Now that summer is here, all eyes are on Paris as the world gears up for the biggest sporting event of the year. Ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics, Haikyu!! creator Haruichi Furudate is hyping the Japan national volleyball team in the best way possible — with a special crossover illustration.
The sketch brings several real-world representatives into the beloved manga-turned-anime series, alongside a caption that reads, “Make the world exciting!”. It’s a dream come true particularly for outside hitter Ran Takahashi, who previously expressed his wish for Furudate to include him in a drawing in a video discussing theatrical release of Haikyu!! The Movie: The Dumpster Battle.
This latest tribute also serves as a cool follow-up to a previous nod back in 2020, where the first anime opening, SPYAIR’s “Imagination”, was played during the match between the Japan and Venezuela men volleyball teams. That year proved to be Team Japan’s best outing in 29 years, with the players advancing to the quarterfinals and eventually finishing in seventh place.
The recent boom in the sport’s popularity is largely attributed to Haikyu!!, which serialised in Weekly Shounen Jump from February 2012 to July 2020. It saw over 60 million copies in circulation as of September 2023, earning the honour of being one of the best-selling manga series of all time.
An anime adaptation produced by Production IG, aired in 2014 with 25 episodes. Season 2 ran from 2015 to 2016, marking the debut of a third season, while the fourth season was split into two cours (quarters of a year). Haikyu!! The Movie: The Dumpster Battle is the latest entry in the franchise, released as the first part of a film duology.
The official synopsis of Haikyu!! is as follows:
“Based off of the original Weekly Shonen Jump manga series from Haruichi Furudate, Haikyu!! is a slice-of-life sports anime revolving around Shoyo Hinata’s love of volleyball. Inspired by a small-statured pro volleyball player, Hinata creates a volleyball team in his last year of middle school. Unfortunately the team is matched up against the ‘King of the Court’ Tobio Kageyama’s team in their first tournament and inevitably lose. After the crushing defeat, Hinata vows to surpass Kageyama After entering high school, Hinata joins the volleyball team only to find that Tobio has also joined.”
Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth’s theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia’s greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really.
