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why kageyama’s backstory is the saddest in haikyuu aka the psychology behind kageyama tobio — a thread
before y’all attack me READ THE ENTIRE THREAD. psychology has been a special interest of mine practically since i learned the world. this thread is going to dig into pretty much all the hq backstories (mainly kageyama’s ofc) and explaining
why he acts the way he does.
1. his grandfather’s death. now, this is obviously a sad beginning. this event can be categorized as traumatic, especially if he had been raised by his grandpa. his parents are never shown nor mentioned so we can assume that they are
a) absent (in any instance such as work, walking out, etc) b) dead. we can see that his grandfather was an important part in his life since he was a baby. even if his parents WERE present, we can still see that his grandfather stilled played
a VERY important role in his upbringing. he opened his love for volleyball and, in my eyes, acted like a father figure. this is why volleyball is so close to his heart. it reminds me of the person, along side his sister (i’m assuming), who raised him.
even if his parents were there to raise him, it’s obvious in his eyes that his grandfather was more a father figure to him than his actual parents. making his death hit extremely hard on him, more so than anyone else.
he began to mourn, as any normal person does, but in his own way. it’s quite normal for men to not cry, even when they lose someone close to you. this is why he seems so apathetic and cold to the whole situation. you can tell he’s hurt, if you look close enough, but it’s not
obvious. it’s also quite normal for people to become distant when they’re grief stricken. the mourning and grieving process varies for everyone and is very normal to take YEARS for people to understand their loss. i believe you can see him process through the
4/5 stages of grief throughout the entirety of haikyuu. anger and denial (“the king of the court” stage), depression (beginning of karasuno days, most of ch. 387), and acceptance (when he and hinata become one as a team and when he becomes “king” again).
2. his bullying and being “the king of the court”. to me, this is him being angry over his grandfather’s death while simultaneously denying it. because he refuses to accept the death, he begins to bottle up his emotions.
it’s normal for people to be angry that their loved one passed on. why didn’t they leave them? why couldn’t they have stayed? it feels as though they are betraying them by leaving them behind. to try and release these emotions, kageyama vented it on the court.
his grandfather got him into volleyball and it will always something precious to him because of it. he would try to control how everything planned out and, as a setter, he was essentially the backbone of the team. it was the one thing he could control in his life.
when you’re in pain, you feel as though your life is out of control. but having the control over something, anything, makes you feel better. powerful. by him being a setter, that allows him to have something in control within his life. his entire time had to trust and depend on
him. without him, they were practically useless. especially since kageyama was so incredibly talented. it quickly went to his head. this is how “the king of the court” came to be.
he wanted everything to go right when playing volleyball, because it’s the one thing in his life he can control. it would be at least one thing in his life that went right while HE was in control. so, he was demanding. he wanted things to play out perfectly.
otherwise, he’s a failure. this lead to him being bullied. bullying is extremely traumatic, especially when it’s repetitive on a daily basis. because he was also hurting during these times, it was even worse for him.
his teammates leaving him alone on that court was one of the worst things that could have happened to him. it reminded him of that helpless feeling he felt when his grandfather left him. it was traumitzing. he felt alone once again.
3. karasuno days. when his fellow teammates and senpais brought up the fact his middle school days, it hurt. knowing that they just saw him as a spoiled brat, as most other’s saw as he was so demanding, was horrible. you could tell that he mostly wanted to leave behind
his middle school days. being forced to be teammates with hinata helped with his development so much. he had to work past being the one man show he had in middle school and be an actual teammate. he had to learn that he was apart of a team for a reason.
this helped to work towards accepting his grandfather’s death.
4. being crowned “the king of the court” once again. this was a push for him to accept his past. ALL of his past. including his loss.
when he could tell that was slowly reverting back into his old habits of being demanding and trying to be a perfectionist, it terrified him. he had grown to love his team and didn’t want to be left behind again. but because of hinata, being crowned king was so important to him.
it was essentially them saying, “we’re here for you. through it all.” and that’s exactly what he needed to hear to accept it all. knowing he was apart of a team that accepted him for everything, one that wouldn’t leave him behind. karasuno was the perfect team for him.
4. other haikyuu backstories. if you look at any haikyuu backstory, they’re all pretty sad. but, they give a reason for the character’s development. it makes the stories more immersive and detailed and allows us to empathize with each and every character which makes them likable.
kageyama’s is reasonably the saddest to make his character development so huge. furudate made an incredibly bold and amazing choice to give the secondary main characters the saddest backstories with the biggest developments.
it’s very rare to see such rich and deep backstories for even side characters and that’s what make haikyuu so unique and beautiful. you feel and empathize for pretty every character they show and it’s what makes these characters so incredible.
the main character is given a drive and purpose with challenges to overcome but so does every other character. hinata was talented but passed over for his height. yamaguchi has potential but hadn’t truly opened it. tsukishima needed to learn a love for volleyball again.
the list could go on with the amount of characters who had amazing development with tragic backstories but looking back at kageyama, none of them had the same amount as he did. he’s a very special character and had one of the most tragic stories in all of haikyuu.
