×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

2.43: Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Team
Episode 4

by Christopher Farris,

How would you rate episode 4 of
2.43: Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Team ?
Community score: 3.9

The focus for 2.43 swings back around to Kuroba and Haijima for this episode, and while Shinichiro was already my favorite part of watching the show, I understand the reasoning in doing so. The childhood friends are back on the same team again after the middle-school prologue, so with the narrative of successive tournaments already kicking off, it's important to define what their relationship has become at this point, and how that'll be instrumental in their actual playing moving forward. Given how much 2.43 has already backtracked and rerouted through its past plot points (with some returns working more effectively than others, I'll get to that later), it's hard for me to say if the Kuroba/Haijima progression here constitutes a completed arc or if it will continue to complicate as a storyline throughout the season. What I can say is that what we get feels like progress just in the space of this episode, lending things that sense of movement and momentum so important to the sport of volleyball.

Said volleyball is increasingly more present, and seemingly, more important to the story being told by 2.43. However, I'd be lying if I didn't say the sport still feels more like a template, a medium for delivery of the story between the characters rather than a focal point the show is especially interested in. A little more attention is paid to the concept of plays and the characters' positions and roles within, but every time, especially with the important stuff this episode, it rounds back to what it means for the relationships between them. Haijima's current setting style is highlighted as indicative of where he is now as a person: He customizes his sets to each one of his teammates, but still places them at apexes that demand utilizing the most of their height and power, symbolizing how far he's come in learning to accommodate others while still asking the most of them, performance-wise. Kuroba, meanwhile, is made to stay apart and practice the basics in ways we don't see much of, yet culminate in his understanding that Haijima already considers him the best spiking option, which he's already used to, and wanted to hone their abilities so Kuroba's confidence would grow.

It's all quite salient, with even the volleyball depiction used symbolically to denote when the notable character shifts occur: having the more procedural execution of the previous episodes before ratcheting up to more dynamic presentation once Kuroba experiences his awakening as the team's ace. But it still comes off like the sport is in service of everything else about the show, which smacks just a bit oddly when 2.43 is also trying to extoll the appreciable virtues of its chosen game. The characters' passion for volleyball is quickly becoming apparent as a value they all share, codified particularly in Kuroba this week as his display really impresses that appreciation on his surly cousin Yori. But with the way it's presented, there's a sense that said passion could be for anything and this particular story wouldn't deviate too badly from what it's done so far.

I don't know if that's a bad thing necessarily, so much as a noteworthy, odd quirk of the show. To be fair, attempting to be a sports show with that hangup does have a tangible effect on its entertainment value. For all the strong payoff of the ideas between Kuroba and Haijima by the end of this one, what gets us there is a stretch spent in training camp with several scenes of characters practicing or messing around after-hours. The point of Kuroba being left out of Haijima's setting practice can be made in just a few seconds of setup, and with seemingly little interest in depicting the technicalities of volleyball to fill the rest of that content, we're left with what otherwise feels like time-killing. And I think it really is the fault of the lighter focus on the sport than they need to have. A later scene of misunderstood tension between Kuroba and Haijima at the laundromat shows that 2.43 can depict meaningful stretches of downtime in interesting ways, with loving attention paid here to the liminal sound design and focus of the minute business of the characters. And as shown by the end of this episode, david production can animate the crap out of some volleyball with the best of them, so why not focus on more elements of the practice to hammer home the issues between the characters even further?

It feels like I'm going back and forth on this episode, but I'll argue that's because it's going back and forth on itself. When it's on I recognize and appreciate what it's doing, and when it's not I feel like it's easy to see where it could quit meandering and do better. That applies as elements from the earlier episodes rear their ugly heads in bits of this one. Yori's back, as mentioned, and I was actually impressed to see how he was used to illustrate Kuroba's growth over this oddly-compressed period of time we've spent with the characters. But then in the latest in 2.43's already-trademark Stressful Post-Credits Scenes, it's made clear that Yori hasn't totally left the thug life behind, and it might be encroaching in ever more dangerous ways on Kuroba's volleyball career. Given how well this episode seemed to work in the arc of Kuroba and Haijima really getting over their past misunderstood issues with each other to just play some volleyball, I'm not sure how well the addition of more outside melodrama might jibe with things, especially if all it's going to be is a sprinkling of surface-level edginess every now and again just to try and differentiate it from other sports shows. Though I guess I'll take it over the bizarrely noncommittal allusions the show seemingly keeps making towards Kuroba dating his cousin. At least make clear if that's really a thing or not already, 2.43, so I know how hard to judge you for it!

I guess that speaks to my main worry about 2.43 at this point: There's a lot going on already, and I'm not sure it can responsibly sustain it, especially when there's still a whole sports show in here that it could be good at if it really tried. As-is, I'm really down for the character interactions and how they lead into pontifications on people's development over time. But now I think the story should figure out what it wants to focus on in that development, instead of trying to have as much happening across different kinds of plots as possible, for the sake of superficial density and drama.

Rating:

2.43: Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Team is currently streaming on FUNimation Entertainment.


discuss this in the forum (16 posts) |
bookmark/share with: short url

this article has been modified since it was originally posted; see change history

back to 2.43: Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Team
Episode Review homepage / archives