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Haikyu!! Second Season
Episode 16

by Rebecca Silverman,

How would you rate episode 16 of
Haikyu!! Second Season (TV 2) ?
Community score: 4.7

You know those episode endings that just make your jaw drop a little as you whisper “oh hell” under your breath? This would be one of them. While it isn't clear precisely how The Event happens, or what the damage is, it's obvious that Karasuno has just taken a major hit, and it seems entirely possible that it will determine the course of the rest of their current game...if not more than that.

Actually the episode does do a little foreshadowing before it's final reveal. We've seen players get injured before – just last week Kageyama took a ball to the face, which leads to this week's best line, “I'm going to stop it this time! And not with my face!” - but not quite to the degree we have in episode sixteen, which has two separate instances which look really painful. One, Daichi and Asahi's fist bump of doom, is played for laughs, while the other, Asahi's serve bending back the fingers and wrists of the blockers attempting to stop it, is sort of brushed past. Both, however, give a bit of a jolt: they really look like they hurt, much moreso than Kageyama's ball-meet-nose last week or even the crash when Hinata wasn't paying attention a while back. Both of these instances not only open the door for the finale, but they also let us know that this time, Karasuno has gone beyond playing for keeps.

Plotwise, this episode wraps up the game with Johzenji and moves on to the next, against a school called Wakutani South, or Wakunan. Both games are important in that they figure out how to cope with Hinata's quick: Johzenji simply doesn't block him while Wakunan turns out to have a player with a similar verve and style to Hinata (and his hero, the Little Giant) in its captain Takeru. It's hard to say which throws Hinata off more personally, but for the majority of the team, Wakunan definitely presents as the biggest threat. Daichi is a bit cooler about it, as he recognizes how Takeru is being a good captain along with an impressive player, and on the sidelines it is remarked that the game is ultimately going to come down to a battle between the captains. Also throwing Karasuno off is the fact that Takeru's entire (immediate) family has come to watch him play, something that I get the impression is rather unusual. (I come from a family where everyone turns up en masse to everything, so this threw me a bit.) Yes, Tanaka's sister Saeko comes to see him play, but no one else family-wise has come to watch any of the players, and every time Takeru's family erupts into a cheer, the Karasuno guys look visibly shocked...and maybe a little shaken. How much this is contributing to the match is unclear, but it certainly feels like a factor.

Before we ever get to the Wakunan game, the show takes a few minutes to show us a little of Johzenji's background, which is a nice touch. Episode fifteen really made Johzenji feel like bigger characters than they perhaps are, so getting a glimpse of what the team means to their manager, and seeing their captain as a regular player in his first year, helps to give a little closure to their part of the game. Of all of the teams Karasuno has faced, Johzenji felt the most interesting and unique, so it would have been a shame to see them just fade into the background.

Speaking of backgrounds, there are some more wonderful behind scenes this week, taking place as someone else speaks or does something in the foreground. One of the best is Asahi sliding along the floor as he misses a ball, not a great moment for him personally, but a beautiful piece of animation as each part of his body lands and jerks along the floor, skin moving slower than fabric. The fingers and wrists bending backwards that I mentioned earlier are also a very good example of little movements being well captured by the show's animation; seriously, I hurt for those guys.

In some respects all of this fades in comparison to the final moment of this week, as well as the foreshadowing you can see upon reflection. It's a very well put-together episode with only a few moments that feel like they could have been skipped (but probably needed to be there for people who like Date Tech more than I do), and it really will be a long week waiting to find out what the consequences of it will be.

Rating: A-

Haikyu!! Second Season is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.


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