After hiding in the shadows, Akari Oshiro makes her debut to the Beach Volleyball Club! With dreams of shedding her childhood past as the famous Okinawan face of Shequasar, she aims to become a beach volleyball idol and team up with the tallest of the crew, Higa Kanata, to dominate the game. Can she achieve her goal with hopes, dreams and willpower?
For starters, no, since she assumed the person in the magazine she read was tall. Kanata is the very opposite of tall.
And after displaying her beach volleyball skills to Kanata, Akari…Akari’s got some work ahead of her…
Amusement aside, Harukana Receive volume 3 completes the Beach Volleyball Club once they get Oshiro to open up (while still being embarrassed being formally known as “She-chan”), and now they can be an official club. Aside from the introduction of the Thomas sisters’ mom, Marisa, who will influence how Kanata and Haruka improve as a team, most of this volume centers on Kanata’s former relationship with Narumi. The first two volumes have essentially covered this, but volume 3 explains how they first met. Not surprisingly, it starts with assumptions.
Narumi was a transfer student when Kanata first met her, and after initially trying to know more about the new kid, class interest quickly died down when she showed how shy she was. Kanata wants to know more about her but isn’t sure what to do. How about taking a suggestion from your mom and start playing beach volleyball? This is what gets Narumi to open up to Kanata. And after enough practice, they soon became a dominant team on sand. Note that this was when they were young (like 10 years old). This is also where they met the Thomas’ twins, with all of their strengths and flaws!
As mentioned in other reviews, I assume there’s only so much you can do playing beach volleyball, and there are methods that show there’s certainly some strategy needed. In this volume though, the strategy is likely minimal. There was Haruka and Kanata learning that stopping a spike can’t always be done alone from Marisa, but the big match was with the Thomas twins taking on Narumi and Kanata when they were younger. For that, it definitely emphasizes what you’re wearing matters (what Emily wore was a factor) and understanding that it’s always good to surprise your opponent when it calls for it. But realistically, it feels like the more I read Harukana Receive, the more it really, aside from physical attributes, comes down to mental tactics (sharpness, awareness, etc).
Of course, Harukana Receive spares no effort in showcasing these girls in their bikinis, which is also its main draw. That is something you can’t shy away from in beach volleyball. That’s even used as a rallying point regarding an athlete’s body being their weapon, which certainly can be true. But whether I need to hear Kanata’s mom telling two children that supposedly being in smaller bikinis is better for beach volleyball players is not a great selling point.
Anyways, it’s important to emphasize that this volume is basically setting things up. Now that they have 5 members, everyone can get better — it’ll just be a case of how. One way to do that is to take part in a tournament. And with that as the goal, both our leads need to learn about each other in a way that will help them compete properly, which is where knowing what state of mind the two are at is key. So we’ll soon see if Kanata explaining her past to Haruka and their training will pay off real soon.