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yamaguchi tadashi is under appreciated; a thread
when he was first introduced, yamaguchi was practically just tsukki’s bodyguard. if somebody made fun of tsukishima, got mad at him, or just showed him any attitude - yamaguchi would defend him. his entire character was being tsukishima’s number two, and constantly apologised.
after the 3v3 game, he was the only first year who wasn’t a regular. it seemed like there was nothing special about him; yamaguchi never had kageyama’s accuracy, tsukki’s amazing blocking skills or hinata’s agility, but he worked so hard to get to where he is now.
as a kid, yamaguchi was bullied for being small and having freckles. in a flashback we see other kids picking on him, and tsukishima helping him by calling the bullies lame and scaring them away with his build. yamaguchi idolised tsukki, and joined the volleyball club with him.
after the practise match against the neighbourhood association, yamaguchi asks shimada to teach him how to do a jump floater; and after that he worked extremely hard to work on improving it in order to help the team.
at the training camp we find out about tsukishima’s backstory with his brother and see why he has no motivation to work hard. he wasn’t giving it his all and considered volleyball to be just a club, but yamaguchi helped him.
he motivated tsukki and for once, instead of agreeing with everything he said, we saw yamaguchi’s character developing and it became obvious he wasn’t just tsukishima’s lackey. he showed how important volleyball is and helped him out of his slump and encouraged him.
yamaguchi felt horrible after the first official match against aphs johsai, his first time getting put in he missed the serve and the guilt would have destroyed him - knowing that one single point could have won them the match.
in karasuno’s rematch against aoba johsai in season two, yamaguchi pulled off multiple pinch serves and helped out karasuno greatly. we finally saw how powerful yamaguchi could be and how valuable he is to the team.
at first yamaguchi was extremely nervous to play in a game, he had no stand out skill, so he worked hard. he learned the float server and improved it to help his team out, he became more confident and deserves more recognition.
