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11th Paralympics Anime Short is Collab with Dear Boys Basketball Manga
posted on by Kim Morrissy
The 11th installment of the NHK's "Anime x Para: Who is Your Hero?" (Ani × Para: Anata no Hero wa Dare Desu ka) animated project will collaborate with Hiroki Yagami's Dear Boys basketball manga.
The short will air on October 18 on NHK BS1. The story centers of Shōnan Dai Sagami High School first-year student Yoshiki Mori. After he gets berated by Ayumi Fuse, the captain of the basketball team, he meets a girl named Rin Nakamura, who is practicing basketball in a wheelchair. Yōsuke Sugino voices Yoshiki Mori, Marie Iitoyo, and Tomokazu Sugita plays Ayumi Fuse. Daichi Miura will create the theme song "Not Today."
Yagami's original Dear Boys manga focuses on Kazuhiko Aikawa, a transfer student to Mizuho High School. A lack of players and a coach quitting due to conflict with a student leaving the team have left the Mizuho High School basketball team gutted. Aikawa joins, and brings the team back to competitive shape through his love of the game. Eventually, the manga shares its focus between the Mizuho High School team and the teams and players of other schools.
Yagami launched the first Dear Boys manga in 1989 and ended it in 1997. The series has inspired a prequel and multiple sequels. Yagami launched the Dear Boys Act 4 manga in Monthly Shonen Magazine in October 2018. The story is set one year after Kazuhiko and Mizuho High School's inter-high victory, and is set in the famous Shōnan Dai Sagami High School, Mizuho's rival school. The manga centers on Fuse, the school basketball team's ace who aims for the nationals, and a new freshman protagonist.
The first manga inspired a 26-episode television anime series that premiered in Japan in 2003. Bandai Entertainment released the anime (retitled as Hoop Days) in English in 2005.
"Anime x Para: Who is Your Hero?" is an animated series aiming to increase interest in parasports ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo. Previous shorts in the series collaborated with Captain Tsubasa for blind soccer, Baby Steps for wheelchair tennis, renowned Ashita no Joe artist Tetsuya Chiba for wheelchair rugby, and Yowamushi Pedal for para-cycling, among others.
Source: Comic Natalie
