Slam Dunk (manga)

Slam Dunk (スラム ダンク, Suramu Danku^?) is a Shonen manga of the Spokon genre written and illustrated by Takehiko Inoue. The plot follows Hanamichi Sakuragi, a high school student who decides to practice basketball in order to win over Haruko Akagi, the girl he is in love with.

The manga was published in Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine from 1990 to 1996, and its chapters were compiled into 31 tankōbon volumes by Shūeisha and later into 24 kanzenban volumes. It was adapted into an anime series by Toei Animation between 1993 and 1996, although the plot of its 101 chapters only covers up to volume 22 of the manga. Slam Dunk has sold over 120 million copies in Japan, making it one of the best-selling manga series in history.

Later, the author used basketball as a central theme in two other manga titles: Buzzer Beater and Real. In 2010, Inoue received special praise from the Japan Basketball Association for helping to popularize the sport in the country.

Plot

Slam Dunk tells the story of the evolution as a basketball player, and as a person, of its protagonist Hanamichi Sakuragi, a troubled 15-year-old gang member with an impressive record of fifty love rejections. behind their backs. At the beginning of the Hanamichi series, he knows nothing of what sports is or more than anything about basketball.

At the beginning of the play, we see Sakuragi, a fearsome and violent high school bully, recently arrived at Shōhoku High School and dejected by his latest sentimental failure, which he attributes to the fact that his last girlfriend was in love with a basketball player. which causes him a deep rejection towards that sport. Everything changes when he meets Haruko Akagi, with whom he falls instantly in love and with whom he tries to impress through basketball thanks to her great height and amazing innate physical condition. However, Sakuragi is completely unaware of the rules of this sport, as well as completely lacking in technique. This situation worsens when he joins the team, when he sees the enormous basketball skills of Kaede Rukawa, also a first-year player and with whom Haruko is in love. Sakuragi then ends up getting into a fight with Rukawa which causes a misunderstanding with Haruko and consequently, that reinforces his hatred towards basketball, which reaches extreme levels when he unintentionally provokes the captain of the basketball team, Takenori Akagi who at his time, he is Haruko's brother. Akagi, who is passionate about this sport, hearing Hanamichi say that basketball is for losers, considers it a serious insult and challenges Hanamichi to a match in which if he manages to score at least one basket, he will win the game. Hanamichi with many difficulties, manages to score and Akagi acknowledges his defeat, Haruko who was present surprises Hanamichi with the news that the captain of the basketball team with whom he has just faced is nothing more and nothing less than her older brother, so Hanamichi now also tries to impress Captain Akagi, but Sakuragi tries to flatter him with gifts and finding out about things the captain likes, but more importantly, he must show his tenacity. Once within the team, Hanamichi Sakuragi must learn everything related to basketball from the basics, right at the arrival of the Kanagawa regional high school tournament, but at the same time, Rukawa will also enter the team, which will give rise to the beginning of their rivalry. As the work progresses, Sakuragi will try to compete with him despite his low level and this rivalry will serve as a push to improve progressively throughout the manga. Over time he begins to really appreciate basketball, perhaps the only activity in which he excels outside of fighting and although he still wants to impress Haruko at all costs, this will no longer be his only motivation. The incorporation of Sakuragi will make the Shōhoku team stronger, which, led by Akagi, will face the Kanagawa tournament for the first time and later the national one with real chances of success. As the story runs, the Ryota Miyagi team will be joined by a young man who will befriend Hanamichi since, like him, he has problems in love with a student from his school, being in his case a young woman named Ayako who would also join the team. team as an assistant, but with a strong history of violence since he was only able to join the team due to a fight he had with another young man who would also join the team, Hisashi Mitsui who in his youth was the most valuable player in high school and who He became a criminal after not being able to overcome a knee injury that kept him away from basketball, never to return, or so it was believed.

Characters

Hanamichi Sakuragi

He is the protagonist of the series, whose violent nature and reputation have led him to receive a total of fifty love rejections. Sakuragi hates basketball because the last girl who rejected him confessed that she had a crush on a basketball player named Oda, until he meets a girl named Haruko, she asks Hanamichi if he likes basketball, Hanamichi says yes, claiming to be quite a sportsman and decides to join his high school team to try to get Haruko to like him. She highly recommends him to her older brother Takenori Akagi (the team captain), however at first they don't get along at all as Akagi challenges Hanamichi to a duel in front of the entire school, in which he had to score at least one basket for him. be the winner. Hanamichi achieves this by taking great pride, since unlike everyone he is the only one who has managed to beat him despite his ignorance in the sport and Akagi, acknowledging his defeat, accepts him into the team. There is also Rukawa, another rival of his that Hanamichi is envious of, since Haruko is in love with him. After a rough start, Sakuragi manages to be one of the five most important players on the team. Nobunaga nicknames him "Red-headed Monkey". Some say that Inoue was inspired by Dennis Rodman to create Sakuragi.

Year: 1 year

Stature: 189.2 cm

Weight: 83 kg

T-shirt number: #10

Position: Pivot Wing

Age: 15

Secondary: Wakou

Kaede Rukawa

First-year player. He plays small forward and is Sakuragi's great rival, at least for the latter. He has a great quality, but basketball seems to be his only interest and it is also the one that most attracts girls and especially Haruko, with whom Hanamichi is in love and sometimes Hanamichi warns Rukawa not to treat her with contempt. He starts out as an extremely individualistic player, although throughout the manga he manages to evolve, taking advantage of his good passing skills. He is nicknamed Super Rookie (Great Rookie) and Hanamichi Sakuragi nicknames him Sleepy Fox Face or Stinking Fox. He is considered the star player of the Shōhoku team and one of the best in Kanagawa Prefecture, being the best rookie of the year for many. His great rival on the court is Akira Sendoh, but he shows great interest in Hanamichi Sakuragi, the latter being the one he focuses a lot of his attention on. Rukawa was the one destined to take the number 10 jersey, but at Hanamichi's insistence he relents and gives it to him. In the national tournament he has a big duel against Sannoh's star player, Eiji Sawakita.

Year: 1 year

Stature: 187 cm

Weight: 75 kg

T-shirt number: #11

Position: Air

Age: 15

Secondary: Tomigaoka

Takenori Akagi

Nicknamed Gorilla or Gori by Sakuragi and his friends, he is the team's captain and Pivot. He is considered one of the best in the country, also one of the best academics in his class. His biggest dream is to win the national championship. He is also Haruko's older brother and the 'mentor' of Haruko. of Hanamichi, since he taught him to catch rebounds, shoot to the basket, etc. Every time Hanamichi commits indiscipline or does something improper both in games and training, he hits him on the head, although there are also situations in which he comes to recognize his progress. His strongest rivals from the prefecture are Jun Uozumi from Ryonan and Toru Hanagata from Shoyo. At the national level, his rival is Masashi Kawata from the Sannoh team. It could be said that due to his ability on the court and even his physical resemblance, this character was inspired by the legend of the knick's Patrick Ewing.

Year: 3rd year

Stature: 197 cm

Weight: 90 kg

T-shirt number: #4

Position: Pivot

Age: 17

Secondary: Kitamura

Ryota Miyagi

A second-year player, he is the point guard of the team (Point Guard) and the one who recovers the most balls in games, he is considered one of the best point guards in Kanagawa prefecture. He is deeply in love with Ayako, the manager of the Shōhoku High School team. He was hospitalized for a while because of a fight with Mitsui and his gang, so he joined the team a bit late. Fighting and arrogant like Sakuragi, the two become good friends having in common having suffered many love rejections. His rival to beat is Shoyo star Kenji Fujima. He becomes the new captain of Shōhoku after Kogure and Akagi graduate.

Year: 2nd year

Stature: 168 cm

Weight: 59 kg

T-shirt number: #7

Position: Base

Age: 16

Secondary: Unknown

Hisashi Mitsui

His specialty is 3-point shots. He was the star player in his high school, but upon entering Shōhoku, in a training match he seriously injured his left knee. Because of this he goes to the hospital where he has to rest for a long time, but Mitsui before he finished his rest escapes to go to training where he is injured for the second time and goes to the hospital again. Because of this injury, he misses the Regional championship, which frustrates him a lot to the point that he renounces basketball and becomes a young gang member. He spends two years without playing, and suddenly he returns to the gym to fight with the basketball team so that with this the team is suspended, in this way he would harm Riota Miyagi (one of the members of the team with which he was at odds) They fought and there was a lot of blood, then Professor Anzai entered the gym and Mitsui, upon meeting him again, is moved and decides to return to basketball. It should be noted that Professor Anzai and Mitsui had known each other before, in a game that Mitsui's team was losing by 2 points. With a few seconds left, the ball goes to a throw-in, in which Professor Anzai and Mitsui have the opportunity to exchange a few words and the professor tells him the most famous phrase of Slam Dunk: "If you lose hope the match will be terminated immediately, don't lose hope until the last moment". So Mitsui followed the advice and tried his best until the end, and clinched the victory with a 3-point shot. That event marked his life. Hanamichi calls him Mitsuito. Hisashi Mitsui was essential in the victory against Sannoh's team, the latter being the only game that was not substituted.

Year: 3rd Year

Stature: 184 cm

Weight: 70 kg

T-shirt number: #14

Position: Escort

Age: 18

Secondary: Takeishi

Content of the work

Manga

From an artistic point of view, Slam Dunk presents a great quality that becomes more and more apparent as the story progresses. The design of the characters is very well proportioned, while the movements are expressed with a fluidity and realism that for many surpass those of the animated series itself.

It is worth noting the great recreation that Takehiko Inoue makes of basketball (a sport of which he has been a fan since his years in high school), always transmitting the rhythm of a real game, panel by panel and second by second, showing us absolutely everything that happens on the court with a degree of precision and thoroughness unprecedented to date. Such is the thoroughness of the author that the entire manga takes place in just three months, from the beginning of the course in April, until the summer.

Like many other manga, Slam Dunk was not fully adapted into an anime. Thus, its adaptation to this format only includes the first 22 volumes, leaving another nine unpublished, in which the national tournament is narrated.

For a time, this manga held the absolute sales record for a manga, thanks to its 23rd and 24th volumes. This record was later taken from it by One Piece. In December 2004, it reached a total of 100 million copies sold, an occasion that was commemorated with the publication of six full-page illustrations of the manga's protagonists in Japan's main newspapers along with a message of thanks to the readers.

Anime

An anime, consisting of 101 episodes, was produced by Toei Animation and directed by Nobutaka Nishizawa. It first aired on TV Asahi from October 16, 1993 to March 23, 1996. It later aired on the Animax satellite television network. The anime followed the story of the manga, but left out the National Tournament games. Toei compiled the episodes into a series of seventeen DVDs that were released in Japan from December 10, 2004 to May 21, 2005. Toei collected the series into three DVD box sets during 2008 on a total of seventeen discs.

Music was composed by Takanobu Masuda (episode 1-61) and BMF (episode 62-101). Three CD soundtracks were released during the series' broadcast in Japan. The openings, ending, and two other themes were collected on The Best of TV Animation Slam Dunk CD soundtrack, released on July 21, 2003.

As for differences to the manga we can find:

• The last game of the anime, against a combination Shoyo-Ryonan does not exist on the sleeve.
• The anime makes the mistake of calling "states" to prefectures. Japan is not a federal state.

In addition to this, it must be remembered that the anime only adapts up to volume 22 of the manga, with which the entire part of the national tournament remains unpublished. For this reason, the last chapters resort to a mixture of events that occurred in the manga (such as Sakuragi's 20,000 shot training) with others totally unrelated to the original (such as the fair that Sakuragi attends with Haruko and her friends). she).

Music

• Opening themes (openings)
  • Episodes 1 to 61: "Kimi ga Suki da to Sakebitai" (がの が。 が。 が。 が。 が。 。 が。 。 。 が。 。 が。 。 が。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。 。, "Kimi ga Suki da to Sakebitai"^?) by BAAD.
  • Episodes 62 to 101: "Zettai and Daremo" ( の も。, "Zettai and Daremo"^?) for ZYYG.
• Hispanoamérica
  • Episodes 1 to 101: "I want to yell at you" by Adrian Barba

• Closing topics (endings)
  • Episodes 1 to 24: "Anata Dake Mitsumete'ru" (▪ ≤3 ≤3 ≤3 ≤3 ≤3 ≤3 た た た 。, "Anata Dake Mitsumete'ru"^?) by Ohguro Maki.
  • Episodes 25 to 49: "Sekai ga Owaru Made wa" (∧, "Sekai ga Owaru Made wa"^?) by Wands.
  • Episodes 50 to 81: "Kirameku Toki and Torawarete" ()(urge))の)。¶¶, "Kirameku Toki and Torawarete"^?) by Manish.
  • Episodes 82 to 101: "My Friend" by "ZARD".
• Hispanoamérica
  • Episodes 1 to 101: "Only to you my eyes see" by Marisa de Lille

Movies and OVAS

Toei Animation produced four films with original content (not based on the manga) between 1994-1995. On January 7, 2021 Takehiko Inoue confirms the production of a new film via Twitter.

On January 7, 2021, Slam Dunk author Takehiko Inoue announced on his Twitter that the series is getting a new anime film from Toei Animation titled The First Slam Dunk. Inoue will direct and write the new film, with Yasuyuki Ebara designing the characters. It will be released on December 3, 2022 in Japan.

Video Games

Some video games based on the series have been produced by Bandai for the Japanese market. Two basketball simulators titled Slam Dunk and Slam Dunk 2 were released for the Game Boy. There were three games on the Super Nintendo, Slam Dunk, Slam Dunk 2, and SD Heat Up!. Games have also been released for the Game Gear, Mega Drive, and Sega Saturn. A coin-operated Slam Dunk arcade game, made by Banpresto, was released in 1995. In the Nintendo DS game Jump Ultimate Stars, players appear as supporting characters. of Shōhoku (Sakuragi, Rukawa, Akagi, Mitsui and Miyagi) and as helpers characters Coach Anzai and Haruko Akagi.

Awards and nominations

Shogakukan Award