Pacing wise the movie just felt weird and I'll try my best to express those feelings. On one hand some scenes move at a breakneck pace with moments that shook up the game by creating additional problems to solve being given little time to get into a character's headspace before someone else has already found an answer. On the other hand some scenes dragged, flashing back to a scene from a previous season in an attempt to quickly establish context for the next character interaction instead of trusting the audience to remember previously established material.
On the visual side the movie did mostly fine, but outside of a few specific moments the animation wasn't notably better than what's come before in the tv series. To bring up serving as an example, we're not given any stylish scenes that rivaled serves we've seen from Oikawa/Mad Dog/Ushijima.
There's still much to love about this movie however, after all this is still Haikyuu. Many of the character interactions were on point with great highlights such as the banter between Kuro & Tsukishima, when they weren't just flashing back to and referencing season 2 anyways. Animation wise the depiction of exhaustion from the characters was a major highlight, likely the best depiction in the series so far, even if exhaustion itself only seems to have narrative impact on a few players.
Ultimately I'm left with mixed feelings on the film. While undoubtedly enjoyable, I do find myself wondering if adapting the story into new TV season would have addressed some of my concerns. I'm ofcourse excited for the next and final film, though there's now a part of me concerned for how the next film is handled given there is supposedly even more to adapt when compared to the Nekoma match.
