Toei Animation opened an official website for a new anime film for Takehiko Inoue’s Slam Dunk manga on Thursday.
Inoue serialized the basketball manga in Weekly Shounen Jump from 1990 to 1996. Shueisha published the manga in 31 volumes between 1991 and 1996 and republished 24 new edition volumes under the Jump Comics Deluxe imprint in 2001–2002. As of August 2018, Slam Dunk has over 121.4 million copies of its volumes in print.
Toei Animation adapted the manga into a television anime that aired for 101 episodes from October 1993 to March 1996. The animation studio also produced four short films featuring side stories during the television series’ broadcast.
Geneon Entertainment USA, in partnership with Toei, released the first 20 episodes across four DVD volumes in North America in 2005 before ceasing distribution. Crunchyroll currently streams the anime with subtitles.
Gutsoon! Entertainment published the first five manga volumes in English under the Raijin Comics Imprint in 2003–2004 before going defunct. VIZ Media reacquired the series and published all 31 volumes from 2008 to 2013. The manga has also been published in multiple foreign languages, including Chinese, Spanish, and French.
Slam Dunk won the 40th Shogakukan Manga Award for best Shounen manga in 1994 and was voted the greatest manga of all time at the 10th Japan Media Arts Festival in 2006.
Synopsis
Hanamichi Sakuragi, a tall, boisterous teenager with flame-red hair and physical strength beyond his years, is eager to put an end to his rejection streak of 50 and finally score a girlfriend as he begins his first year of Shohoku High. However, his reputation for delinquency and destructiveness precedes him, and most of his fellow students subsequently avoid him like the plague. As his first day of school ends, he is left with two strong thoughts: “I hate basketball” and “I need a girlfriend.”
Haruko Akagi, ignorant of Hanamichi’s history of misbehavior, notices his immense height and unwittingly approaches him, asking whether or not he likes basketball. Overcome by the fact that a girl is speaking to him, the red-haired giant blurts out a yes despite his true feelings. At the gym, Haruko asks if he can do a slam dunk. Though a complete novice, Hanamachi palms the ball and makes the leap…but overshoots, slamming his head into the backboard. Amazed by his near-inhuman physical abilities, Haruko quickly notifies the school’s basketball captain of his feat. With this, Hanamichi is unexpectedly thrust into a world of competition for a girl he barely knows, but he soon discovers that there is perhaps more to basketball than he once thought.
Official site: https://slamdunk-movie.jp/
Official Twitter: @movie_slamdunk
Source: PR Times
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