Forum - View topicPlaying the Long Game - The Story of Slam Dunk in North America
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2665 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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An excellent historical overview from Coop, and it just reminds me that I really should finally give Slam Dunk a proper go, at some point. I did buy GKids' recent BD for The First Slam Dunk, but so far my only experience with the series has been a handful of episodes and the first volume or two of the manga, both years upon years ago. I definitely really enjoyed what I had experienced of it, though, and I do remember when Toei tried releasing the anime on DVD over here in the mid-00s, as well as the existence of Raijin's release of the manga, though that was happening right as I was getting into anime.
When Viz decided to give the manga a go it was definitely a shocker, but I'm glad they stuck through to the end with it, because classics like it should be something that's also available official in English. Inoue's entire hesitation with eBooks has always been a bit odd, though, since his other basketball manga Buzzer Beater was a literal webcomic back in the mid-to-late 90s, so his reluctance in letting Slam Dunk (& Vagabond) be given any sort of digital release is weird. At the same time, though, Slam Dunk being print-only is likely what also helps make it such a consistent best-seller in Japan, because fans really have no other choice if they want buy it, now do they? |
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GATSU
Posts: 15549 |
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Unfortunately, Short Game got delayed to next year. I think the reason Viz took a chance on Slam Dunk was that Eyeshield survived the market correction of the mid-2000's. Though they kind of used the ending date of 1996 as SD's origin, rather than 1990, to make it seem younger, and that irked me a bit. But finishing that sucker more than made up for it. I just wish Viz would spring for the one-off sequel. Anyway, if you like sports and brawling, don't forget that Kodansha's Ashita no Joe is up for pre-order now.
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Chris Handsome
 Posts: 314 |
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Isn't it about time to rescue the City Hunter manga? Uncensored, no bs.
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GATSU
Posts: 15549 |
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Chris: I'm still wondering why Cat's Eye hasn't been brought over, yet.
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Primus
 Posts: 2814 Location: Toronto |
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It's obvious Toei will do more Slam Dunk in the future. If it's a remake of the manga, it'll be interesting to see if that finally lets the series gain a foothold in the western Anglosphere or if it'll continue to be ignored. It's not guaranteed, but it's better than hoping the original material will suddenly get a second life.
Was this written before the Blue Lock movie was released here? I say that, because it frames that series as being popular in North America. The box office for Episode Nagi didn't really reflect that. It's the lowest grossing of the non-event Crunchyroll releases to date. It only did $600k more than Slam Dunk, despite being a given a proper two-week run in more theatres. Though, admittedly, Japanese audiences didn't make Episode Nagi an unignorable runaway hit like The First Slam Dunk. One had hype that people not familiar with the source material might've heard of. The other was more of a franchise film. Speaking of soccer anime, it's kind of telling Captain Tsubasa wasn't mentioned at all. Its history in the western Anglosphere isn't identical to Slam Dunk's, but there are similarities. Both are legacy WSJ properties that were huge in other markets but got ignored here and have received modern relaunches. Admittedly, the new Captain Tsubasa anime had kind of a botched rollout, but I'm not sure it would've done notably better if it hadn't. |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2665 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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That's ignoring the entire point of the article, though, which is that Slam Dunk has been attempted in English every now & then for roughly 20 years, and only now is it finally starting to find something resembling "success", even if only slightly, while Captain Tsubasa has only finally gotten an official English presence over the past 5-6 years. There's no real point in bringing up Tsubasa in comparison, because Tsubasa has only recently been given anything resembling an attempt in English, as bizarre & kind of botched as it's been. If anything, Slam Dunk's closest comparison would be Fist of the North Star, as that also had literal decades of attempts at finding an in road in English, even getting its own Raijin Comics attempt, but only in the past few years has it finally started paying off. |
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StarAkira
 Posts: 3 Location: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia |
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I've been wondering the same  it's high time they should
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NJ_
 Posts: 3101 Location: Wallington, NJ |
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As someone who bought & owned Interlude on DVD after watching it fansubbed first and knew about the issues with it along with these two before I did, the closed caption subs weren't the only problem. -No chapter stops -Each episode went back to the menu after they finished -Some off-screen Japanese dialogue was muted to match what the dub had (this was at the end of episode 2) The dub itself was so-so aside from the main unnamed character sounding annoyingly bad.
They didn't have a good track record to begin with after the horrid job with their Saint Seiya & Mononoke DVDs but releasing this dub-only was even worse knowing that it was never completed. The only thing they did put out in full was the Digimon dubs and even that can be up for debate because of the lack of the movies. As for The First Slam Dunk, I own it and have yet to watch it but I'll get to it soon and I'll probably get the 4k combo CE whenever they announce it for the bonus disc if it's good enough. |
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Яeverse
 Posts: 1146 Location: Indianapolis |
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Doesn't ask the questions that people have been asking for years...
Viz stop reprinting and do the new edition release. Total missed opportunity. Also surprised the article dings sports movies in Hollywood, every year theres the typical inspiration sports movie + big budget ones (last year, iron claw (❤️ Zac Efron), Gran Turismo, , next goal wins, Creed III) and this year we had multiple (the rowing movie, the bicyclist x dog movie, young woman and the sea). Mangaplus+ grabbing new sports series is pretty good, picked up the hottest newest one Days of Diamond after all. But beyond that, not really any new big sports series on the horizon as most new ones are struggling (shonen jump has failed to launch any beyond blue box), on jump+ Boukyaku Battery has been a low seller for years but the anime has given it a boost curious if Viz will take a chance on it, and Matsumoto looks super compelling dogs, in weekly young jump Dogs Red had a decent start due to the author name recognition, Catennaccio appears to be struggling to sell... For others, guess Ao Ashi too far to get licensed, Ace of Diamond too long to get a print release, same for Major/Major 2nd... |
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Fluwm
 Posts: 1012 |
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This is the kind of ridiculously in-depth article that makes ANN a real treasure for the community. It's especially nice to see this degree of attention levelled at something relatively "niche" like sports manga, whose lack of popularity in the U.S. has always felt deeply wrong, somehow.
I just got an email a day or two ago saying it'd been delayed again -- though just 10 days or so, pushed back to the end of January. I really wonder about the reasoning here. Do short story manga collections really sell that well? It's hard to imagine. Though I have to think the handful of anglophone Adachi fans out there are chomping at the bit to buy literally anything in English. God knows I've three copies of all the Cross Game volumes, including the Kindle copies -- let no one accuse me of not doing my part! Speaking of, from what I can tell, Cross Game wound up being fairly successful overseas -- both the anime and the manga. I've always been curious why no one ever followed up on that by licensing another one of his big series... rather than Short Game, I'd've expected to see someone pick up Katsu!, or H2, or even Touch (though I view Touch as a somewhat less viable option than some of the alternatives, I'm aware that's not a popular opinion). EDIT: One thing Adachi's manga (often) tends to have over other sports series, comparatively speaking, is simply that he tends to keep things a bit shorter. Slam Dunk is something like 30+ volumes, right? Eyeshield 21 is at 37 volumes; Ace of Diamond is at 47 volumes; Major is over 70 volumes; Ippo's well over 100 volumes. That kind of thing can be kind of intimidating. Kinda feels like shorter series in the 10-20 volume range might serve better to create a "foundation" for the genre -- or at least that's what I thought Cross Game was doing back when it released, but yeesh, that was practically a decade ago. |
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Akcoll99
Posts: 280 |
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Yes! My most wanted English release for years. Ever since Gutsoon closed up shop. I was a huge fan of their output and bought Raijin every week when it came out. I even wrote them an email asking about future licenses and was told that Cat's Eye AND Angel Heart were both in the works. But then they abruptly shut down about two months after that... One thing I didn't see in this article is that Slam Dunk got a complete English-language release in Australia long before the US. When the Gutsoon release cut off at volume 5, I purchased the rest of the series from an Australian seller. I've since sold it off as part of a shelf-cleaning endeavor, but I remember the translation quality being pretty good. |
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