Lately I've been thinking about the downgrade in the production of Haikyuu this cour and how it impacts my feelings on the series. It's a pretty interesting situation and while I try not to say negative things much on Twitter, this is pretty important to me so meh, why not.

Please note that I'm nothing remotely close to an animation authority or expert, and I'm probably wrong on some things. I'm just spewing my dumb thoughts and putting them out there.

Thanks mostly to COVID (I think), the limitations are pretty clear - The lighting/shadowing, background art, storyboarding, and audio direction are all first class, but the animation just isn't nearly as consistently fluid and the moment-to-moment action isn't as dynamic.

In my opinion, Part 1 of To The Top was very varied & interesting in terms of animation, but there aren't as many fluid/creative sequences or cuts this cour. Again, probably due to COVID, which is really unfortunate. Seems like a similar thing happened with Re:Zero S2.

And Haikyuu is such a consistently expressive story, so that sort of thing is noticeable. It's a shame, but that's just how things are. It just isn't the same. But that doesn't mean that these new seasons will take away from my appreciation for the adaptation. Quite the opposite.

The story material is the strongest at this point than in any other part of the adapted material IMO (though not yet entirely - future eps will cover that stuff), and it's not like the anime is failing in any way to capture the weight and emotions of that.

I teared up many times this season and was swept up quite a lot. It still shines through really well, just not in the 11/10 way that it used to. It captures the backstories in a serene and beautiful way, & that makes sense because they don't require intensity and dynamic motion.

But the in-match work is unambitious for the most part. And this is mostly the same staff that worked on Cour 1, which had lots of dynamism. So it really seems that this is a COVID issue. And yeah, that sucks big time, especially considering how gigantic this match is.

It's weird to say this coming off of what was in my opinion a top tier episode, lol. I adored it. In addition, Tanaka's episode was absolutely awesome. Nekoma's second episode was terrific. The Kita stuff was beautiful. But overall, on the whole, it's just more limited.

But even still, it is still a good adaptation that captures the beauty and spirit of the story despite the niggles. As a result, the anime is in no danger of dropping in my list or of me losing appreciation for it. In fact, it'll probably rise in my list after this season.

It won't rise as much as it might have if the production was as miraculous as it used to be, which is too bad, but this is still a fantastic show that fills me with joy. It's just too bad that I probably won't be able to give it the 10/10 that the source material deserves.

I'm saying this now before the big climax, which I hope will be excellent, so of course things could change one way or another.

But hey, there are still four episodes to go, covering some absolutely beautiful material at the conclusion of this match now that we've entered the third set with all of these backstories established. So we'll see how that goes!

The most important thing to note here is something I want to conclude on - Of course, I absolutely sympathize with the impact COVID has and how tough it must be on the staff. My appreciation for what they've put into the series in such a difficult situation is commendable.

They've done incredibly given the circumstances, I can't imagine how tough working under those conditions must be, and that's on TOP of working in an industry that is challenging at best. Much love for still giving us a very good product <3