Are You a basketball love? If you are, then here is a piece of great entertainment for you; I will today talk about “Slam Dunk“, which is a Japanese sports manga series.
It is written and illustrated by Takehiko Inoue.
What is Slam Dunk About?
It's about a basketball squad from Shhoku High School in the Shonen region of Japan. From October 1990 to June 1996, it was serialised in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump, with the chapters compiled into 31 tankōbon volumes.
Toei Animation adapted the manga into an anime television series, which aired from October 1993 to March 1996 and was broadcast globally, with especial acclaim in Japan, other Asian nations, and Europe.
Slam Dunk is the eleventh best-selling manga series in history, with 120.29 million copies in print. It won the 40th Shogakukan Manga Award for the shonen category in 1994. Inoue got special recognition from the Japan Basketball Association in 2010 for his contributions to the popularisation of basketball in Japan.
A Summary About What Is There in the Series
Hanamichi Sakuragi is a gang leader and a delinquent. Sakuragi is extremely disliked by females, having been rejected fifty times. He meets Haruko Akagi, the lady of his dreams, in his freshman year at Shohoku High School, and is thrilled when she is not disgusted or afraid of him like all the other ladies he has asked out.
Sakuragi's agility is recognised by Haruko, who introduces him to the Shohoku basketball team. Sakuragi is first hesitant to join the squad since he has no prior sporting experience and believes that basketball is a game for losers because his fiftieth rejection was for a basketball player.
Despite his immaturity and violent temper, Sakuragi shows to be a natural athlete and joins the squad, primarily to impress and get a closer relationship with Haruko. Sakuragi later discovers that, although playing largely due to his affection for Haruko, he has grown to like the sport.
At the same time, Kaede Rukawa, Sakuragi's fiercest competitor (both in basketball and because Haruko has a big crush on Rukawa, although one-sided), the star rookie, and a “women magnet,” joins the squad.
How Did Audience take It?
By 2004, the collected volumes of Slam Dunk had sold over 100 million copies, and by 2012, they had sold over 118 million. By 2014, the manga series has sold over 121 million copies, making it Shueisha's fifth best-selling manga series.
It won the Shogakukan Manga Award for shonen manga for the 40th time in 1994. Until 2002, Slam Dunk volumes 21 through 23 held the record for the initial printing of a manga with 2.5 million copies.
Slam Dunk: 10 Days After was well-received in print, placing 6th and then 15th in Oricon's weekly manga rating.
The first six volumes of the 2018 shinsōban version of the original manga all charted in the top eight during their first week of publication, with the first volume ranking second.
What Impact this Series Had?
The popularity of Slam Dunk among Japanese adolescents throughout the 1990s is attributed to its success. The attractiveness of Slam Dunk and its influence on the popularity of the sport, according to Real Sound's Azusa Takahashi, is founded in its realism.
It features not just exciting gaming sequences but also scenes of consistent practice. Inoue and Shueisha founded the Slam Dunk Scholarship programme in 2006. If they pass the school's admittance interview, the winning 17- to 18-year-old recipient receives a fully funded academic and athletic scholarship to a university-preparatory school in America.
Inoue was honoured by the Japan Basketball Association in 2010 for his contributions to the promotion of basketball and the scholarship programme in Japan.
In Japan, the anime adaption is also a hit. Slam Dunk was voted as the 8th most popular anime in TV Asahi's 2005 Top 100 Anime survey of various age groups. In addition, the series was voted 10th in a separate survey conducted by TV Asahi and created by a website.
The anime's home media release performed well, appearing in Oricon's Japanese Animation DVD and Blu-ray rankings.
“The initial wave of basketball in Japan was pushed forward by ‘Slam Dunk,'” according to Cornell University PhD student Dexter Thomas, who is researching a dissertation on how race influences hip hops in Japan.
Wrapping Up
Are you intrigued to know about the series? What is your take on this series? If you want to watch this series, then you can watch it on Crunchyroll- it is an official site with the largest anime collection.
So what are you waiting for? Watch it and enjoy it.
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