Every Version of Slam Dunk

From a one-shot to 157 million copies

Slam Dunk began with a prototype. In the summer of 1990, Takehiko Inoue published a one-shot called Aka ga Suki in Weekly Shonen Jump Special, sketching the rough outlines of a red-haired delinquent and a girl named Haruko. That autumn, the full series launched in Weekly Shonen Jump and ran until June 1996, producing 31 collected volumes and selling over 157 million copies worldwide. The premise was deliberately simple: Hanamichi Sakuragi, a fight-prone high school misfit with zero basketball knowledge, joins the Shohoku High School team to impress a girl and finds something he is actually made for.

Inoue's timing was serendipitous. Basketball was ascending in Japan in the early 1990s, fuelled partly by the NBA's global expansion and the arrival of Michael Jordan on the world stage. Slam Dunk met that wave and helped accelerate it, credited by many in Japan with driving a generation to pick up the sport. Toei Animation adapted the manga almost in real time, premiering the TV series in October 1993 while the manga was still running, and releasing four short theatrical films between 1994 and 1995. Video games arrived on the Super Famicom and other platforms through the mid-1990s.

Then the series went quiet for more than two decades. Inoue moved on to Vagabond and Real, and the anime never covered the manga's climactic final arc. It was not until 2022 that Inoue himself returned to direct The First Slam Dunk, an animated film that retells the story's pivotal match from the point of view of point guard Ryota Miyagi. The film replaced the entire original voice cast, blended 2D and CG animation, and opened on December 3, 2022 in Japan, where it outperformed both Demon Slayer and Suzume at the box office that season.