#im pretttyyyy sure these all count as 慇懃無礼 but i could be wrong

[thelingodingo]

Examples of Haikyuu Characters Using Formal Speech for Sarcasm (慇懃無礼)

You may have heard that there is no such thing as sarcasm/irony in Japanese, which is true if you're thinking about it from an English perspective. But a form of sarcasm/humour in Japanese that I really enjoy is polite rudeness. Basically, it's when one uses excessively formal language towards someone they usually would not. It can be seen in English to an extent as well, for example, if your friend is being overdramatic over something you did you might say, "oh my! I can see that my gracious friend is outrageously offended by my ludicrous statement! I humbly apologize for my crudeness and beg you for forgiveness!!!!!!" It's very obvious that you are being sarcastic towards your friend by overly formalizing your words like that.

There happens to be a good amount of examples used in Haikyuu of this polite rudeness which I wanted to share with you all since it's not something that's really translated in the subtitles.

Tsukishima: theres a handful of times throughout the show (especially in season 1) where Tsukishima uses formal speech in relation to Kageyama whenever his King of the Court attitude appears. It's very clear that Tsukki is using formal speech to make fun of the "King". This is something thats pretty much conveyed in the subtitles tho.

Hinata: like Tsukki, Hinata also uses formalities towards Kageyama to poke fun at him, such as when he calls him "Kageyama-kun".

Bokuto: in the scene where Bokuto, Kuroo, and Akaashi are talking to Tsukishima, Kuroo mentions that Bokuto is within the top 5 spikers in the country to which Akaashi adds on how Bokuto isn't in the top 3. In response, Bokuto says "Don't raise me up just to let me get knocked down" (subtitles), he says it in formal Japanese which adds on a sense of humour for the audience.

Miya Twins: an obvious scene is when they are fighting and Osamu sarcastically says in formal speech, "Does wittle Atsumu-kun never make a mistake?!" (subtitles). Theres a couple more examples of the twins using polite rudeness against each other throughout the Karasuno Inarizaki match as well, you just gotta listen for it.

Suna: Atsumu says, "I'm not gonna let them just keep picking up my attacks" and Suna replies, "I'm the one that actually attacked, though". He says the sentence formally in a sarcastic way since obviously it really is him that's actually doing the attacks.

I'm sure theres more examples but those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.