Slam Dunk Review

Inoue's basketball is legible. Court geometry, body position and the split second before a rebound are drawn so clearly that a reader who has never watched a game can follow a play, and the Sannoh match's final minutes drop dialogue entirely for pages of pure staging that read faster than real time. The comedy is the disguise. Sakuragi starts as a broad delinquent gag and is converted into an athlete so gradually that the exact page where he stops being a joke is impossible to find.

Rukawa, Akagi and Mitsui each carry a complete arc without stealing the frame, and Mitsui's return is the single best redemption beat in sports manga. The girl who set the plot moving is quietly dropped from it, which is the right call and still leaves a thread hanging. The ending is abrupt, and Inoue has said so himself. What the book never does is inflate: the team loses, on schedule, and the manga simply stops.