Wen 丨 Lucifer
On October 26, an instagram account called "inouetake_" suddenly posted a poster of "Slam Dunk Master". The main body of the poster is the back of the "Five Tigers of Northern Hunan" familiar to the audience, and the cherry blossom road in the c position is standing with a ball, full of momentum. What makes netizens even more excited is that at the far end stands a row of figures dressed in white jerseys, which is the team uniform of the strongest opponent that the protagonists of "Slam Dunk Master" have encountered in the national competition- Sanno Industry, and the poster also has the words "Shonbei vs. Sanno Industry" written impressively below.
A stone stirred up thousands of waves, and this poster suddenly became the focus of hot discussion among netizens: "Is the animation of "Mountain King War" finally hammered?" However, it was immediately discovered that the text on the poster did not mention the cast members such as supervisors, scripts, and starring actors as usual, but wrote the names of manga characters such as Sakuragi Hanamichi, Kaede Ryukawa, and Tsuyoshi Akagi, and the poster was not posted by the certified account of the original author, Yanao Inoue, but a high-imitation account. At this point, it is already certain: this is another online prank.
However, the reason why this fake poster incident can cause netizens to discuss, in addition to the good quality of the poster itself and the texture of the official poster, there are two factors: the obsession of the diehard "Slam Dunk Master" for the imaging of the national competition has not diminished a quarter of a century after the end of the TV animation version; the planning of the new theatrical version of "Slam Dunk Master" is indeed advancing.
Slam Dunk Master (1993)
In 1990, when "Slam Dunk Master" had just begun serialization in Weekly Shonen Jump, "Flyer" Jordan had not yet lifted his first championship trophy, and "Big Bug" Rodman was still a member of Jordan's nemesis "Bad Boy Army", tirelessly refreshing rebounding data on the field, and Inoue Hadaka had just graduated from Kumamoto University for three years.
"Slam Dunk Master" begins with a strong school comedy color, confessing that the bad teenager Sakuragi Hanamichi, who has been rejected fifty times, joined the basketball department because of Haruko Akagi's casual sentence "Do you like to play basketball", bent on winning the hearts of the people she wants, but then the plot gradually becomes serious, and the aimless Sakuragi Hanamichi shows a focused side of her personality, which is suitable for serving as an inspirational idol for adolescent readers. Yuhiko Inoue, who had served as Hojo's assistant, carried forward the teacher's tough realism style and brought the charm of basketball to the fullest, and the manga immediately gained national popularity.
In 1993, "Slam Dunk Master" ushered in animation, and the production was todayo animation, an established animation company. Both the anime and manga series ended in 1996, but as the anime had caught up with the manga series, the story began to develop in two directions: the anime version ended on the eve of the national competition, and the animation production team created a friendly match between Shonbei and Kanagawa Star United to make the audience's familiar characters end one by one; and the manga version ended with Shonbei team's peak showdown with its strongest opponent, Sanno Industries.
Sanno Industries in the manga is an undefeated division in the national competition, stronger than Xiangbei in each position, and the depth of the bench is far thicker than that of Xiangbei. This ultimate battle occupies the entire five volumes of the comic version, and the plot has ups and downs, but it has not been animated, which has made countless SD fans regret it.
Over the years, the Chinese network has always circulated the saying that "Inoue Yanxiong was dissatisfied with the adaptation of the Toei version, and the discord between the two sides led to the delay in animating the national competition". In fact, this is a rumor, although the original plot of the animation team is inferior to the original, and the rhythm is slightly delayed, but the quality of the animated version of "Slam Dunk Master" still belongs to the high level of the contemporaries.
At the same time as the TV animation screening, Toei Animation also produced four theatrical versions of the anime with a length of about 30 minutes, namely: "Sakuragi Hanamichi vs Oda" and "Dominate the Country!" Sakuragi Hanamichi", "The Biggest Crisis in Shonbei!" The fighting spirit of Sakuragi Hanamichi", "The Soul of the Roaring Player!" The scorching summer of Hanamichi and Ryukawa maple". The four theatrical versions are all original, the first three were written by scripter Ryoyuki Suga, and the last one was written by Nobuaki Kishima, who can be said to be an official fan who has nothing to do with Inoue.
"Kado Maki and Oda" (1994)
After the end of the "Yamano Battle", Inoue used only one page to neatly end the shonbei team's "domination of the whole country", which was a deliberate and shocking ending, and the youth of Sakuragi, Ryukawa and others seemed to be frozen in the summer of 1996.
In 2004, the single book of "Slam Dunk Master" sold more than 100 million copies, and Yuhiko Inoue drew "Ten Days After Slam Dunk Master" with chalk on the twenty-three blackboards of an abandoned middle school in Kanagawa, and briefly explained where everyone went after the end of the national competition, which is the last update of "Slam Dunk Master" that fans can see, and the "National Competition" and "Yamano Battle" that anime audiences have in mind are still missing.
"Ten Days After the Slam Dunk Master"
Perhaps it was the official waiting too long, forcing fans to go their own way. Fan-made short films about Shonbei vs. Sanno are popping up on video websites, fans use stop-motion animation and even 2K games to restore this century war, some fan-made short films are rough, some are creative, you can feel the fanwork author's love for the original spilling the screen.
Until the beginning of this year, Yuhiko Inoue suddenly announced on Twitter: "This will be a movie!" And marked the "Slam Dunk Master" label, succinctly announced the official launch of the sequel that fans have been waiting for for twenty-five years. The tweet of just seven words received more than 50,000 likes, and netizens were eager to find out: what does the new work of "Slam Dunk Master" look like? Is it an animated film or a live-action movie? But the most important question remains: Will there be a "Mountain King War"?
Then Toei clarified: the new work is an animated film, will be released in the autumn of 2022, the rest of the information is still in a state of secrecy, so far the official only released a thirty-second trailer. Even in this trailer, there is only one sketch, and the familiar Xiangbei fivesome in a circle wearing red jerseys seems to be cheering each other up, an atmosphere of a big war.
But SD's avid fans still see important information from this trailer: the red jersey is the away jersey of Xiangbei, and in the national competition, the Xiangbei team wore red when facing the Mountain King! Previously, when Xiangbei played against Fengyu, he wore the white of the home field. This sketch greatly increases the likelihood of a "Mountain King War" in the new game.
Not only that, but the audience also found that in the credits, Yuhiko Inoue's title was not "original case" but "supervisor/script" - in the film industry, "acting and directing" is a common phenomenon, but in the manga industry, there are few examples of "drawing and directing", because the production process of animation and manga is completely different, and only rare masters such as Osamu Tezuka and Hayao Miyazaki can cross the border to succeed.
Yuhiko Inoue is undoubtedly one of the most outstanding manga artists in the world today, and although the original author gives people a sense of reliability that "the original work must be restored", this is in fact inoue's first time as an animation supervisor, and it is inseparable from the assistance of experienced deputies. In the official production list, Yasuyuki Ehara, who supervises character design and painting, is an animator with a relationship with the Wit Society.
Takehiko Inoue (right) Tsukasa Yokijo (right) Takehiko Inoue (right) Tsukasa Yokijo
Wit Society, dubbed the "Hegemonic Society" by Chinese animation audiences, has produced many high-level animations in recent years, and is known for its action scenes. The scene of humans killing giants with "three-dimensional maneuvering devices" in "Attack on Titan" is from The hand of Yasuyuki Ehara, and viewers who have watched "Giants" must still remember those gorgeous and speedy pictures. If you want to make sports-themed animation, Yasuyuki Ehara is the best choice. With such mature animators sitting in the seat, whether it involves "Mountain King War" or not, fans of "Slam Dunk Master" must have more reasons to look forward to the new theatrical version.