The golden age of Weekly Shonen Jump was that of the 90s. Why this decade? Simply because the best-selling stories of all time were published and boosted the magazine’s sales. Dragon Ball, Yu the Ghosts and also the legendary slam dunk manga. Takehiko Inoue brought this story to the 1990s and wowed readers.
Soon Slam Dunk will be back with a movie, and what better opportunity to retrace the editorial history of these characters who are still loved and admired today? Takehiko Inoue is a 1967 born manga artist who took his first steps in the manga sector as assistant to Tsukasa Hojo, the world famous creator of City Hunter and Cat’s EyesThat same year, however, he began laying the groundwork for his solo mangaka career by releasing Kaede Purple, in which he conceived the character of Rukawa Kaede.
After a failure with Chameleon Jail in 1989, he focused on basketball, a sport that was not very popular in Japan until then. The author could have chosen any sport and the editor pushed other directions too, but he chose basketball because Inoue practiced it at school to impress girlsjust like Hanamichi Sakuragi. Only over time did Inoue begin to appreciate the sport itself, following a path similar to that of the protagonist of Slam Dunk.
Success came almost instantly, and within a few years Slam Dunk became one of the best-selling manga of all time, breaking a record that was only recently broken by Demon Slayer over 20 years later. With the conclusion of slam dunk, There was a basketball boom in Japan In 2010, the Japanese Basketball Federation officially thanked the Mangaka for its contribution to the development of the sport in the Japanese archipelago.
And it’s not surprising that Slam Dunk’s birthdays are still warmly celebrated by its fans around the world today.
