#this is a joke i know damn well theyre japanese lol

[ryuichifuwa]

[suckishima]

haikyuu rewatch s01e01

i've been itching to rewatch the series lately and a few years ago i did something similar for miraculous ladybug where i wrote up like a stream of consciousness/commentary post and made a gifset for each episode and i wanna try to do it again for haikyuu?? we'll see if i stay committed or not lol—gifsets per ep probably a lot more likely to continue than commentaries tbh, these things are long and not thought out so,

anyway let's start with episode 1, who wants to take bets on how many times i get teary-eyed?

ughhhhh how did i not know IMMEDIATELY my first time watching what a fucking banger of a show this would be. this opening scene is sooo aah. the voice over with the sounds of the balls and shoes, the actual content of the 'a tall tall wall' monologue, and then the visuals of just hinatas shoes stepping up to the line and then 'it was a view i could never see on my own' and the rest of the teams shoes step in??? FUCK

holyyyyy and bc im obsessed i know who is who based on their shoes in that lineup and after thir 'onigaishimasu' and they run onto the court they all run in at different speeds?? and like tanaka goes quick and kageyama bounces on his toes and tsukki is all like unenthusiastic?? what the fuCK bro

its been literally 40 seconds and im in awe aaah

oh.. oh no it's the intro. i was joking before about getting teary-eyed but uhhh

how long has it been since i watched season 1 omgg 😭😭😭

gOD the opening is so good, not just imagination but the visuals rrr the practicing shots and the animation on all the volleyball looks so great wowow

one of the less talked about of the many crimes of getting movies instead of a 5th season is definitely the loss of another amazing opening and ending

damn did i really never realize that karasuno of the little giant's time didnt JUST go to nationals but theyre playing on center court when hinata catches them on tv? meaning its either the semi finals or finals, damn lol

hmmmm i am already conflicted about whether or not i wanna talk about manga spoilers in these writeups lmao. tumblr blockout spoiler text WHEN

anywayyyy manga readers hinata on his bike watching little giant on tv iykyk (and if you know me lol) right

rrrr the imagery of the crow flying into hinata from the screen with still the sounds of the balls and whistles aaah what a cool way to show inspiriation

huh, the libero is no.2 not no.4 is that manga accurate from just before furudate decided that it was a Thing for karasuno or did the animation not check?

okay i checked and you literally can only see the little giant in the manga and none of the rest of the team so im calling it an oversight on the animation side lol (understandable, tbh when youre just making people up to fill in the shot, you arent thinking about jersey lore)

no one cares but my japanese is surprisingly better than when i first watched (at which time i knew nothing) and i can actually understand a few bits here and there without the subs

reading the occasional katakana in the background is fun too. mmmm i should try looking at og scans of the manga to see how the sound effects are intended to be read, ive heard the way furudate incorporates the characters into the action as the sound itself is really well done

air salonpas!

oooo one of the teams practicing spikes had one guy hit left handed, thats a fun detail!

dude hinatas friends are such homies i swearrrr

'whats our opponent kitagawa daiichi even like' 'idk! but we're gonna win!' lmaooo hinata you coulda done SOME research

ooo the shot of kitagawa walking in and looming above hinata is so well done, they look huuuge. i know factually that kindaichi and kunimi are tall but i tend to forget, kunimi especially, hes got short energy to me 😅

yessss and the shot of kagyama walking by and just like his Aura is enough for hinata to pick up on the king vibes yooo its so goood

kitagawa daiichi banner is just 'victory' lol okay

i could use some of hinatas blind confidence in my life lmao

oh jk its bathroom tummy ache time

man the set up for kageyama as like powerful early on is SO good, weve only seen him twice so far and both times it all above the king cape, which im pretty sure is also supposed to represent how hinata sees him which rrrr what a great way to set up their dynamic knowing everything that's to come. greatest opponent to greatest ally etc etc

also thinking about how this IS basically all hinatas POV (including the quote i just referenced) and what kageyamas POV of hinata is when he looks back on it all 👀

kageyama telling hinata he shouldnt talk big bc he isnt even physically ready (referencing tummy ache), and hinata right off the bat telling kageyama 'the six of us go all the way' and kageyama responds 'i will win every game' oooo yep they both got some things to learn from each otherr

seriously how is hinata like the friendliest person on the planet. his team is SO bad and all he cares about is that he's finally on the court, he's so positive and determined even when they're doing terribly and his friends dont know wtf is going on

🥺🥺🥺 he's so happy seeing his palm all red after spiking the ball successfully the first time waaah

sjkhdk i always laugh at 'well there IS a foxy senpai on the girls team' lmaoo like he could have just ignored that part of the question, and who translated it to 'foxy' anyway lmaoo

koji, soccer friend, coming in for a foot receive! he missed lol but for real hinatas friends are so cool showing up for him like this

i mean, they are also avoiding him when he tries to practice throughout middle school, but they showed up here when it counts

love that you can see the 'mild internal bleeding,' as kuroo would call it, on izumi's arms when he tells hinata that his arms hurt lol

akjhsakjsasj they hype hinatas jumping skills, the music swells, you think hes got it, aaaand then immediately triple blocked and the music cuts back out lmaoo. honestly, love how haikyu always plays with expectations like that

half time serve routines my beloved.... i miss you..

'we keep trying.. because we havent lost yet' <333

but also kunimi, what a mood lmao

the animation on hinatas slide hit after the toss missss aaaah, and kageyamas bangs like whipping in the wind before he reaches as far as he can aah god this whole sequence is so beautiful

kageyama after knowing hinata for roughly 30 minutes: "this guy overwhelms me" skagsajsa

he has every quality to be someone even better but—WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING THESE PAST 3 YEARS?? 😭😭😭😭

karasuno senpai in the crowd!! related dumb question time, why isnt tanakas hair blond here? he should be a first year atm, and the beginning of the ep said this match is about 3 years and 3 months after little giants nationals (which is in january, although iirc the month changed sometime around those years so possibly it was in march during his time—hence why call 'spring tournament') but either way if hinata and kageyama are still middle school third years then tanaka should be a first year and thats when his hair was blonde. likely in universe answer i guess is just that this tournament is after the practice match where karasuno loses badly and gets made fun of which makes tanaka respect his senpai more and shave his head lol. which also, if hes here with them at this middle school tournament also makes sense with that so. question answered i guess

'if you want to be the last one standing then become strong' waaah

awwww the first years that he recruited to fill out his team stayed with him to practice with the middle school girls team!! they caught the volleyball bug <3

not me pausing to try and see which one of them is the foxy senpai..

lmaoooo the "old ladies team" that hinata practices with are called the yukigoaka beauties lol nice

yoooo hinatas running toward the gym for the first time and a crow flys away and a feather crossed in front of hinata niiiiice

let me tell you i had relatively low expectations for haikyu my very first time. i just wanted something easy to watch while i ate my lunch during the day, and i thought it would just be a predictable underdog story where hinata gets revenge for middle school. and i wasnt against that, i was relatively entertained this whole episode, then it gets to the end and reveals that kageyama has to be his teammate and i was like OH this is gonna be GOOD good. immediately have me hope and reassurance that the show knew what it was doing and wasnt gonna just be typical cliches etc

fuck i wish i could watch again for the first time

i warned you this would be long lol, honestly these writeups are more for me in the future to like remember my thoughts etc and like i said we'll see if i keep it up lol

[tumblunni]

ALSO TO FIX EXCELLUS

Because tangeants again lol

Recognise that its fuckin stupid and bigoted to expect us to believe someone is a villain INSTANTLY after seeing that they're queer, before they even do anything. Don't spend your entire damn game having the characters go "eww its that disgusting person of ambiguous gender we should kill them because gross" rather than.. Yknow.. "Excellus fuckin murdered those people". Recognise that literally doing this is gonna make your character LESS villainous and MORE sympathetic long before you finally get to goddamn showing them do anything bad except say "ohoho i wanna be a princess". And it'll make bunni REALLY PISSED OFF because nobody wants to feel sad for an asshole murderer yet THAT SADNESS IS FOREVER ENGRAINED IN MY SOUL NOW

Seriously fuckin hell it even made the heroes look less heroic! I felt like Excellus was almost justified in becoming a murdering selfish monster if she spent her entire life being treated that way by both sides in this big good or evil conflict. Why the fuck should she give a shit if she's being degraded? Like FUCKIN OBVIOUSLY murdering people and wanting to conquer a random japanese country as a mad dictator is not a remotely logical reaction to being misgendered. But like they could have changed some stuff and made a perfectly good sympathetic villain who gets manipulated by the bigger bad because of her sad past of being treated like shit and like she feels like this is her only option to be herself. And then maybe you can reignite her hope in the world and her self esteem and moral centre and help her redeem herself and team up with you to take out the real horrible fucks with no sympathetic motives. Instead she's friggin played as THE one who's evil cos she has no sympathetic motive. Like that's her whole Thing, she's supposed to just be selfish and greedy and horrid. Your damn bigotry somehow failed your own story as well as failing all trans people ever!

Or like yknow.. If you want an asshole fuckboi then actually write an asshole fuckboi. Scrubby scrub the trans = bad shit from this plotline and you do indeed have a selfish monster who murders a bunch of innocent people and gets his just desserts. You had a ready made simple character archetype and you were so preoccupied shoving your transphobic screed into your game that you fucked it up!

So yeah i think either make this goofy ohoho trans auntie a good character, make the asshole ohoho bad character a cis man, do both at once, or like even i'm not opposed to having a trans villain exist but like seriously make them a synpathetic villain. If they're the only trans character in the plot its already gonna send a bad message if theyre in the role of "worst most underhanded jerk villain", even if it WASNT also transphobic as fuck. So a sympathic trans villain or adding more LGBT characters so it doesnt seem like this one individual was designed to make a statement on your entire feelings for a minority.

ALSO

like seriously please do not do this stupid thing of mooshing every stereotype together from every LGBT identity and acting like theyre all the same thing?? Like man i fuckin HATE that anime trope that yknow.. The gay man says all this trans stuff cos he's ~just that flambouyant~ Like being a drag queen is what 100% of gay men are, 24/7, and anyone saying theyre a trans woman is just one of those drag queens who's really getting into character. Or just.. I dunno. I cant even wrap my head around what train of logic must have led to that stereotype in the first place! And its so fuckin annoying as a queer person trying to talk about why this is bad queer stereotyping, it just makes me extra sad to straight up not know what pronouns to use for the character so i feel like i'm being just as horrible to them as their creators were. Like man i've only settled on going for "she" for Excellus cos after years of looking into it it does seem like the original japanese was indeed specifically using stereotypes of trans women and not trans men or nonbinary people. Though all languages do seem to call the character male it seems pretty strongly to be a "i believe that trans women are men and can never be women" kind of thing, rathe rthan the character herself calling HERSELF male. She calls herself a woman in both english and japanese, and its just that the english has everyone else use male pronouns for her and added the non-canon "explanation" that she only acts like a trans woman because she has something wrong with her balls. (Ugh!) And in japanese on top of calling herself a woman she also uses feminine (and specifically trans/drag queen coded) variants of "I", and other common speech pattern traits used for negative stereotypes of trans women. Though again we do have other characters calling her a disgusting perverted man instead. Sigh!

Ok ok ALSO BIGGEST FUCKIN FIX! dont draw the character like a horrible distorted cariacature goblin in an entirely different art style to everyone else. Seriously its so annoying how they tried to make you agree with "excellus is disgusting just for acting queer" by LITERALLY DRAWING A DISGUSTING CHARACTER. If you take away the weirdass overdetailed horror movie monster face, there is nothing ugly or even "manly looking" about her! She's just like somebody's perfectly normal chubby aunt or something. You could go out in any street all over the world and see five of her! I hate it cos its almost like psychological manipulation or something? Like i've seen so many lets players who arent bigoted but merely oblivious still agree that excellus is ugly and disgusting and comical because of it, cos all the implications of transphobia/homophobia flew over their heads and all they saw was a character drawn to look monsterous. And just.. This is so common. Its the overwhelming japanese stereotype of trans women. Draw them looking INFINATELY MORE MANLY than the cis male characters. So manly that it really hammers home how "obvious" it is that a man in lipstick or dresses "just looks wrong" and of course there's NO way they could ever pass and ha ha look how deluded they are that they think they look pretty. It's horrid. It really is. Seriously I like to point at Tabitha from Pokemon ORAS for a good counter example, cos he's also an ambiguously transgender character from a game that came out around the same time and by some weird coincidence they look very similar. Except for the literal entire face. The literal entire exact same face, just its drawn hideous and distorted on the one who's supposed to be a negative trans stereotype, and drawn exactly like everyone else on the positive one. And there's not one example in the whole game of anyone calling Tabitha ugly because he looks trans, or even insulting his weight or anything. Same damn character design, just drawn without bias and treated like a human being. I mean seriously right down to them having the small "evil eyes" but with Tabitha he's always drawn with them in a perpetual sort of happy face and then his pose with them looking similar to Excellus is supposed to be a BADASS MOMENT of this comic relief villain showing his worth! And hw literally has red eyes on top of it! His design is even MORE "evil" yet just not drawing it as a stereotype entirely changes the player's perception and he became beloved by many. Whereas with Excellus even the trans people in the audience couldnt relate to her and just felt fuckin sad.

Oh also i guess Excellus is implied to be a trans woman and Tabitha is implied to be a trans man? But i don't think game freak was trying to say anything about trans men being more valid or whatever, cos the first canonical LGBT character of any sort was a trans woman npc in the battle maison. And tabitha being trans isnt really confirmed as clearly as she was. i hope someday theyre able to confirm an LGBT main cast member but until then i will forever hold onto the glimmer of hope that was given to me by Beauty Nova.

Also seriously Tabitha and Excellus both also look EXACTLY LIKE ME IN REAL LIFE so I kinda took Excellus extra hard and latched onto the Tabitha headcanon so much more because it was good healing after all that nonsense. Tho I also did considee nonbinary Tabitha at the time, because his japanese name is a gender neutral one that's merely like 75% female, rather than a 100% feminine one. But then his old RSE design was very masculine so i think maybe a trans man is what they were trying to imply if they did indeed do it on purpose. Anyway i probably would have translated his name as Ashley cos it has the same "technically neutral but more popular with girls" aesthetic while also keeping the same fire pun as Homura. I have no idea how on earth Tabitha is supposed to be a joke, honestly. Tho i meam maybe he's just the one type specialist on the entire poke-earth who doesnt have a joke name?

ANYWAY thank you terrible transphobic stupid manga i read today for reminding me that i love Tabitha. And also the developers love Tabitha. And also all the characters in universe love him, like seriously the only difference between the devon dialogue of him and Shelly is that they mention the other scientists nicknamed him tabitabi. And its so cute how seriously they said it too?? Its like "our boss tabitabi,the most feared and respected genius man".

Lovv dat tabb