Slam Dunk 15
Posted: September 28, 2011 Filed under: Slam Dunk Leave a comment »Takehiko Inoue – Viz – 2011 – 31 volumes
Only in a shounen manga can one minute and thirty seconds of game time take 120 pages to play out. That’s almost one page for every second. This series is so good that I didn’t even notice the ridiculous stretch.
You know why?
SLAM DUNK.
It was magical.
It took 15 volumes to happen. When it did, it was special. I loved that Haruko consoled him with it later, too. That made for an adorable scene.
And for as long as it took to happen, I love that that wasn’t even the most exciting thing about that game. It certainly got a double-page spread devoted to it, but the story didn’t even linger on it for one page more.
So, the game ends, and I was a little sad. I couldn’t remember what they did in this series before they played basketball. After all, this game alone has lasted over five volumes, right?
Well, I guess they practice for their next game. I suspect there won’t be a lot of downtime between events. I do hope we’re not going to have to sit through the Kainan/Ryonan game, though.
I was also a big fan of the reactions to Hanamichi’s haircut. Now he’s even scarier than he was before! Fantastic.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot to offer in the way of commentary here. They do just play basketball. But they do so in the most exciting, edge-of-your-seat way imaginable. I hate basketball, but I love reading this series. I was very amused by the author commentary in the front of the volume where Inoue responds to criticisms about how he’s taking too much dramatic license with the basketball games in this series. He says that real basketball games are way more exciting than he could ever make it, and you should watch one so you can see for yourself.
I don’t know about that.
