Haikyuu!! is a 2012-2020 sports shonen manga, by Haruichi Furudate. It was serialized on Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump and had 45 volumes.
Shoyou Hinata is a young boy very determinate to become a great volleyball player like his unnamed idol "The Little Giant". Despite suffering with lack of support (the male volleyball club of his school is practically a fan club instead of a sports one), he manages to get other five students to create a team along him to compete in a volleyball tournament. They are utterly defeated in the first round, but Hinata's abilities impress his opponents and especially annoy Tobio Kageyama, the setter of the other team, regarded as a genius of volleyball even at such an early age. Not that Tobio's realism, to not say cynicism, doesn't annoys Hinata as well. To the surprise of both, they end up on the same high school (Karasuno) on the next year and must work together if they want to achieve greater success in their careers. And considering that Karasuno has lost a good part of its prestige in the last year, they better go for it...
The series has an anime adaptation produced by Production I.G. and Toho, which had 85 episodes (plus 5 OAV's) and ran from 2014 to 2020. There are also four movies.
- The Ace: Tobio is very good at what he does. It is deconstructed in the fact this talent makes him very self-centered and dismissive of other players.
- Ascended Extra: Keishin Ukai is introduced as a shopkeeper in chapter 10 without even being named. A few chapters later he becomes the team's coach.
- Beauty Mark: Shimizu has one on the left side of her fact, just below mouth level.
- Cigar Chomper: Keishin Ukai is seen constantly chomping on a cigar, and is presented as very abrasive.
- Curb Stomp Battle: The match between the team from Shoyou's school and the team from Tobio's school ends on a 3-0 result where Shoyou's team don't even makes half of the points of their opponents in the third set, and that's what we only see.
- Determinator: Shoyou don't understands the meaning of the word "improbable". He trains volleyball in a place where's there's no volleyball training for boys, and his determination to win isn't extinguished when the opponent's team have over 10 points of advantage over his team and a set point.
- Fighting Your Friend: In chapter 9, Kageyama defies the trope, saying the fact most of Aoba Joshi's players being his teammates from middle school will not stop him of fighting as hard as he can.
- Foil: Tobio and Hinata are both good at volleyball, but while Shoyou have determination fuelling his abilities and is a nice boy, Tobio has natural talent and a mean streak.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Downplayed, but Tsukishima is clearly the more cynical and cold-hearted member of the Karasuno's volleyball team, and he is the only one to wear glasses.
- Hard Work Hardly Works: Chapter 6. Kei Tsukishima personally does not believe in this and says so to Hinata, saying his efforts can't pay off being so short.
- Headphones Equal Isolation: An early hint of Tsukishima's cold personality is his use of headphones.
- It's All About Me: Kageyama's main flaw is how much he thinks he is right all the time and how everybody should just obey him and play as he pleases, which is very counter-productive in volleyball.
- Jerkass: Tobio is very, very harsh towards everyone we see him interact with at first. Even though he shows a shade of niceness towards Shoyou at first, he seems more interested in attacking his team-mates for their pride than anything else.
- Literal-Minded: Chapter 8. Hinata takes Kageyama's command to "to not look at the ball" literally, and avoids looking at it, to the extreme of hitting it with his eyes closed.
- Ms. Fanservice: Shimizu is considered one in-universe. The first thing we hear what other schools think of Karasuno by chapter 11 is how sexy their manager is. Outside it she is very pretty but averts it, always covering a lot of her skin.
- Right Behind Me: Chapter 11. Aoba Johsai's students being to insult Tanaka when he is just around the corner.
- Pilot: Haikyuu!! was initially published as a one-shot in Shueisha's seasonal Jump NEXT! magazine prior to serialization. A few details are consistent with the later series, but others are cases of non-canonical Early Installment Weirdness. Example: Tsukishima is 4 cm. shorter than his 188 cm. canon self and a second year. Hinata is not a starter. Most of the Karasuno volleyball team doesn't even appear in the one-shot.
- Proper Tights With Skirt: Shimizu wears pantyhose over the skirt of her school uniform.
- Sempai-Kohai: Chapter 12. Tanaka makes Hinata call him "Tanaka Senpai" while motivating him after a particularly disastrous set from the latter. Observers notice he is probably just want to be called "senpai".
- Stealth Insult: Chapter 10. Yamaguchi reacts loudly when Kageyama proposes a game's plan involving "big, dumb" blockers "just like Tsukishima", saying it's a insult towards the latter. Tsukishima himself promptly tells him to shut up.
- The Ace: Tobio is very good at what he does.
- Underdogs Never Lose: Like many other japanese sports' genre media, averted. Shoyou's improvised team is massacred by the more experienced team they to have to face at the first round.