Haikyu!! opens with a boy watching television. Shoyo Hinata, a junior high student with no team and no height to speak of, sees Karasuno High School play at the Nationals and fixates on one player. The commentators call him “The Little Giant,” a short wing spiker who jumps like the height problem does not exist. Hinata has no experience and no club. He has a vertical jump and an obsession. That is the whole engine of the show, and it turns out to be enough for 85 episodes across four seasons.
Trailer, via Crunchyroll Store Australia.
A One-Man Volleyball Club
The setup is as lean as a serve. Hinata joins his junior high volleyball club and finds he is its only member. He spends two years recruiting classmates just so he has someone to practice with. In his third and final year, some friends finally join, and the club enters a tournament.
Their first official match is a crushing defeat. The team on the other side includes Tobio Kageyama, a third-year setter nicknamed “The King of the Court” for his skill and his brutal play style. Hinata vows to beat him in high school.
Then Hinata studies, gets into Karasuno, and discovers Kageyama has enrolled there too. The rival is now the teammate. It is a clean premise, and Haikyu!! does not waste it.
Karasuno’s Wingless Crows
Karasuno is not a powerhouse anymore. The school lost that reputation after the era of the Little Giant, and local teams call them “The Wingless Crows.” Hinata chose Karasuno because the Little Giant played there. He arrives at a program that needs redemption and a roster that needs a spark.
What it gets is a setter-spiker partnership nobody planned. Kageyama’s genius setting and Hinata’s athleticism combine into an explosive new tactic. The two push each other toward their full potential, and Hinata builds his first real relationships with a team.
This is where the show’s drama lives. Not in the tournaments, exactly, but in the fact that two people who wanted to destroy each other now cannot function apart.
Ayumu Murase and Kaito Ishikawa
The voice cast carries the central relationship. Ayumu Murase voices Shoyo Hinata. Kaito Ishikawa voices Tobio Kageyama. Murase has to sell both the raw enthusiasm and the insecurity underneath it, and Ishikawa has to make a controlling, abrasive setter worth rooting for. The pairing works because neither performance tries to soften the other.
Haikyu!! is produced by Production I.G. The first season aired on MBS from April to September 2014, with 25 episodes. It ran on MBS, TBS, CBC, BSN and tys. Four seasons, 85 episodes, from April 6, 2014 to December 19, 2020.
The Four Seasons, in Order
The run breaks down cleanly, and the shape matters for anyone deciding where to start:
- Season 1 — April to September 2014, 25 episodes
- Season 2 — October 2015 to March 2016, 25 episodes
- Season 3 — October to December 2016, 10 episodes
- Season 4 — two split cours, January to December 2020, 25 episodes
That third season is the outlier at 10 episodes, and the fourth season’s split release across 2020 is the reason the show’s final television stretch feels stretched. The anime adaptation comes from Haruichi Furudate’s manga, serialized in Shueisha’s Weekly Shōnen Jump from February 2012 to July 2020 and collected in 45 tankōbon volumes.
A Film Series Called Haikyu!! Final
The television series is not the end of the story. Haikyu!! Final is a two-part anime film series that serves as the finale. The first part, Haikyu!! The Dumpster Battle, was released in February 2024. The second and final part, Haikyu!! vs. The Little Giant, is set to be released in 2027.
That 2027 date is the part worth watching. It means the story Haikyu!! began telling in 2014 will not finish on screen until more than a decade after it started. For a series about a boy who spent two years recruiting practice partners, a long wait is thematically on brand.
75 Million Copies and a Shogakukan Award
The reception has been strong on both sides of the adaptation. In 2016, Haikyu!! won the 61st Shogakukan Manga Award in the shōnen category. By December 2025, the manga had over 75 million copies in circulation, making it one of the best-selling manga series.
In North America, Viz Media licenses the manga. Sentai Filmworks licensed the anime for digital and home release, and Crunchyroll later took it on. The published critical score for the series sits at 8.6 out of 10, based on a TMDB audience score of 1,550 votes.
Why the Hinata-Kageyama Pairing Works
The best thing Haikyu!! does is refuse to make Kageyama a villain. He is a prodigy setter with a brutal play style, and the show lets that brutality be a real problem rather than a quirk. His teammates at Karasuno have to absorb him. Hinata has to learn to receive what Kageyama gives.
The show’s answer is a tactic built on trust neither of them has yet. That is a harder story to write than a rivalry, and Haikyu!! commits to it.
Hinata vows to surpass Kageyama
That vow is the spine of the whole series. It survives the moment they become teammates, and it survives every match after.
The comedy keeps the drama from hardening. Haikyu!! is listed as animation, comedy and drama, and it earns all three. The jokes land because the characters are specific — Hinata’s stubbornness, Kageyama’s temper, the team’s slow climb back from “Wingless Crows” to something opponents have to respect.
What the Show Gets Right, and What It Doesn’t
The pacing is the weak point. Season 3’s 10 episodes are tight and focused. Season 4’s split cours across 2020 spread 25 episodes over a full year, and the release schedule does the momentum no favors. Watching it now, in sequence, that problem mostly disappears, but it was real at the time.
The strength is that Haikyu!! never treats Hinata’s height as a punchline to be resolved. He does not grow. He jumps. The Little Giant is the proof that the body is not the whole argument, and the show builds its entire philosophy on that.
Karasuno’s redemption arc gives the team a reason to exist beyond Hinata’s personal goal. The “Wingless Crows” label is a wound the show keeps picking at, and that is the right instinct. A team that used to be good and is not anymore is more interesting than a team that was never good at all.
Where the Series Lands
Haikyu!! earns its 8.6 out of 10. The first season establishes the rivalry and the partnership with unusual efficiency. The middle seasons build the team into something worth caring about. The fourth season, split across 2020, is the weakest stretch structurally, but it is not a collapse — it is a scheduling problem more than a storytelling one.
What holds up is the central idea. Two players who wanted to beat each other end up needing each other, and neither of them gets to be simple about it. Ayumu Murase and Kaito Ishikawa make that tension audible in every exchange. Haruichi Furudate’s manga gave the adaptation a spine, and Production I.G built 85 episodes around it without losing the thread.
The 2027 release of Haikyu!! vs. The Little Giant is the real test of the franchise’s staying power. The television series already made its case. It is one of the better sports dramas of its decade, and it is one of the few that understands a rivalry is more useful when it turns into a partnership.
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