Haikyu!! To the Top 2nd-cour
ハイキュー TO THE TOP 第2クール (Haikyuu!! To the Top Part 2)
- Sports
- School
- Team Sports
- Episodes
- 12
- Duration
- 23 min per ep
- Aired
- Oct 3, 2020 to Dec 19, 2020
- Status
- Finished Airing
Synopsis
Karasuno High, once dismissed as a “Flightless Crow,” has reached the national stage and opened with a convincing win over Tsubakihara Academy. Their next challenge is far steeper: Inarizaki High, last Spring Tournament’s runner-up, led by the formidable Miya twins, Atsumu and Osamu.
When the match begins, Karasuno is rattled by Inarizaki’s loud, jeering crowd, but steadies itself with support from its own fans. An offense built around Shouyou Hinata helps Karasuno find a rhythm, only for the Miyas’ unconventional, unpredictable play to swing the momentum and catch their opponents off guard. As the rally-by-rally battle intensifies, Karasuno must withstand Inarizaki’s pressure to keep its climb toward the top alive.
Otaku Consensus
Haikyu!! To the Top 2nd-cour is a high-performing continuation that earns its 8.56 MAL score by turning one extended national-tournament matchup into a study of pressure, rhythm, and team psychology, with Production I.G’s sports staging still doing the heavy lifting. The strongest praise centers on the Inarizaki material finally clicking after a slower start, while the recurring criticism is that the ending lands more as a setup for the next famous rivalry than as a fully satisfying curtain call.
Why You Should Watch
Watch this if you want sports anime tension built from tactics, crowd pressure, and incremental player growth rather than superhuman spectacle. It scratches the same competitive itch as Slam Dunk’s match-by-match escalation, but with the ensemble club chemistry that made Haikyu!! a modern shounen staple. This cour is especially rewarding for viewers who like seeing a team’s identity stress-tested: setters, decoys, bench energy, and opponent scouting all matter in visible ways. The 12-episode format gives the volleyball room to breathe without drifting into filler, and the teen cast’s coming-of-age angle stays tied to performance rather than speeches. If you prefer grounded team sports with emotional release earned point by point, this is one of the franchise’s densest stretches.
Key Characters
- SShouyou Hinata(VA: Ayumu Murase)
Hinata remains compelling because the series treats his raw athletic hunger as something that must be sharpened through observation, timing, and trust rather than solved by enthusiasm alone.
- TTobio Kageyama(VA: Kaito Ishikawa)
Kageyama fascinates fans as a precision-obsessed setter whose growth is measured not just by technical brilliance, but by how well he can turn other players’ instincts into usable weapons.
What Makes It Stand Out
- 1
Production I.G handles the cour, continuing the studio most associated with Haikyu!!’s clean volleyball readability: the action is staged so formations, setter choices, and tempo changes stay legible instead of becoming abstract motion.
- 2
The season is structurally unusual for a sports cour because all 12 episodes are built around sustaining one high-stakes competitive phase, making pacing and momentum management as important as individual highlight cuts.
- 3
Masako Satou directs with Mariko Ishikawa as assistant director, while Taku Kishimoto oversees series composition; that staff mix gives the cour a more controlled, match-focused shape than a conventional school-club tournament montage.
- 4
The Inarizaki material is widely treated by viewers and reviewers as the cour’s defining arc: critics noted that the season took several episodes to find its rhythm, but that it ultimately delivered in the back half.
- 5
The anime’s data profile reflects its identity with unusual clarity: AniList tags it at 98% Volleyball, 88% Ensemble Cast, 83% School Club, and 51% Twins, neatly mapping the cour’s emphasis on team systems and the Miya twins’ presence.
Fun Facts & Trivia
- Fun fact 1
- Haikyu!! To the Top 2nd-cour aired as a 12-episode fall 2020 season from October 3 to December 19, following the first To the Top cour that began earlier in 2020.
- Fun fact 2
- Haruichi Furudate is credited as the original creator, with Takahiro Kishida on character design, Mai Yonekawa on prop design, Mayumi Satou on color design, and Yumiko Nakata as director of photography.
- Fun fact 3
- Ichirou Tatsuda is credited for both Art Director and Art Design, meaning the cour’s background identity and broader visual environment were supervised under the same named staffer.
- Fun fact 4
- The reception remained strong across major anime databases: MAL lists it at 8.56 from 558,668 votes with a #128 rank, while AniList records an 85/100 score and 8,248 favourites.
- Fun fact 5
- Several English-language reactions singled out the end-of-season teaser for the long-awaited Battle at the Garbage Dump as a major fan-service moment, even as other viewers felt the ending functioned too much like a bridge to the next event.
Studios
- Production I.G
