I’m not a sports fan, I never have been, but that changed when I started watching basketball, and I started watching basketball because I read Slam Dunk (1990-1998).
Some of this generation's greatest players and teams, maybe of all time, are competing right now in the NBA finals. The next GOAT of basketball Victor Wembanyanma is trying to continue the San Antonio Spurs’ dynasty against a team with one of the biggest fanbases in the world, the New York Knicks. It’s history in the making.
People around the world tune in because they care about sports, they have FOMO, while others tune in because someone or something told them just how exciting basketball and basketball culture can be. For myself, for many across eastern Asia, and for many animanga fans, we learned to care about basketball from Takehiko Inoue and his seminal series, Slam Dunk.
There are other sports series with large fanbases, whether that’s another basketball series like Kuroko no Basuke (2008-2014), boxing sensation Hajime no Ippo (1989-present), or the huge volleyball series Haikyū!! (2012-2020). So why is Slam Dunk so special?
Slam Dunk is special because it was the complete package in 1990, when I read it in 2024, and now. Even so, from the first page, chapter, and volume, it may not look like that. At the beginning of the series, Hanamichi Sakuragi is a big teenage delinquent who joins the team because a girl talks to him and asks if he can do a slam dunk. He doesn’t even know the first thing about the sport, and when he actually tries playing, he hates it. Still, he keeps playing to get closer to the girl, and from there, it doesn’t take long to realize he will do anything, including putting his body on the line, to help his team win and show that he's a basketball genius.
The basketball element isn’t what makes the series special. Author Takehiko Inoue understands the story could have happened with any other sport. He simply chose basketball because it’s what he knew and was passionate about.
To see what the special sauce is that made me fall in love with Slam Dunk, we have to go deeper. If I try to distill Slam Dunk into one thing, one word that will make you decide to read it without dipping into cliches, I would say–complete. Slam Dunk is special not because it’s doing anything that other popular sports animanga aren’t. But, when you step back and take into account everything about the series, from the characters to the art, the pacing, the heart, you get an experience that other works haven’t been able to replicate.
When/if you’ve read Takehiko Inoue’s other series, you can better understand. Whether it’s Vagabond (1998-present) or Real (1999-present), which itself is another kind of basketball manga, you can see that Inoue is a storyteller and illustrator at the top of their game. A good writer can take something you’re interested in and make a fun story out of it, while great writers have the ability to make a story that moves you and makes you passionate about the characters and the world they inhabit, even if it was something you had 0% interest in before.
With the right combination of great rhythm and hyperrealistic artwork, Inoue masters flow and readability for the reader, creating the perfect impact. While the panels by themselves are amazing works that go into museums or in artbooks, moving your eyes from one panel to the next and into the next page and chapter instantly transports you into the middle of the game.
You can hear the shoes squeaking on the court, smell the must of the gymnasium, and feel the physical energy of each player. Slam Dunk is just a straight-up cool story where you intimately get what each player on the team struggles through as they try to reach their respective goals. Inoue doesn’t need to be overly dramatic or shove these characters’ respective identities or characteristics in your face either–they’re real, and it doesn’t take much to recognize, feel, and empathize with them.
There are thousands of reasons to love Slam Dunk, and in the nearly 40 years since its release, it seems like people across the world found the series and fell in love with it the same way I have.
Even though basketball was unpopular in Japan, with Inoue’s editor even telling him that basketball was a taboo, he wrote about his passion. I’m grateful he did because then he was able to grace the world with something amazing, something with a significant and measurable cultural impact.
Inoue received many letters from readers telling him how they began playing basketball because of his series. Japan even hit a record number of high school basketball players for girls in ‘94 and boys in ‘95.
In 2002, Inoue won the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize.
In 2006, Inoue and Shueisha–Slam Dunk’s publisher– created a Slam Dunk Scholarship, a fully paid academic and athletic scholarship for students to study at a university in America.
In 2007 at the 10th Media Arts Festival in Japan, there was a public poll asking what Japan’s favorite manga was, and Slam Dunk swept.
In 2010, the Japan Basketball Association awarded Inoue with a special commendation for his help in popularizing basketball in Japan.
In 2022, 30 years after the series began, The First Slam Dunk film released (written and directed by Takehiko Inoue), and it became the 7th highest-grossing Japanese film of all time.
It’s the 8th best-selling manga of all time in tankōbon volumes sold. For comparison, Captain Tsubasa (1981-1988) is the next highest sports manga at 90 million in circulation, and that’s with 110 volumes available to buy versus Slam Dunk’s 31.
Essentially, the first wave of basketball’s cultural relevance in Japan was led by Inoue and Slam Dunk. It drew a wide array of people in, regardless of their background. With that said, it is important to mention a few other variables at the time that both influenced Japan and Inoue’s own story. Japan’s fascination with basketball and the era of Slam Dunk was also partly created by:
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Japan TV secured securing rights to broadcast some NBA games in 1990
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The 1990 NBA Japan Games
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Michael Jordan’s reign in the 90s
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The 1992 NBA Dream Team
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The 1992 Japanese asset bubble burst.
While Japan’s interest in basketball has declined since then, this is not unique to Japan. With the rise of the internet and cable TV, the viewership has been more fragmented. Basketball itself was still somewhat popular, but viewership was declining. Thankfully, fewer eyeballs didn’t mean worse basketball–instead, some fans think the game may be better than ever before as global popularity is still on the rise and the talent pool of players is steadily growing.
Viewership may be on the rise again too as the latest Western Conference Finals between the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder is breaking viewership records. It was the most-watched Conference Finals of the last 24 years, reaching nearly 20 million viewers on broadcast alone, with many more keeping up on social media.
Slam Dunk still has influence today too. More people are going back and reevaluating older animanga series, and the 2022 The First Slam Dunk adaptation shows there is still a large fanbase for the series. Even professional basketball players like Yuta Watanabe and Rui Hachimura of the Los Angeles Lakers have cited Slam Dunk as being major inspirations.
Even without the direct connection of players saying they were drawn to the game by Slam Dunk, it’s fun to see the numerous connections between both worlds. Inoue drew heavy inspiration from the NBA players and iconic plays of the 90s, modeling some panels after specific shots, and almost every main character has an NBA player analog (like Sakuragi mirroring Dennis Rodman or Rukawa after Michael Jordan).
Outside of Slam Dunk specifically, multiple players show love for anime, and teams like the Lakers had a crossover promo-night with One Piece. There are even NBA-crossover figures of One Piece characters wearing iconic NBA jerseys (which are the next best thing after iconic Ace and Yamato hats). The next generation of pro athletes and their fans are growing up watching anime and reading manga, and the next generation of animanga fans are pushing for pro sports to further embrace the hype they know and love.
Whether you’re not a fan of basketball, you’re new to the sport, or you’re a diehard rooting for your favorite team in these NBA finals (Go Spurs Go!), you cannot deny the impact that Slam Dunk has had on the global basketball fandom.
If you haven’t read it yet, you never know–maybe if you give it a shot, you’ll turn into the biggest Slam Dunk evangelist you know, talking about the same series and its effect on basketball in 10, 20, 30 years.