"Guardians" (Japanese: ガーディアンス Gādiansu) is the three hundred nineteenth chapter of the Haikyū!! series, written and illustrated by Haruichi Furudate. It was published in the 43rd issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump's 2018 series.
Overview[]
The third set between Karasuno and Nekoma gets underway. Nishinoya, inspired by Yaku's performance, refuses to lose as a libero and shows off his improvement. Soon, both Tsukishima and Kuroo move to the front line, ready for another round of the teacher-and-student showdown.
Plot[]
The third set starts off with a bang. Yaku cleanly receives a powerful serve from Karasuno, and Kenma tosses to Yamamoto. Refusing to be outdone, Nishinoya also demonstrates his skills by saving Yamamoto's spike. Tanaka follows up with a high toss to Hinata that ends up being too short. With a imperfect toss and three blockers marking him, Hinata resorts to a rebound to give Karasuno a chance to reorganize their offense. This time, Kageyama sends the toss to Tanaka, who scores after the Nekoma blockers got distracted by Hinata.
It's Kageyama's turn to serve. He immediately executes a service ace to put the score at 2-0. However, Kai saves Kageyama's following attempt, allowing Nekoma to take a point back while ending Kageyama's serve streak. Kenma once again targets Hinata with his serve and manages to restrict both Hinata and Tanaka. Karasuno uses a center open attack with Hinata spiking through the tiny gap in-between the blockers. To everybody's surprise, Yaku anticipates Hinata's action and is already prepared for the incoming spike. He makes a clean save, and Yamamoto scores for Nekoma.
As a fellow libero, Nishinoya is both awestruck and motivative by Yaku's incredible performance. In the following play, Nishinoya makes a difficult receive and quickly moves out of the way in order not to obstruct Asahi's run-up. Because of this, Asahi is able to join up with the rest of the team on offense and scores from the back row. Nishinoya is praised for his awareness and insight, especially with Yaku also acknowledging Nishinoya's prowess. Eventually, Tsukishima rotates to the front line and comes face-to-face with his teacher, Kuroo, once again.
Appearances[]
- Others
Chapter notes[]
Character revelations[]
- Nishinoya heeds Kageyama's advice in Volume 25 Chapter 223 and quickly moves out of the way of a back row attack after receiving.
Errors[]
- There are a few drawing mistakes in this chapter, such as:
- Tanaka is drawn making the first serve, even though it's supposedly Kageyama.
- Hinata is shown spiking with his left arm (If it were true, Hinata might be ambidextrous, something he wasn't able to do it until he played beach volleyball with Carlos Carvalho and Lucas Santos on Volume 43 Chapter 376).
- When receiving Kageyama's serve, Kai's uniform is drawn with the number 3 (which is intended for third-year libero Yaku) instead of his usual number 2.