Haikyuu’s Oikawa Tooru and Argentina: The Anime Boy, The Myth, The Legend

Oikawa Tooru’s story with Argentina lives on, as photos of the Argentinian volleyball players posing with plushies of their Japanese teammate go viral.

For those not in the know, Haikyuu!! is a Japanese manga / anime series, with the manga having concluded July 2020. It followed several schools of boys’ volleyball teams, with plenty of intense sports genre action and heartfelt camaraderie amongst fellow friends and competitors.

At the end of the manga, Oikawa ended up in Argentina, playing volleyball competitively, of course, with the “CA San Juan Voley”. The developments in the manga have been acknowledged and fully embraced by the UCPN San Juan Vóley Club, proudly having #Oikawa in their official Twitter bio, with both the team’s coach and setter welcoming him into the fold, once the news broke out. There is even a team photo, further cementing his presence in the scene.

Oikawa himself is more of an “antagonistic” party in the series proper, being one of the earliest and biggest hurdles the Karasuno team – the protagonist team – faces. A somewhat arrogant individual with the talent to back him up, he’s arguably one of the more divisive characters amongst fans due to his attitude. Nonetheless, he still has many fans, consistently ranking high in prior popularity polls.

Where will Oikawa’s career go from here? Should the mobile game adaptation come out, perhaps we can see another side to him, who can say?