Welcome to This Week in Shonen Jump, our weekly check in on Viz’s various Shonen Jump series. Viz has recently changed their release format, but our format will mostly remain the same. We will still review the newest chapters of two titles a week, now with even more options at our disposal. The big change for our readers is that, even without a Shonen Jump subscription, you can read these most recent chapters for free at Viz.com or using their app.
This week, Beau checks in on “Haikyu!!” If you have thoughts on these or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Haikyu!! Chapter 370: Challenger
Written and Illustrated by Haruichi Furudate
Translated by Adrienne Beck
Lettered by Erika Terriquez
Reviewed by Beau Q.
When last we saw “Haikyu!!” was two weeks ago– the end of the Spring Tournament, the last chance for our Karasuno boys to achieve their dreams gone, the end of school- it was the end times for “Haikyu!!” readers, especially since the Spring Tournament felt like the tale “Haikyu!!” was built to tell. But what you didn’t know about this volleyball manga, or at least, what Furudate wanted to obscure you from realizing, is that there’s more than one type of professional volleyball played in this world.
Now, Jump otaku worldwide are fairly rabid when it comes to when/if a manga is ending, and getting caught up to that final send-off like a fiber of their soul was ripped from this world. When Furudate pulled the plug on the Spring Tournament, giving that terrifying Hoshiumi the win over an ailing Karasuno team, the common sports manga response was that the book ended. So this week’s chapter was met with the expectation of an epilogue, but instead ch 370 has found some new wings for our Little Giant, Hinata, to fly on: beach volleyball.
Furudate walked a tight rope between balancing epilogue exposition, and subtly building peripheral content to imply a rather alarming plot twist: Haikyu!! is hitting the beach volleyball circuit! Two years removed from graduation and those halcyon days, Kageyama is playing in the 2016 Rio Olympics, Hitoka is an OL, and Hinata is a beach bum who reads Dragonball, and learns the sand game in the southern sun.
Timeskip aside, sports manga since time immemorial have timeskipped to continue past its expiration date, often petering into obscurity. Modern shonen sports manga rely heavily on seishun or ‘the springtime of youth,’ but with characters aging out of that demographic, the series loses its seishun, and therefore the impetus to be read– to exist. So why does Haikyu!! continue to exist?
Possible Answer:
Hinata, in one solemn panel, holds the repose of Neidan, the internal alchemy of Taoism, so to say that the tenements of this belief system are at play even in the sands of Christ the Redeemer. Instead of fast-forwarding immediately to the next arc, Furudate uses this chance to end on two segments: an “end…for now” meeting on graduation day between our starcrossed leads, and a quote from the founder of philosophical Taoism himself, Laozi: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
And thus begins “Haikyu!!” again.
Final Verdict: 8.5 – Beach volleyball manga START!!
