Haikyuu!!: To the Top ep.12 – A Murder of Crows, A Glaring of Cats and A Flock of Seaguls

I still think that Hoshiumi looks more like a little owl but it seems the show is associating him with a seagull. I’m not going to argue. For reasons I will most likely never been able to explain, I do think a seagull would probably be better at volleyball than an owl.

I’m really putting my brain power to good use here!

This season of Haikyuu actually has 13 episodes so this is the penultimate (although it might just go onto s4 part 2 and I’m here for it). In any case, the episode served as sort of a cool down after Karasuno’s big win last week. This tin=me, we just got to follow along with the players as the other teams are playing and get psyched about all the great players we’ll get a chance to see in future episodes.

Personally, I don’t need any help to get psyched about Nekoma and I guess the show figured most people would be like me because we didn’t get to see them much. We did see their banner though. You know how most teams have an inspiration saying or motto. Date is “The Iron Wall” because of their great defence, Aobajohsai is “Rule the Court with their controlled play. Karasuno has one of the best ones in my opinion, it’s simply “Fly”, due to Udai’s influence. Amazing motto for volleyball! Well apparently Nekoma’s motto is “Connect”. As in they favour team work. That’s amazing. You figure it would be the protagonist motto (Fly is cooler though!).

The bulk of the episode focused on two players, both of which have silver hair. Coincidence? I think not!

The first is Bokuto. We’ve actually known about Bokuto for some time now. He’s been appearing in Haikyuu since season 2 I believe. and we did see him hit it off with Hinata a lot at the beginning of this season. But Bokuto’s never really had the spotlight. And I’m guessing his turn is coming up. He’s an affable adversary with an occasionally childish personality and apparently a thirst for the spotlight. I don,t think any other Haikyuu character has similar characterization so there’s a lot of potential there.

Since Haikyuu is a show with a huge cast that attempts to lovingly develop as much of them as possible, it’s difficult for any individual member to stand out much if they aren’t main characters. The fact that they can still come up with original yet plausible personality types is pretty impressive.

As for Hoshiumi, well he stands out instantly. I guess I’m going back on my last paragraph already. Oy vey. I’m happy we get to see more of him, he’s always so wonderfully animated.

Suga laid out the conflict of this character. Hinata is used to being the little guy. He’s used to fighting against impossible odds. But he isn’t use to having another player actually threaten to become the next little giant before him. That could throw someone off big time!

But I wasn’t worried. In fact I wrote in my notes that this was great for Hinata. Not only is Shoyo a player that loves playing against strong opponents most of all, but he also responds extremely well to rivalry. See Hinata is a good and very passionate player but he’s a bit easy to distract and he gets unfocused. Having an actual person to concentrate on is going to help keep him centred. Hinata is in fact a pretty formidable opponent at the best of times, a focused and single minded Hinata is going to be downright frightening!

It’s a good thing Hoshiumi looks like he can handle it!

It was a great breather and if the point of this episode was to get me excited about what’s coming up next then: Success!

I am looking forward to next week and next season and really as much of this show as I can get. I would like to see the OG little giant again as well. I liked that kid.