Slam Dunk 9

Takehiko Inoue – Viz – 2010 – 31 volumes

I skipped a volume in here somewhere, but it doesn’t feel like it.  This volume opens with Sakuragi thinking about the aftermath of the fight, which must mean it took up volume 8.  Must’ve been an epic fight.

Anyway, this volume covers… er, most of the tournament the team entered.  The first game is covered in detail, then it skips over all the others in an awesome montage-like fashion to skip to the final 8.  Most of what’s going on is about the teamwork and everyone’s role on the court during a game.  Surprisingly, Sakuragi does have a place, but he’s not very successful since he can’t stop fouling out.

Again, I think one of the best things about Sakuragi is that he’s not an invincible, inherently talented main character.  He is, in a sense, since everyone keeps talking about how he’s something special, but he doesn’t know how to play basketball and makes a lot of mistakes, which I like.  Even better, he doesn’t use these mistakes to build character and mope around until something miraculously changes.  He doesn’t learn from these mistakes at all.  He just keeps doing them, to hilarious effect.  He fouls out through the whole volume until he decides to ask Akagi for help out of sheer embarrassment.  He is king in his mind, however, and all the praise that is normally lavished on the main character takes place entirely in his head.  He’s hilarious and extremely upbeat, which is why he works so well as the lead.  Volumes like this, that are just basketball, would be a whole lot less interesting without him.

I’m having trouble with the characters because of the skipped volume, unfortunately, even with the handy bios in the front of the volume and Haruko helpfully discussing each person’s strengths at the beginning of the book.  It also doesn’t help that the punk with a crush on the manager has gotten a haircut.  I get him and another one of the aces confused.  It doesn’t really matter, since the only thing I really have to know is that one of them is a punk who will hit on the manager, but it still confused me a bit.  That’s entirely my fault, though.

But yes.  Still awesome.  You can call Slam Dunk the bus driver, because it takes almost all other sports manga to school.  I can’t get over how addictive it is and how quickly the volumes go by.

This was a review copy provided by Viz.