First Reviews for Haikyuu: Land vs Sky Are Beyond Promising

Haikyuu is making its grand return to anime after spending several years away, and not only does this include a full fourth season coming our way next January, but a new set of OVA specials adapting some of the stories that are going to be skipped over in the official anime series. Titled "Land vs. Sky" and "The Path of the Ball," these OVA adapt the games between Nekoma High School, Fukurodani Academy, Nohebi Academy, and Itachiyama Academy as they all vie for their own way into Nationals as teased by the final moments of the third season.

The new Haikyuu OVA special has debuted in Japan and the first reviews are certainly promising. As detailed by @todokugou on Twitter, the animation for the OVA seemed a lot more "mesmerizing" than it has seemed for Season 4:

The OVA “Land Vs Sky” was absolutely amazing. I personally think that the animation for the OVA is much more mesmerising than S4 (at the moment). This small arc was one of my favourite side stories from Haikyuu so seeing it animated was such a blessing! pic.twitter.com/zxaQppStga

— 🌺 (@todokugou) November 30, 2019

As @todokugou also explains, the OVA is two episodes long totaling at around 45-50 minutes overall. Much of the focus is on Nekoma's game, but Fukurodani gets time to shine as well. This seems about right for how these matches were handled in the manga as they were more a temporary tangent away from the main story to flesh out the rest of the characters introduced during the Kanto Training period.

The Haikyuu OVA will be screened as part of Jump Festa 2020 later this December in Japan, with a home video release sometime in January. Unfortunately there's no English language release confirmed for the special just yet, but there's more hope for Season 4 -- which is coming out around the same time.

Originally created by Haruichi Furudate for Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump in 2012, Haikyuu!! has been licensed for an English language release by Viz Media. If you wanted to catch the first three seasons of the anime, you can currently stream Haikyuu!! on Crunchyroll, Hulu, and Netflix. The series is described as such:

"Based off of the original Weekly Shonen Jump manga series from Haruichi Furudate, Haikyu!! is a slice-of-life sports anime revolving around Shoyo Hinata's love of volleyball. Inspired by a small-statured pro volleyball player, Hinata creates a volleyball team in his last year of middle school. Unfortunately the team is matched up against the "King of the Court" Tobio Kageyama's team in their first tournament and inevitably lose. After the crushing defeat, Hinata vows to surpass Kageyama After entering high school, Hinata joins the volleyball team only to find that Tobio has also joined."