WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Season 4, Episode 22 of Haikyuu!!, now streaming on Crunchyroll.
Episode 22 of Haikyuu!! To The Top finally sees Hinata excel defensively -- and without the help of Kageyama. Previously, he was unable to perform a proper receive, but when the team needs him most, Hinata delivers the last line of defense against a surging Inarizaki team. His individual effort may have just saved Karasuno's season.
Hinata Shoyo joined Karasuno High with one dream: to be the greatest volleyball player this world has ever seen. While he’s crazily talented, he gets a lot of grief for his overall lack of skill. When he first started playing volleyball, it was mostly by himself in middle school. He managed to get his friends on a team so he could enter a match, but that’s the extent of his volleyball experience prior to joining Karasuno.
Since then, he’s become a major building block of Karasuno’s offensive strategy. When stronger players or people in higher places look down on him, it’s because of his unrefined skill. Hinata is usually able to prove himself on the court, but that wasn’t the case in the arc leading up to Nationals. Both Kageyama and Tsukishima received training camp invitations, but Hinata, with all his athletic ability, was not invited anywhere. Instead, he crashed Tsukishima’s camp and took the opportunity to be a ball boy.
That arc built up to perhaps the most exciting moment of Season 4 thus far. With Inarizaki rallying in the third set against Karasuno, the future started looking bleak for The Crows. Their collective morale began to fade. Inarizaki confuses the Karasuno blockers with a trick play that sets up their ace spiker for a huge score. Karasuno’s court seemed completely vulnerable. Hinata then does the unbelievable. He accomplishes a perfect receive on an impossible spike. This is the same match where his face collided with the ball two sets earlier.
Everyone is stunned. The crowd, the players (and the viewers watching online) are all silent. What’s truly amazing is he doesn’t do it once, but twice. The second time he tracked it out of bounds. A rally goes back and forth, and Karasuno doesn’t manage to score, but that’s not what’s important.
This moment is tremendous in the way of narrative payoff. As a ball boy, Hinata learned how to observe the minute interactions on the court. He worked hard and challenged himself to receive the ball by taking a suboptimal opportunity. It’s monumental for his growth as a character, one who doesn’t just rely on his instincts on the court and off it. The receive shows a shift in his personality. It shows that he didn’t only put in hard work, but careful consideration and precise hard work into realizing how he affects the game. He is now accepting of the areas he can improve to keep playing volleyball and keep the skeptics at bay.
The immediate effects on the game are just as great. Karasuno didn’t score off Hinata’s play, but it saved them from a crushing mental defeat. Hinata’s overwhelming joy after his accomplishment sent a tidal wave of motivation into Karasuno’s team. Seeing their weakest defensive link get excited and insatiable about his new skill makes the rest of the team just as eager to win. While other matches in nationals were about physical endurance, this battle is about mental reinforcements. Karasuno just gave themselves a major boost. The mental shift could be enough to translate into a momentum shift in the next episode. At the end of this set, someone will be sent home and Karasuno does not want it to be them.
