#fun fact ive been collecting screenshots of tsukki and tanakas interactions this whole reread to eventually do *shrug* something with lol

[suckishima]

man i love this sequence so much—and tbh their dynamic in general which i feel like we don't talk about enough

on paper they seem like such opposites—and they kind of are—with tanaka being a mood maker and morale stabilizer for the team, he's loud and boisterous and never holds back what he's feeling ("dial down my feelings?? what does that even mean??"), while tsukki barely speaks on the court, openly admits to disliking loud and excitable people, and seems to calculatedly hide his emotions away. you would think they wouldn't like each other and wouldn't work well together, but i think every interaction we see between them is a positive one

we see them kinda partner up to roast other teams or their own teammates, but also tanaka is one of the few senpai that tsukki seems comfortable openly making fun of directly. but then tanaka doesn't even ever seem mad by tsukki's taunts—occasionally he'll even pass judgement on how successful tsukki was with his comebacks. and tanaka will just throw a jab back easily, which tsukki doesn't really seem bothered by either—tanaka never gets under tsukki's skin the way kageyama does, for example

and then we get a great little sequence like this one that's deliberately pointing out their differences and then using them to emphasize something more, and it's just so effective??

what tanaka goes through in the first set of the inarizaki match of feeling like he's not doing enough and having it shoved in his face that he'll never be the best, is like a speedrun version of what tsukki has been going through since he was in middle school when he found out his brother was lying about being the ace. there are these little subtle callbacks too—with the dichotomy of being lame vs cool (yamaguchi calling tsukki lame for not trying and tsukki thinking yamaguchi is cool for saying so), and furudate even uses the same visual metaphor of a never-ending staircase

it took tsukki years to realize he might be looking at things in a destructive way, and then months more after that until he actually saw the merit of trying—and then even here we can see that he doesn't find any of this easy. and tanaka basically does all of that in thirty minutes or so.

and while tsukki seems perturbed by this, he isn't mad at all. you can feel the respect tsukki is veiling behind his words in the first panel of the page when he calls him "ridiculously mentally tough." it's "frightening" to him because it's something that doesn't come naturally to him personally, when it obviously does for tanaka

of course it's important to note that the situations are completely different in terms of the catalyst for those feelings, tanaka didn't have some world-shattering event he's been struggling with since he was a pre-teen (that we know of). he just had an off day. but what i like is that the emphasis here isn't really about the circumstances, it's about their attitudes, how they each react to feeling down about themselves

and i just love the way furudate put this page in here. we just had this awesome sequence of tanaka scoring a well earned set point by doing a move he's been practicing for months after he spent all match feeling inadequate—sounds a lot like tsukishima winning set 2 vs shiratorizawa with a stuff block that was preceded by months of extra practices from him, but the reader (rightfully) isn't thinking about tsukki at all. until furudate gives us this conversation and we're reminded (not specifically or directly of tsukki's moment but) that this feeling is something other players, other people go through too. like, furudate didn't have to put this page in here, the chapter and tanaka's moment would have been just as epic without it, but i feel like it just adds this extra little emotional grounding to it

it just, it feels so human. getting down, being hard on yourself, feeling or even knowing you'll never be the best, everyone can relate—it's a storyline we've seen in haikyuu before but furudate always manages to make it feel not only fresh but satisfying because of how they present it to us with a new lens every time. tanaka and tsukki are so opposing in their character and actions that it makes their moments feel different and new, so it's just as cathartic for the reader every time, even though the underlying message is the same

whether it's hard or not, it's always cooler to try