It might have been a long time since Haikyu!! ended its run with Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, but there’s a worthy successor that you can keep up with right now that captures what made that series so far. As Haruichi Furudate’s Haikyu!! franchise prepares to bring its anime to a close with a new movie in the near future, it still remains as one of the best sports series to ever come out of Shonen Jump magazine. It’s a series that has been hard to top even as more sports efforts join the fray, but there’s a new series that’s fit to take that crown.
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Togo Goto and Kento Matsuura’s Harukaze Mound has only been running in Shonen Jump magazine for less than 20 chapters (and is currently one of the series potentially in danger of being cancelled this Fall), but there’s been no other series that has been able to capture the same exciting energy as Haikyu!! once had during its own peak. With a large roster of fun characters, incredible art, and a great outline for the future, Harukaze Mound is gearing up to be the next big thing in sports manga.
What Is Harukaze Mound?
Harukaze Mound made its debut with Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump earlier this Summer, and is one of the only few series from that batch to still survive to this day. Togo Goto and Kento Matsuura have returned to the magazine following their previous cancelled effort, Phantom Seer, which was a dramatically different story than this one. Harukaze Mound introduced fans to a pair of twins who were both seeking to make it to the high school baseball championships one day, but one of them was a much more outwardly talented pitcher than the other. Sparking a new rivalry, the two brothers end up going to different schools to follow their own paths to greatness.
With the younger brother, Aokaze, heading to an elite school, and the older, Nagiharu, heading to a less prestigious one, the series has tapped into that underdog energy that made Haikyu!! such a great series. This spark between the brothers makes the two of them work incredibly hard to improve their skills even a little bit, and fans have already gotten to see this work pay off through two major practice games seen in the chapters so far.
But the best aspect of Haikyu!! was seeing its massive roster each go on their own respective journeys. Each one had their own kinetic personalities, and with each one focused on a different skill set, it meant that none of the training arcs for these characters felt the same. It’s already been the same case for Harukaze Mound as not only is it a team of misfits put together and needing to work together, but each player has their own quirk that they need to practice on and overcome.
Harukaze Mound Can Only Grow From Here
There’s just so much promise here, and the pacing of the series has already seemed to nail things down. There have been previous manga efforts to highlight baseball within Shonen Jump, but one of the things they failed at was the fact that they couldn’t figure out baseball’s timing. It can be an exciting game, but there are long stretches of the game that are just wars of attrition. Very few exciting things can happen when strong teams are trying to control the flow of the other, and that’s something Harukaze Mound understands.
The last practice game, for example, skipped over several innings and instead focused on the real make or break moments. This is the key to, without a better phrase of putting it, make baseball as exciting as real fans see the sport. It’s all being elevated further with Harukaze Mound‘s incredible artwork making even the smallest moments look as grand as possible. If this series gets to have a long run, there’s a lot that we could see. Tons of rival teams could get their own time in the sun, we’ll eventually get that battle between brothers, and there’s just much more that could happen.
Shonen Jump is in desperate need of a new sports hit, and Harukaze Mound can be that worthy Haikyu!! successor if it gets the support. Make sure you check out the newest chapters on either Viz Media’s digital Shonen Jump library or Shueisha’s MangaPlus service. What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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