Slam Dunk 🏀 Vol. 1 (Ch 1-9)

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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:basketball: Welcome to Slam Dunk Volume 1 (Ch 1-9) Discussion :basketball:

Return to the Home Thread ・ Go to Vol 2

This is an informal book club. Read at your own pace and use the space here to ask questions, post reactions, and get hyped about reading this legendary manga!

Slam Dunk Tankobon edition Volume 1 covers Ch 1-9.
(Kanzenban edition Vol. 1 covers Ch 1-11; see note about editions in the home thread)

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:closed_book: Details :open_book:

Natively: Level 23
Furigana: mostly (see screenshots in BBC nomination post)

Discussion Guidelines

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How do I join in?

  1. Get yourself a copy of the book (see “Where to buy” below)
  2. Click on the participation poll below to let everyone know you’re planning to join in
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Where to buy

No ebook available, so I’ve put in extra effort track down more links for physical copies. Read the note on editions before buying.

See note about editions in the home thread, and there may well be updates on buying links there, too.

Physical copy (Tankoubon edition): Amazon, Manga Republic (used/new), Verasia (EU), Kinokuniya (USA)

Physical copy (Kanzenban edition): Amazon, CDJapan, Manga Republic (used/new), Verasia (EU)

Resources

  • Vocab spreadsheet (includes main characters, and enough vocab from Ch 1 to get you over the hump)
  • Male speech tutorial
  • Contractions tutorial
  • A discussion document from 2 forum members (mitrac and prath) who read Slam Dunk together. Warning! Spoiler tags aren’t possible so attempt reading the chapter first then the discussion for that chapter. Don’t scroll down beyond that chapter’s discussion before reading the next one.

Poll :loudspeaker:

Readers: How far are you in the story?
  • Just watching for now
  • I hope to start soon!
  • I’m reading Volume 1
  • I have already read Volume 1
0 voters

Want to rejoin the discussion when future readers have questions or comments? Set the thread status to Watching below!

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@Prath and I read Slam Dunk volume 1 together and thoroughly enjoyed it. We’re going all in to read the series together and with anyone else who would like to join us! We’re just starting Vol 2 now, but we’ll be watching this thread :eyes: to help you out.

To celebrate finishing the first volume, we decided to start this thread to share the resources we gathered that made reading the first volume a lot easier for us! We hope the links in the home post above, our vocab spreadsheet, and especially sharing our conversational discussion document (warning spoilers) helps anyone who is interested in this manga to read it!

Happy reading! :slightly_smiling_face:

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Yess, absolutely! It will be so fun to discuss the first volume all over again, especially because we’ve already read it once.

So if anyone is planning to read, please feel free to go all out and ask any questions you have/share your thoughts! :basketball:

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I’m so glad to see this, since I own the whole paper set. It’s probably still a bit above my level but I’ll be sure to use the vocab lists when I get to it!

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oooh how fun, at some point post a photo in the home thread!! I’m collecting as I go so it’s not so impressive

It will be fun to see you around! And if it makes you feel better - you get used to it quickly and it gets dramatically easier chapter for chapter. So although chapter 1 reading felt like wading through treacle when we started, chapter 2 got a bit easier, etc, until chapter 5 I think we both felt like - wow we can read in Japanese!

… and then chapter 7 was a doozy lol, but you’ll have the benefit that we and other members of this lovely community can answer questions, and we put a lot of notes in the discussion doc for that chapter if I remember right

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Definitely agree with this. The more I read the more easy it became. Especially after finishing the second volume I felt it was a really big difference to how fast/smoothly I read the first. The initial hump can be really hard, but if you’re able to learn some words and slang that come up often, you get used to the authors writing style and choice of vocabulary.
Just one example, I didn’t remember ever hearing the word 相当 before. But after I learned it towards the beginning of the manga I’ve seen it pop up again in slam dunk and other places at least 20 times haha.

Since its a sports manga, I also find that depending on the chapter some may go faster than others. Especially if its chapter in the middle of a game, or if you’re just really in the flow it can go really fast. But then sometimes after a match there will be a lot of dialogue, so it feels like you’ve slowed down a lot.
But I agree with mitrac too that we’d be here and willing to answer any and all questions! It wouldn’t be a bother at all :DD

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I have already read this volume, but I thought I’d flip back through and drop down some of my thoughts!

Volume 1 Thoughts

I agree with others about this manga in its humor. Its not like I was expecting or not expecting anything in particular, but the absolutely stupid humor surprised me! And in the best possible way, I love it :rofl:
Sakuragi is stupid, straight forward with his emotions, and I think that makes him very loveable haha.

I was also surprised with his little friend gang! They’re first making fun of him, laughing and everything, but when you see more of them you see how much they actually really care for each other!! I thought that was really sweet. After Sakuragi my favorite is Youhei, thats my BOY. He is such a genuine and encouraging friend

I also enjoy Sakuragi and Rukawa’s funny little rivalry thing. My only problem with it is I wanted more!! Which is silly since its just the first volume, but especially on Rukawa’s side I want to see him play more and learn more about his character. Its not that I don’t care about him (or maybe I am just too heavily Sakuragi biased :relieved:) but we haven’t seen as much of him or even much of what he’s thinking

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I’ve read the first chapter so far. Story thoughts:

So, the main character is quite a piece of work. Four pages in, he’s already headbutted four people. It was quite fitting and ironic that he ended the chapter floored as he had hit himself on the backboard. His hairstyle reminded me of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, which might not be entirely coincidental. He seems like the stereotypical ‘bad boy’. I don’t really like him yet, but I suppose you can say “there’s a lot of room for character growth”. :smiley:

I like his posse of friends. They’re not afraid to make fun of him, both in the beginning when he’s rejected, or in the end when they find him on the floor with a big bruise. The way they’re drawn as they see what’s happening was pretty funny.

Looking forward to the next chapter.

Question on character naming

So, from the spreadsheet 花道 is the main character’s last name and 桜木 is his first name. This surprised me at first. His friends call him by his family name, and he’s immediately on first-name basis with the girl. She calls him Sakuragi-kun, and he calls her Haruko-san. From previous high school manga I’ve read (not too many yet, I admit), I figured students mostly called each other by last name, especially when they’re not close friends. Could anyone weigh in?

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volume 1 overall thoughts

Sorry about the late reply!

I totally agree! Although I initially disliked Sakuragi, he grew on me very quickly! He’s so dumb in a cute/endearing way.

Sakuragi’s so-called gangster group (read: high school friends pretending to be tougher than they actually are) is pretty surprising and adorable. I got to see more about the genuineness and care in the second volume though!

This is hilarious :rofl:

character naming

Oh wow - this is a great observation! I completely missed it.

I’m probably not the right person to answer this because I haven’t read much high school manga. I hope others can give a more precise/clear explanation.

Just want to share some of my thoughts anyways.

I’ve heard that using first names is quite intimate, and I’m guessing Haruko maybe started using them to convince Sakuragi to join the club. And since she was the one to use first name first, I think Sakuragi got excited and followed along because he wanted to be close to her as well?

I may be completely off about this, haha. Thanks for bringing this up!

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Chapter 1

I hadn’t noticed or thought about that contrast but I love it! Surely not an accident that his first experience with basketball is getting “headbutted” by the backboard :joy: I had similar impressions, lots of room for chard development. Although even before some of that happens the silly humour that @TheNerdyNova mentioned totally won me over

I’m really looking forward to the discussion as you go through by chapter! You noticed different details and it’s so interesting

name use

Also guilty of not noticing or thinking about this. I have a vague memory of my friend telling me her friends transitioned from using first names in the younger years to last names in high school because it seems more adult. I’ll ask her!

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I had a mistake in the spreadsheet, which is now corrected, and then a discussion with a native Japanese friend about naming conventions that was still relevant.

Naming Stuff

Ok, so I discussed this with my friend and got some more details.

First of all, I’m really sorry, the spreadsheet was wrong and I had the surname and given name for 花道 the wrong way around. I made that page pretty early on before I was confident enough to check on a Japanese website and the problem on English sites is they don’t use consistent character naming conventions, so they use a different order between first/last name for different characters. I didn’t notice that at the time, although luckily none of the other characters were incorrect, but I think their names were a bit easier to identify.

I corrected that and double checked the ones on there with a Japanese character list that I put on the resources tab.

桜木・ 花道
Surname ・Given name

Now for your question, which is still relevant despite my mixup in that there is some interesting name stuff going on here. Haruko calls Hanamichi by his surname, yet he calls her by her given name. Hanamichi and his friends call each other by their given names. But this English distinction of first/last name isn’t the whole story in Japanese. Here’s how my friend broke this down, with a caveat at the end on major exceptions (and a big caveat that we had this discussion half in Japanese, half in English, :joy:):

Here is the order of forms of address in order from closeness to less close, using Hanamichi as the example:
花道 桜木 花道くん 桜木くん 桜木さん

There is a lot of nuance still, but in a simplified way of how these are used here:

Hanamichi and his gang use the first one with each other because they are super close: given names / no adornmnet (花道)

Hanamichi likes Haruko, and is using the closest one he can politely since they only just met, the 3rd one for her (given name with adornment 晴子さん)

Haruko uses something just a tad more distant with Hanamichi, the fourth one: 桜木くん. I asked my friend if Haruko was romantically interested in Hanamichi if she would have used 花道くん and she said yes. I don’t think this is a spoiler, as this is something any Japanese person would pick up on, but I’ll put it behind a tag just in case.

I think I got that right now :melting_face:

Now for the caveat, these things can change a lot by school and decade and personal preferences, and what is cool at the time etc etc. For my friend, at the time she went to high school, it was cool for the girls to call each other (close friends) by the fifth one (surname-san), because it was what adult males did (ie, grownups in a influential positions). So in other words, they were purposefully breaking the closeness convention with each other for a bit of fun.

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naming

So I’d say I was maybe 1% right :laughing:

Thank you so much for asking your friend and letting us know about it!

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Thank you so much for that explanation! Makes sense, and always interesting to get some added perspective on cultural phenomena.

I’ve read chapters 2 and 3. Eager to continue. The difficulty is quite manageable (with a dictionary app on the side), as long as I don’t go for 100% understanding with all of the slang and abbreviations. Still, the gist of what they’re saying is well-understandable even without researching everything.

Story thoughts, ch.2 and 3

I’m starting to warm up to Sakuragi. He’s still way too hot-headed and ready to throw punches, but what he really wants is just a girlfriend to walk to school with. That’s sweet. :*)

Haruko-chan mostly seems very naive at this point. It’s cute that she’s worried about cleaning and disinfecting Rukawa’s wound. :wink: The plot point where she blames Sakuragi for the fight seems only a partial misunderstanding to me: it’s not like he was an innocent bystander, he was totally ready to start the fight all over again. In that sense, she does get an honest look at the kind of guy he is (also). I’m guessing/hoping this might be the trigger he needs to get his acts together and turn his life around - sort of… I’m assuming we haven’t seen the last brawl. :man_shrugging:

The addition of the three friends as an audience works really well, I think. They seem mostly like a stand-in for the reader, and we get to cheer and console the main character along with them. The joke of them being called “etc.” in the role call was very funny. :smiley:

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a big win considering neither of us went to a Japanese high school and the spreadsheet was wrong :joy: I was so overwhelmed by everything else in Ch 1 I didn’t even think about what it meant that different versions of Hanamichi’s name were flying around, so kudos @Till for noticing!

Ch 2-3

I just flipped through this to remind myself of these chapters - ah I can totally see why you read them together! And I hadn’t really noticed that at the beginning of the chapters he draws Hanamichi (I’m on a first name basis whereas I see Till is sticking with Sakuragi lol) in basketball uniform, such an interesting choice I hadn’t really thought about at the time. Kind of like saying, despite all this happening - you know where it’s going, stick with me, don’t give up on Hanamichi

That part is so adorable. I love the build-up to that and teenage drama viewpoint of that being the pinnacle of getting what he wants in life.

yeah, he’s tough character to like at first. I had a lot of goodwill going into this manga fortunately, other wise I honestly probably wouldn’t have been able to look past the brawls and appreciate the humor and look forward to the story and character development. So I’m glad I had that going in, it’s worth it! The brawl at the end of Ch 3 is pretty graphic, I was glad for that to be behind me.

There are so many scenes where the art plays with their position in the scene, too, I love that. It’s part of what love about reading this manga a bit slowly, is looking at the art and the scenes. I always give a chapter one last pass and normally I notice some fun effects and appreciate the effort Inoue went to to capture some action, convey movement, or just find a really cool perspective to capture details + a huge scene.

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I’ve read the full series in English, and I own the first three volumes of the special edition in Japanese. I’ve owned these books for over a year. I’ll give this a go this weekend.

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how fun, welcome to the club! We have threads up for Vol 1 and 2 (tankobon), just let me know what chapter your third volume gets up to and I can create some discussion threads (I’m just on volume 2 (Ch 11) now). Looking forward to it!

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Story thoughts, Ch. 4-5

Lost of action in these chapters, with the confrontation between Hanamichi and the Captain. The reading was a bit slow for me, lots of text on the pages despite all the action. Makes me want to read faster, because the story really gets me interested in what happens next. That’s good motivation to keep on studying!

Hanamichi is hilarious, the way he believes he’s so smart and totally incompetent as well (trying to kick the ball away from the Captain on p. 95 after lots of strategising). Still, on p. 104 we see one of his strengths as well, which is a really nice touch: He’s really fast, and Captain credits him for it. That makes his (supposed) future as a successful basketball player a bit more believable. And he has plenty of determination, which should resonate (even if it’s currently directed in the wrong way).

Hanamichi tripping and pulling down Captain’s pants was funny (and very unexpected!), but the highlight for me was a panel on page 110:
花道：こっちは謝ってんのになんて短気なヤローだ！！
友達、一緒に：オマエもね
:joy:

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Yes!!! That totally caught me off guard too!! So stupid but so funny :rofl:

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Story thoughts, Ch 6-8

Chugging along, just finished chapter 8 where Hanamichi is officially entered into the basketball club and finishes his first training. I’m happy that the story is progressing this far, I was ready to see our protagonist take meaningful steps to push the story along.
The confrontaton between Hanamichi and the Captain had a nice buildup and a great conclusion. Artwork on page 133 and 134 was great!

I’ll happily continue reading this series along with my other book clubs. Let’s see if I can catch up to you, so we can actually ‘read together’. Not a goal in itself, but would be nice.

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You’re almost done with vol 1! That will be so fun when you catch up to us.

Yes I love these shots too! I really like the top view on p 135, as well. It’s a nice transition from action to whaaaat just happened, like a full school reaction feeling After finishing a chapter I do another pass just to admire what Inoue achieved in the artwork

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