Haikyuu!! Observations: Chapter 372 and 395 Parallels
** SO. MANY. SPOILERS. BELOW **
Have I established that Furudate is master class in terms of narrative? The parallels in Chapter 372 and 395 of Haikyuu!! are stunning, and need to be discussed.
First off, though, is the establishment of a timeline. Because this final arc has been a mess to make linear sense of…I have no clue how the anime will handle this, other than putting title cards in every single flashback to keep us on track!
For starters, the Ushijima flashback in Chapter 395 happens nearly TWO YEARS before the events of Chapter 372. We get this evidence because at the start of Chapter 395, we have this shot of Ushijima:
Not only does it establish he’s 19, but he’s not on the Schweiden Adlers, yet. He’s in his debut year, playing for the Japan national team. I wonder if he made the switch to play because Hoshiumi joined the Adlers, or Kageyama? And then, in Chapter 372, when we get his selfie reaction – MORE ON THAT BELOW – we see that he’s 21 and on the Adlers. So two years difference in those flashbacks in 395 vs. 372, and a total of FOUR years’ difference between the events of Chapter 395 and the present Haikyuu!! timeline. Simple to keep up, right?
So, if the current timeline is November 2018, then it’s around 2014 when Chapter 395 happens. Hinata is considering doing Beach volleyball in his second year, as evidence below, and Oikawa has already joined the Argentinean League right out of high school, which will get brought up below, too.
Okay, getting on track now that we’ve established the timeline – the first major parallel is Iwaizumi meeting Ushijima, similar to Oikawa and Hinata meeting in Chapter 372, only, of course their meeting is so nonchalant and chill, versus Hinata and Oikawa’s dramatic sand reunion:
BUT HERE, my friends, is where the parallels of Hinata/Oikawa/Iwaizumi/Ushijima create a magnificent Venn Diagram of Narrative Magnificence! You have parallels of:
* TRAINING TO GET BETTER *
Hinata went to the beach in Rio to train in beach volleyball to become a more well-rounded trainer.
Ushijima went to California to get advice and practice training with his father’s foreign league team, much like Oikawa did with joining the Argentinean League…
* TRAINING WITH YOUR IDOLS *
Oikawa establishes in Chapter 372 that he immediately went to Argentina after high school because he wanted to play under the guidance of Jose Blanco, the famous Argentinean setter that he idolized as a kid and still very much respected as a young adult and player. He ALSO, and this is important, establishes that he was going to break into the foreign leagues to get stronger anyway, and that his overall goal is to make it into an Olympics-playing team some day. Given that Hinata’s encounter with Oikawa happens in 2017, he’s been playing with Argentina about three years at this point.
But THEN, we also have Iwaizumi, who back in 2014, went to California after high school to go to college at USC-Irvine in California. His whole reasoning is that a famous Japanese trainer works with the volleyball team there and that Iwaizumi has been a huge fan of him and his published work. He also wants to major as in Sports Science, as we the audience are led to believe, to become a Physical Trainer and intern with the author, Takashi Utsui, once he graduates college.
And of COURSE, there’s the reveal then that Iwaizumi’s actual idol in real life is also the real-life father of his team’s long rival, Ushijima himself. It’s worth posting this reaction alone. Iwaizumi, you beautiful dork, you. If Oikawa ever saw that face, though…
It’s also worth noting at this point that clearly Oikawa and Iwaizumi keep in contact, as evidence in his conversation with Ushijima. I have to say, this chapter showcasing Iwaizumi as the peace-keeper; able to be friends with both Oikawa and his hardest rival, Ushijima, is fantastic. It calls back to when Oikawa was making fun of Hinata outside the bathroom, and Iwaizumi chided him for it. Iwaizumi is just an honest, straightforward, nice guy.
Well….Nice to a point. Let’s all revel in the fact that it was IWAIZUMI, y’all, who started this selfie war. Keep in mind, this was 2014 when he and Ushijima supposedly sent the selfie to Oikawa of themselves. And then, three years later, Oikawa pays them all back:
The final parallel, interestingly enough, with Oikawa and Ushijima, who admits that he has hit a wall and has to move forward to get stronger. Revealing that just maybe, he’s not quite the “genius spiker” that Oikawa pegged him as. That maybe he really is just a normal guy that got “lucky” in terms of the father that helped protect his unique attribute of being a “south paw” and, like Kiyoomi in Chapter 394, was lucky to have those around him that he did to help foster his strength as a player.
Basically, Furudate has given us so much to work with in showing how these characters, who seem so fundamentally different, have so much more in common that we realize at first glance. It’s so masterful to see these moments of set up and payoff happening with so much satisfaction for the reader. I love it.
OH, and of course, I wasn’t going to leave you all without this little set of notes from Chapter 395:
* Tendou in this chapter wasn’t current time skip Tendou. It was 2014 Tendou. So technically, we have no clue what his hair looks like now – though he’s fabulous either way! So there’s that.
* It’s shown at the end of the chapter Ushijima’s father watching him play from California. We also see, since it’s 2:20 am there, that Iwaizumi is asleep, still in California, too. If it’s 2018 currently in the series, it means that Iwaizumi did graduate college, and has been interning for Utsui for likely a year, now (because it showed he was a sophomore in the flashback):
@tatakunara-orerumade and @hopipp have already posted my headcanons ahead of me, but basically – if the Olympics happen in 2020, a year and a half from now, that’s plenty of time for Iwaizumi to take his Bachelor’s in Sports Science, internship knowledge from working under his idol Utsui, and make it back to Japan to be a physical trainer for the same team as Ushijima, and more importantly for my shipping, fangirl heart, potentially Oikawa at the Olympics. It would be a beautiful payoff for all the set up these chapters have given us, and a beautiful wrap-up for the series. If we don’t actually get to see the Olympics happen in Haikyuu!! though, you better believe there’s going to be fanfiction about this. *runs off to write*
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