Goodbye Hinata! : Haikyuu!! Officially Comes to An End in Chapter 402.
Speculations among fans have turned out to be true.
Furudate had yet to make it official, and it is now all done: Haikyuu!! will officially end with Chapter 402 in the Weekly Shonen Jump Issue 33 — being in two chapters. This ending announcement is far from being a surprise. In addition to having announced that the current arc began in November 2019 was going to be the last one, Haruichi Furudate — the author of Haikyuu!! — recently stated that his manga had reached its climax in the latest chapter showing off the match opposing Hinata’s Black Jackals to Kagayama’s Schweiden Adlers.
On their side, fans widely based their theories on one element: Page Colors. Often used to highlight mangas which are popular, page colours are also synonymous of ending — a way to pay a last tribute to a manga which positively impacted the Weekly Shonen Jump. The latest examples to date are Kimetsu No Yaiba and The Promised Neverlands — which both received page colours before their endings.
Haikyuu!! does not seem to be exempt. In addition to getting page colours, it will last 28 pages. However, we still ignore what will be occurring in these pages. The most famous theory is to see Hinata and Kageyama playing together once again — not in Karasuno — but within the Japanese Volleyball Olympic Team alongside Bokuto and Ushijima. But there is still a mystery around one character: Oikawa.
Having left Japan for playing in Argentina right after his High-School years, @summersugawara in Twitter speculated— in a pretty interesting thread — that Oikawa might play for the Argentinian Volleyball Olympic Team, basing his/her assumptions on Oikawa’s sentences to Hinata: ‘I will beat you all’. Versatile and full of pettiness, it would not be a surprise to find Oikawa within this situation. However, given that Furudate wants his/her manga to be as authentic as possible (Japanese nationals are forbidden to be dual nationals), it is unlikely to happen that that way.
In any case, Haikyuu!! will leave a big gap within the Weekly Shonen Jump and the manga universe in general. Winner of the 61st Shogakukan Manga Award for best shōnen manga in 2016, Haikyuu!! — began in 2012 — has sold 38 million copies in print as of now. As Captain Tsubasa and Slam Dunk, Haikyuu!! has also had a positive impact on the sports it wanted to depict.
Haikyuu!!: To the Top Part Two — originally scheduled for July 2020 — has been announced for October 2020. It will count 12 episodes and cover the match between Karasuno and Inarizaki.
Sypnosis
Inspired after watching a volleyball ace nicknamed “Little Giant” in action, small-statured Shouyou Hinata revives the volleyball club at his middle school. The newly-formed team even makes it to a tournament; however, their first match turns out to be their last when they are brutally squashed by the “King of the Court,” Tobio Kageyama. Hinata vows to surpass Kageyama, and so after graduating from middle school, he joins Karasuno High School’s volleyball team — only to find that his sworn rival, Kageyama, is now his teammate.
Thanks to his short height, Hinata struggles to find his role on the team, even with his superior jumping power. Surprisingly, Kageyama has his own problems that only Hinata can help with, and learning to work together appears to be the only way for the team to be successful. Based on Haruichi Furudate’s popular shounen manga of the same name, Haikyuu!! is an exhilarating and emotional sports comedy following two determined athletes as they attempt to patch a heated rivalry in order to make their high school volleyball team the best in Japan.
Source: MyAnimeList, Monster and Critics, Twitter.
