative. Will the early episodes of his season focus on Hinata and the first-years’ training camp, and then switch focus to Kageyama’s training camp? Or will future episodes try to intermingle the two training camps?

With this episode, the only times we saw Kageyama were in flashbacks. Outside of that, he never actually made an appearance in the episode. At least we got to see some of the team interactions at Karasuno in the couple of scenes of their regular training that we got to see. Even through three of the characters aren’t with the regular group, at least we’re still seeing the other team members interacting with each other. And we also got to see some interactions between Hinata and other Karasuno team members when he’s at school during the day. So the interactions and chemistry between the team members is still there, which is one of the draws of Haikyu!!

What I’m interested in seeing as the cour continues is whether or not this cour will be focusing exclusively on the two training camps, or if we will begin the spring tournament during this cour. I’ll just have to keep watching to find out.