Haikyuu 2!! Episode 16: Next!

You know what I’ve noticed about this show?

You just CAN’T hate the rival teams. I can’t find anything about them to hate them for. Yeah I was kinda iffy with the undercut guy from Johzenji because he was trying to pick up Kiyoko even after she was showing disinterest in him. But he’s not really a bad guy, and neither is the rest of the team. They’re just loud and dumb. But when they can actually calm the hell down for once, they’re really good players. After a whipping with her words, the manager for these guys send them back out to play and they play a little more seriously. They think of another way to stop Hinata’s attack and they’re doing pretty well, using their minds and all. But after making a mistake at the match point, Karasuno wins the match. And just seeing the cute manager get emotional and smile at them…ahh, darn it. These guys aren’t so bad after all. This really sucks. Even when we didn’t get to know them too well, we still got a little backstory on the team. And they all have good attitudes. I just…I can’t! I can’t hate them!

And then the next team! Wakunan, a pretty powerful school whose skill set is equal to Nekoma’s and Aoba Josai. Speaking of which, I actually didn’t like Oikawa too much last season but, again, since this show really wants you to love all of its characters, Oikawa really grew on me.

But yeah the next team. The captain, Takeru?

His family is right there! Cheering for him, super loud and embarrassing but it’s really cute. And he loves it, and he has a great attitude too! He’s not super smug or anything, but he does show to be quite the opponent for Karasuno. All of them really. But this seems to be the match of the captains. And of course something bad has to happen in the end with Papa Daichi. ;_;

But before I get to that. One of the alumni and Saeko joins Yachi. Coach Ukai and Sensei are worried with this team because they seem like the type of team that would give Karasuno some trouble, and it does seem that way since their scores are tied. Takeru seems like an annoying spiker, according to Tsukki, because he doesn’t look for empty spots to spike, but uses angles. The team manages to stay calm even when they can’t handle Hinata’s crazy quick. So all of that put together, Wakunan looks like a tough match. Things are pretty even, but they had a really long rally going on where no one was giving up. It looked like the ball was about to hit the floor but Daichi ran to hit it, and with the team only getting one more chance to hit it (you can only hit three times if I remember right), Daichi charged in to hit it, sliding really fast. But he saw Tanaka doing the same thing. And going so fast, he couldn’t stop himself. Tanaka did bounce the ball, barely, to the other side and scored the point…but Daichi. ;-;

He crashed into Tanaka and everything halted as they all looked over at Daichi, who seemed to have passed out from that collision.

OH NO! And right when they just said that it was a battle of the captains, this had to happen. This isn’t good, he’s the dad of the team! We don’t need injuries right now, these matches are important.