Mujinazaka High are the team Fukurodani have to get past in "Where Monsters Go", and until now the only one of them you could guess on Haikyuudle was Wakatsu Kiryu. That changes today. All seven named Mujinazaka players are in the game with their official Furudate stats, so here is the roster, player by player, with the numbers behind each of them and my ranking at the end.
Who Mujinazaka are
Oita's powerhouse, seeded fourth at the Spring High
Mujinazaka come from Oita Prefecture in Kyushu, and they are not a surprise package. Thirty Spring High appearances, nine of them in a row, a semifinal at the last Interhigh where they lost to Inarizaki, and a fourth seed at the Spring tournament that lets them skip the first round. Their coach, Michiko Kuzuri, is the first female coach in the series. Kuroo sums up their philosophy in one word: physical. They train bodies first and the volleyball follows.
The club is built around three pieces. Kiryu, one of the top three aces in the country. Michiru Usuri, a setter who wins rallies before the ball is in the air. And the Twin Towers, Nozomu Mami and Keisuke Unnan, two 190 cm middle blockers who make the net feel smaller than it is. Here is how each of them rates.
Wakatsu Kiryu
Total stat: 23/30
The captain, the ace, the number 1. Kiryu's 5 power is the same mark as Ushijima and Bokuto, and the manga backs it up: he goes through three man blocks and, when he has to, over them. What makes him different from the other big aces is the jump. Mujinazaka's leg training gives him a controlled 4 jumping that lets him spike hard off a one step approach where most hitters need two or three, so a bad set is still a kill. The 4 technique is the stat that separates him from Bokuto on paper, and 4 stamina means he is still hitting at full weight in a third set.
The 3s in game sense and speed are where the match finds him. His chapters in the 330s are about the pressure of being the player who is supposed to end every rally, and that weight does not show up in a stat line. It shows up at 22-22.
Nozomu Mami
Total stat: 20/30
The first of the Twin Towers, and the one you feel. At 190.4 cm with 4 power he is the tower that also hits: a middle who scores on the quick as well as walling it off. The 4 stamina is what you want from a blocker who jumps on every attack for a full match, and the 4 speed is the reason a man that size can get across to a wing in time.
The 2 game sense is the honest number. Mami does not read the setter, he reacts to the ball, and against a Fukurodani offence run by Akaashi that is a gap a good setter can use. His current concern is whether there is anything he can do to marry the actress Satomi Ishihara, so the priorities are clear.
Keisuke Unnan
Total stat: 20/30
The second tower, one millimetre shorter at 190.3 cm, and the brains of the pair. Same total as Mami, opposite shape: 4 game sense and 2 power. Unnan is the blocker who reads. His best moment in the match is a point against Fukurodani's quick attack with nothing but a commit block, a guess he makes early and gets right, and he is one of the very few players in the series shown stuffing Bokuto cleanly. Kuroo was the other.
Put the two towers side by side and you get the whole Mujinazaka idea. One tower hits and chases, the other thinks and waits, and between them there is no easy seam in the middle. He wants to grow one more centimetre. He really does not need to.
Naoharu Ezota
Total stat: 20/30
The third year opposite, and the flattest stat line on the team: 4 jumping, 4 stamina, 3 everywhere else. That is not an insult. Ezota is the player Mujinazaka put on the court to do a bit of everything at a decent level: spike from the right, receive serve, dig, block, and serve with a jump. Nothing about him decides a match and nothing about him loses one, which is exactly what a team built around one ace needs from the hitter opposite him. Every Mujinazaka attack that is not Kiryu has to be credible enough that blockers cannot cheat, and Ezota is that credibility.
Michiru Usuri
Total stat: 20/30
The most interesting player on the roster and the one I expect the anime to make a star. Usuri's sheet is a setter's sheet: 4 game sense, 4 technique, 4 speed, and a 2 power that tells you he never intends to hit the ball hard himself. He does not need to. He sets high enough to use every centimetre of the towers, he dumps, he serves a jump floater, and he plays several rallies ahead. In the match he deliberately serves soft to bait Fukurodani into a quick through the middle, where Mami and Unnan are already waiting.
Kenma, watching from the stands, calls him vile once he works out what Usuri is actually doing, which is not beating Akaashi but breaking him. He is the youngest second year on the team and has been told his eyes look scary. After that match, fair.
Subaru Hondo
Total stat: 21/30
The second year outside hitter, and the player who inherits the ace spot the moment Kiryu graduates. The stats already say so: 4 jumping, 4 game sense, 4 technique, a total of 21 that beats every third year on the team except the captain. What he is missing is the 5 in power, and a year of Mujinazaka's training is the usual cure for that. He is the quiet one in the match itself. Most of the time he is the other wing, the hitter Fukurodani are happy to let have the ball so they can load up on Kiryu, and he is exactly good enough to punish that.
Haruma Bishin
Total stat: 21/30
The libero, 174.6 cm, and the reason the rallies in this match go on as long as they do. Bishin gets up most of what Bokuto hits and serves, which in a quarter final at Nationals is an absurd sentence to write about a second year. The 4 jumping on a libero is an odd one until you remember how much of digging a big spike is about getting your body somewhere fast, and his 4 speed and 4 stamina cover that. The 3s in game sense and technique put him below Nishinoya and Komi in our libero rankings, but the gap is two points, not a tier. Mujinazaka's whole offence depends on someone keeping the ball alive long enough for Kiryu to get a second swing, and that someone is Bishin.
The ranking
By total, with the ties settled by what each player is asked to do
- Wakatsu Kiryu, 23. The only elite total on the team and one of the best outside hitter sheets in the series.
- Haruma Bishin, 21. A 21 libero who digs Bokuto is worth more than a 21 hitter who does not have the ball.
- Subaru Hondo, 21. Next year's ace, already the best all round attacker after Kiryu.
- Michiru Usuri, 20. The stats undersell a setter whose whole value is what he makes the other team do.
- Keisuke Unnan, 20. The reading blocker. Stops Bokuto, which almost nobody does.
- Nozomu Mami, 20. The hitting blocker. Same total as Unnan, but the 2 game sense is the easier weakness to exploit.
- Naoharu Ezota, 20. Solid in all six and a specialist in none.
Stack them against Fukurodani and the shape of the match is obvious. Fukurodani have the two best players on the court, Bokuto at 24 and Akaashi at 23, and Komi at 22 is a better libero than Bishin on paper. Mujinazaka have the better pair of middles and the setter who is playing a different game. That is why it went three sets, 25-23, 22-25, 22-25, and why the manga spends its time inside Kiryu's head rather than on the scoreboard.
If you want the longer version of what the anime is adapting, the Where Monsters Go announcement post covers the posters and the PV. And every player above is now live on Haikyuudle.com: the full roster with radar charts is on the Mujinazaka High team page, the Twin Towers are draftable in Dream Team, and any one of the seven can be tomorrow's mystery character in the Characters mode below.