Slam Dunk 13

Takehiko Inoue – Viz – 2010 – 31 volumes

Though Hikaru no Go has ended, I still have Slam Dunk to give me my sports manga fix (if Go can be considered a sport… in manga, it’s the same idea). I don’t like this series as much as Hikaru no Go, or even Eyeshield 21, but it’s still an awful lot of fun to read.

There’s not much to say about this volume. They play basketball vigorously. Shohoku is still fending off Kainan tooth and nail, and this volume barely makes it through the first half of the game. While, of course, the boys still have to work together as a team, this volume is all about Rukawa and his showboating. And to Rukawa’s credit, he is spectacular, and not really trying to show off. He’s just trying to win, and doing whatever it takes to get him there.

What’s really great is that everyone, players and audience included, still has such an extreme reaction to a slam dunk. I love that it’s the name of the series, so that every time it happens, it’s like saying a special password that causes everything to stop and go haywire.

There’s not a whole lot to the success of this series, it’s just really, really entertaining to watch the characters play basketball, and the volume’s always over in a heartbeat. Like most of the best sports manga, you get drawn into the enthusiasm courtesy of a handful of great characters. Even though I don’t care about basketball, I still really want to see Sakuragi play. He wants to play so bad. He does play here, and it is both entertaining and genuinely awesome.

I think it’s interesting that the game’s only about half over at the end of this volume. I’m willing to bet that it won’t end until at least volume 15. And that’s the halfway point of the series, meaning that we will have gone 15 volumes and only seen… really, two major games, right? That blows my mind. It’s crazy, but it works really well for Slam Dunk. I don’t know that many modern sports manga could pull something like that off. What’s even more interesting is that the only hints we’ve been given about the next opponent are some smarmy comments from the peanut gallery that almost reminded me of Prince of Tennis opponents. You know. The kind that are completely full of themselves, and you really want to see their smug faces pounded into the tennis court. Most sports manga I’ve read are all about showing off the next opponent, or the next series of difficult opponents so that you know just how hard the coming games will be, but not Slam Dunk. The whole focus is on the current game.

But yes. Still good, I promise. At this point, you’re either reading or you’re not, so I doubt this review’s going to convince anyone, but just in case… still not boring! Still great! Not my favorite, but still quite good.