Kageyama's backstory only being revealed near the very end of the series is really interesting from a meta perspective.
For reference, his chapter is 387 out of 402. That's 96% of the way in.
To contrast, other characters like Tsukishima and Yamaguchi's backstories are shown in Chapters 87-88.
Now, we do get the explanation for his "King of the Court" title in Chapter 6, at the start of the series, but we don't see how he got to that point, or why he started playing volleyball in the first place like Tsukishima's and Yamaguchi's stories show.
It creates this situation where, despite being the deuteragonist, the character our protagonist, Hinata, is practically glued to the entire series, we barely know anything about him.
We don't even know he has a sister until that point whereas other characters' siblings like Natsu, Saeko, Akiteru, Alisa have all made appearances way before then. Even Oikawa's sister, though we don't see her, we at least know she exists because of Takeru.
He's both closed off to us (the audience) as well as the other characters in the series, and this results in them finding him rude or disliking his character in general (see: the "Kageyama is abusive" discourse that somehow keeps popping up even now).
Chapter 387 takes place in 2018 and was published in 2020 so it takes him 6 years of in-universe time and 8 years of irl time to really open up.
And the catalyst for all of this is Hinata fulfilling his promise of beating him.
You see, another thing to note is that, whenever Hinata thinks of Kageyama, he's always looking at him from behind.
His internal image of him is someone who's always up ahead, someone he needs to catch up to, meaning Hinata can only see one side of him, he cannot see all of Kageyama until he catches up and passes him.
Which he finally does here.
In this shot Hinata is finally the one who's looking back at Kageyama. At this moment, Hinata (and by extension the audience) can see him for all he is, can see how he was just a lonely boy who's been waiting for someone to meet him where he is, to keep running alongside him and not quit the race.
Someone he doesn't have to go easy on. Someone who would actually tell him to hurry up instead of slow down for a change.
there’s a lot of good arguments you could make but i think at the end if the day we all agree that if anyone in haikyuu should have gotten to drop an f bomb no one deserved it more than suga
sometimes when i watch haikyuu im like "why tf r they so shocked when hinata jumps. Like it's probably just 5 feet up in the air"
brother he jumps 10 feet into the air. no wonder they're so surprised. id be freaked out too if some kid just randomly jumped 10 ft into the air right in front of me.
hinata is the character of all time because he’s selfish. he’s so selfish! but he expects everyone else to be selfish, too; he pushes people to take care of themselves, to reach for what they want just by doing it himself. and (almost) everyone loves him for it
okay but third year Kageyama, Hinata and Yachi realizing they're actually Tsukishima's friends
Hinata freaking out because he can't find a black pen before a big test and Tsukishima wordlessly handing him two spares (in case one is almost dry) and telling him to smarten up but not actually making a big deal about it.
Yachi going over to his house to study with him and Yamaguchi and having a genuinely good time and yeah Tsukki makes fun of the bow she has in her hair but he also laughs at her jokes so... they end up playing Mario Party until like 1 am and he doesnt even complain about it.
Tsukishima showing up at Kageyama's house looking really annoyed and saying his brother is home for the holidays and is pestering him about college and the future and hey, do you want to go throw a ball around?
Kageyama, Yachi and Hinata all receive a birthday gift on time that year, neatly wrapped, and even if theyre simple gifts they're all *real* gifts and not one of them is a joke gift or a prank and they have to host a meeting to go through all of the options of why Tsukki's behaviour has changed until Hinata realizes what's happening and starts shrieking because FUCK YEAH I DID IT. TAKE THAT SUCKER. GET FRIENDED.
you can tell that fukurodani and shiratorizawa are rich bitch schools because they have their own personal massage therapists and horses and shit and you can tell nekoma isn't because their cheer squad is captained by a thirteen-year-old
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