Haikyuu!!

After we watched Yuri On Ice, Will's sister told us we should watch Haikyuu. I added it to my list but didn't have any particular interest in it. I was new to anime and so my assumptions were still heavily based on western things/ideas/stories/media/people because it's what I'd grown up with and I was like, yeah YOI is a sports anime but it's skating which is beautiful and the romance element was a big part of why I liked it AND Yuri is too adorable. Why does that mean I'd want to watch something about volleyball?
I am not into sports or the men that like sports or the boys at school that liked sports, when I think about sports and the men involved I think about how they're aggressive, cocky, jerks that think too much of themselves and are not people I want to spend any time with. I know this isn't true of all sports and everyone in it, but the idea of watching something with sports as the topic just didn't interest me. Stereotyping over, sorry.
Jump forward a year and a half and I'd watched and read about a lot more anime and knew now that these stories are different to what I would expect based on my western upbringing so I figured I'd give it a go, it'll probably be alright.

I love how perfectly this shows all their personalities💜

Hahahahahahaha!!! I'm so in love with it!

They try so hard to be good at something they love and they support each other and they're good boys (´；ω；`)

Some lessons from Haikyuu.

Even if you're small and people think you can't play volleyball you can learn to jump high. You can figure out your own way of doing things.
"There are truly various kinds of strengths." Ikkei Ukai

Its not over yet! It's so easy to give up on things that seem to be going badly but you need to try your best until it's actually finished, maybe you can turn it around! Don't give up.

Its worse to not be playing volleyball. When I watched Ennoshita and how he stopped going to practise because it was so tough and he thought not having to go to the club would be better but then he realised that the difficulties of volleyball were better than a life without it I cried. Let's be honest, I cry easy but this hit me because I could so strongly connect it to my situation. Sometimes (often) I wonder if I'm making the right choices with my life but I know what I have now, however difficult it can be, is better than the other options and it is what I want to be doing. Doing this, even with the hard parts, is better than not doing it.

Being inspired by people who are better than you so you can improve yourself. The number of times they go up against someone better than them, whether it's overall or just in that one moment and rather than being put off by it they just use it as encouragement. "They're so cool, I want to play them again, I want to be as good as that, I want to be a part of this." It's so easy to just negatively compare yourself, I want to look at other creatives and think "they're so cool, this is awesome" and just be a part of it all and continue getting better.

The teamwork is so nice to watch. It's not one I can directly relate to myself because I'm a goblin loner but seeing these boys support each other and believe in each other and be like "don't worry, I'm here, you're not doing it on your own" is just so wholesome and cosy. They mess up and it doesn't matter and they just support each other back and forth and it's lovely.

I love that while you very much are following Karasuno and you're on their side and you want them to win and that means you want the other teams to lose we still get to see the other teams history and we get to see them cry when they lose and even if they're the bad guys you get to see how much they care as well, all these teams are going through the same things. They all care about it so much. It would be really easy to just not show the other team at the end of a game, to concentrate on the fact that our side won but being reminded to feel for the other teams adds so much heart to the story. Everyone is doing their best but not everyone can be at the top, sometimes you lose.

I want this hug please, for cosy reasons obviously.

Something else that it's building really well is how I simultaneously don't want the third years to ever leave but I'm also excited to one day see how the second and first years evolve. I could just gush nonsense about my trash birds forever (I love the third years so much and Hinata and Kageyama are obviously adorable and Nishinoya and Tanaka are such good boys and oh my god I'm gonna stop before I just list everyone but I feel bad not mentioning everybody, oooo the managers!!! and the other teams!! aaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh) but I'll stop here.

I'm glad the next season has been announced, it's not till January but at least we know it's coming.
I definitely won't shy away from sports anime anymore. I've added Free to my queue after I saw Kimya Dawson gush about it because I trust her deeply. If you have any recommendations I'd love to know, my watch list can never be long enough, I worry about getting to the end of it one day
 ヽ(￣д￣;)ノ

My Asahi strap because I love him (o^―^o)