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Slam Dunk 10 Days After Epilogue's Reprint Confirmed
posted on by Egan Loo
The Oricon news source has confirmed this weekend that Slam Dunk 10 Days After, the epilogue that manga creator Takehiko Inoue drew for his Slam Dunk basketball manga on a 23 school blackboards, will finally get reprinted this year. Inoue had hinted on his website on January 15 that this story will get a general release after four years. Inoue drew the epilogue to thank his readers for buying 100 million copies of his manga.
Inoue created Slam Dunk 10 Days After at Misaki High School, a school that had closed down in Kanagawa Prefecture just southwest of Tokyo. Inoue drew the manga with chalk on 23 blackboards scattered across the campus. For three days starting on December 3, 2005, over 5,000 fans came to that shuttered high school to see what happened to the Slam Dunk characters 10 days after the main story ended. The epilogue did get reproduced in an issue of Switch magazine (pictured at right), a set of "blackboard cards," and a documentary DVD for the event, but all three have long since sold out. The blackboard card set now goes for 18,199 yen (about US$200) on online secondhand sales.
Inoue serialized the original Slam Dunk manga from 1990 to 1996 in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine. The story follows Hanamichi Sakuragi, an trouble-making boy who joins his high school basketball team to impress the captain's sister. He gradually gains a passion for the sport and helps his team rise to national glory. The manga spawned a popular animated series and sparked nationwide interest in basketball. Viz Media will publish the second volume of Slam Dunk in North America next month.
