jenerallyreading's profile picture

jenerallyreading 's review for:

Haikyu!!, Vol. 41 by Haruichi Furudate
5.0
emotional inspiring sad tense fast-paced

5/14/23 Re-Read:
Chapter 361 you will always be famous! 
Sigh…I knew I would cry like a baby reading the last chapter and to no surprise I did. I still deeply adore Takeda’s speech to Hinata and what this moment represents for Hinata’s future—especially paired with this volume’s declaration of Hinata finally cementing himself as the Greatest Decoy. I can still quite truthfully say this volume represents Haikyuu as a series at its best, and as a series that I regard to have absolutely fantastic storytelling and frankly impeccable narrative structuring.

01/16/22 Re-Read:
After re-reading the Nekoma/Karasuno match I felt the need to re-read the end of the Nationals Arc…god I thought I was emotionally prepared but I was so Not. Out of all the volumes this one remains one of the best—if not the best—in my opinion. Takeda’s speech to Hinata is a small portion of the volume but has so much impact. Overall I just think this volume demonstrates how this series, as a whole, shows so much love for its characters and for volleyball. Much of the purpose of kidlit is to show young readers morals and values, teach lessons, and show truths about the world — all in funny, heartwarming, and approachable ways. Haikyuu might not be kidlit per say, and it’s definitely enjoyable for all audiences, but at its core it pays so much respect to the hopes and dreams, fears and insecurities, and emotions and feelings of its teenage characters. Like yeah we’re reading absurdly dramatized volleyball games, but these boys are given so much space to grow within their friendships and personally and it’s so beautiful. So, the most heartbreaking moment of the series—when Hinata  can no longer play in a volleyball game—could so easily be seen as trivial or irrelevant to life’s bigger problems, but is instead treated as a life moment as devastating for Hinata as it actually is. Sometimes bad things that happen when you’re teen really do make you feel like the world’s gonna end and I just really love how Haikyuu validates the Big Feelings of these teenage boys, and this volume does it best!