Slam Dunk Review

It started with freshman punk Hanamichi Sakuragi, a tough guy with a big reputation from junior high school who is really unlucky at love. His previous attempts have left him in the pits and each rejection is like a mortal blow to him. He overreacts incredibly when dumped and nobody is safe from his wrath when this happens. He's about to give up on trying to find love again when he stumbles into Haruko, an attractive schoolgirl who is actually friendly with him and not outright scared. She's impressed by his physique and comments quickly that he must be on the basketball team, to which he quickly lies and says he is. Sakuragi will do whatever it takes to be whatever a potential girlfriend wants him to be so her comments about this pushes him into something he previously hated.

Haruko isn't exactly interested in Sakuragi though as she's more looking towards beefing up the team since her older brother is the captain of the team. She's also got a huge crush on another freshman who is joining the team after being very popular and winning a lot of games in the junior high circuit named Rukawa. Amusingly, Rukawa also has something of a badass look to him and a short temper but also the skill to back it up. Both him and Sakuragi at different points run into trouble with some of the ruffians of the upper classes and each of them has their own methods of taking them down and there's certainly some mutual respect to be found but Sakuragi only wants to kill Rukawa since he realizes he could lose Haruko to him.

Sakuragi also ends up going up against Haruko's brother Akagi, whom he affectionately nicknames Gori since he looks like a gorilla. Akagi wants nothing to do with this freshman but he ends up in a challenge in the court with him with most of the school watching and Sakuragi actually manages to have something of a surprise lucky moment, and a really bad and embarrassing moment for Akagi, that will allow for Sakuragi to join the team. Though he's able to do this, he's so clueless on the rules and basics that he's relegated to complete newbie status and spends his time training with the team manager doing things like learning to dribble, cleaning the court and the balls and so forth. The rivalry really starts up once Sakuragi, Rukawa and Akagi are all on the same court and have to interact but all of them are immensely talented in different ways that they can see the potential but have to learn to work together.

Sakuragi is an instantly likeable character for me but he's also more rough than a lot of characters in this role and he keeps to it for longer than most others do as well. We don't get much with Rukawa here other than one fight scene that really spells him out easily enough but we do get some good stuff with Akagi and his sister Haruko and the secondary characters of Sakuragi's friends shine nicely in how they really feel about one of their own and what they'll do for him. This is a long series with more than one hundred so there is more than enough time to explore the characters beyond this. What we get here is the introduction and basic setup for what's to come.

One area that really makes me call into question the people working on the release is something that required some knowledge from others. When Haruko is showing off herself with Sakuragi a bit, she calls out the names of Jordan and Carter while running down the court. Now it may just be me, but I don't think I heard those names in the Japanese track but it was there in the subtitles (and the dub). From what I recall, I don't think these names were altogether accurate for the original time of this (93 if you go by anime, 89 if by manga) and certainly not for a schoolgirl in Japan. Since basketball was just getting national attention at this time there were a number of rising stars there that I think she'd have called out more easily.
However it never dissapointed me...