One of the challenges any sports anime faces is drumming up excitement for a contest that’s a foregone conclusion.  Is there even the slightest chance that Tsubakihara – a school whose name hadn’t even been mentioned in the anime before last week, I’m pretty sure – was going to eliminate Karasuno?  Of course not.  But this is not a problem unique to Haikyuu by any stretch of the imagination, and whatever drama there is to be pulled from the match has to come from the way it’s executed.

It often seems to be the case in situations like this that the opponent is the key to the solving that problem.  And so it is here, though superficially Tsubakihara appears pretty vanilla – a bunch of regular guys who apparently crashed out of the previous nationals in ugly fashion and aren’t expected to do anything this time either.  And there aren’t any larger-than-life personalities of the type this series specializes in with this group.  But sometimes, the humbler types can provide drama too.

Himekawa Aoi (Inoue Yuuki, A106 in Atom: The Beginning) is the kid who manages to inject some spark into a pretty straightforward contest.  He seems like an odd choice to be a pinch-server facing match point against – a baby-faced first-year who’s obviously terrified of the occasion and promptly nails one of his sempai hitters in the back of the head with a serve. This is a much-needed moment of levity for starters, but it’s clear Himekawa was introduced for a reason – he serves the way I used to in gym class (underhanded).

I really liked Himekawa-kun, I have to say.  His reaction in the heat of such a tense moment was extremely relatable, and really serves to hammer home the point of just how young a 10th-grader really is.  It’s a lot to ask of a kid this age to deal with the kind of pressure Himekawa is under here, and it points up how exceptional the likes of Tobio and Shouyou are to be integral members of a national-level team.  But let’s face it – a lot more of us are like Himekawa (or Tadashi) than Hinata or Kageyama.

I also thought Himekawa’s weapon of choice was an interesting addition to the volleyball arsenal at this late stage.  As far as I remember he’s the only one we’ve seen serve a moon-ball – a “ceiling serve” as Shouyou calls it – acting like an eephus pitch in baseball.  Especially in a huge arena like this that poses real problems for the opposition, and it nets Tsubakihara a few free points.  Himekawa even manages a good dig on a blocked spike from Arashi, setting up his teammates for a kill.

Speaking of unique serves, it’s Suga who closes out the match and the episode, with his first meaningful appearance of the season. He also relies on a weapon I don’t think we’ve seen from anyone else – 100% of his serve’s effectiveness is accuracy (serving to the setter).  Of course Suga does have other skills, and he ably demonstrates them here – he’s no mere pinch-server, even if that’s what he’s been reduced to for Karasuno.  I guess Suga having an extended run of time on the court is a ship that’s sailed (unless we get another manufactured Kageyama injury development) but at this point, I’ll take a moment of glory for him even if it’s literally only a moment.