thread: why i think the nationals arc ended the way it did, or what haikyuu is really about

the way furudate chose to end the nationals arc is... so ridiculously powerful. from the beginning, the only thing held higher in hinata's mind than "winning" is simply getting to stay on the court for longer. winning is secondary to that and only necessary because it enables it.

this means that the entire time, there's been something with the capability to hurt hinata more than simply losing a match: being taken off of the court.

It sounds anticlimatic on paper: the main character is pulled out of the action when the stakes are highest. but this choice speaks to the fact that furudate is wildly, admirably unafraid to challenge their characters--hinata especially--in the most brutal ways possible.

if you ask me, this desire to tear apart their characters is why furudate had hinata meet a character like hoshiumi, who already /is/ everything hinata is so urgently striving towards, or why furudate had him find out that his former idol, tenma, moved on from the sport entirely.

these are the most brutal and narratively delicate challenges any writer could throw at hinata's character. but they're the very challenges capable of spurring the greatest growth in him. it’s incredibly brave and effective storytelling.

but the fact that /this/ was hinata’s greatest challenge of all speaks volumes. hinata's loss here was not a loss because the other team beat him. hinata’s loss here accesses something beyond that: his fundamental love for volleyball.

he's dealt with loss from the start. but something that’s never been cast in doubt before was whether or not he’d even be GIVEN this chance to lose. this panel reaches into your chest and tears your heart out, because we’re seeing what happens when /that’s/ ripped away from him.

this shouts at us that the deepest emotional undercurrent of this series is not, in fact, the stakes of winning or losing, but rather getting to play volleyball /at all/. and maybe that’s something that we’ve known the whole time. but furudate’s choice to do it /here/ proves it.

better said: these heart-wrenching panels, hinata’s greatest devastation, probably the most tear-jerking images in the whole series, didn’t come from losing. this came from the loss of the game itself. and that made something click in my head.

it speaks to something wonderful: haikyuu is a story about a game with winners and losers, but it was never about winning or losing. it's a story about love.

the desire to stay on the court for longer--the one thing that will always triumph mere "victory"--is borne of that love.

it always comes back to this, in roundabout ways. tsukki's arc in the shira match was so bone-deep satisfying because his character stood in unique rejection of that love for the game. but in that moment, we saw him let himself feel it. this is haikyuu's thesis, more or less.

oikawa's flashback in brazil comes back to this too. his near-destructive drive to get better sometimes blocks out this passion for the game. but chapter 373 is called "that first feeling" for a reason. hinata's presence brings him back to why he plays in the first place: love.

and i think that it's this, folks. beyond the way haikyuu handles character dynamics, beyond the joy i get from writing fanfic, this is why i love haikyuu so much. it's just a story about loving something a whole, whole lot.

and it's probably why you love it a whole lot, too.