The First Slam Dunk, rather than fulfilling the youth of 26 years ago, is more like Inoue gave the doubtful teenagers the courage to face the king of the mountain again.
“Dad, why didn’t Xiangbei win the national championship in the end?” I started showing my son Slam Dunk when he was five years old. Knowing the ending, he asked me with a puzzled face.
This question also puzzled me back then. In the Japanese sports comics I read in high school, no matter how badly injured or tired, the protagonist team won the national championship in the end by virtue of its power. Although the other two I watched were Takahashi Yoichi’s Captain Tsubasa and Mizushima Shinji’s Hot Blood Ball.
I thought about it, and said to my son: “Because Xiangbei has put their best everything together in the Shanwang battle.”
My son was a little confused, and I seemed to understand but didn’t understand. I smiled and stroked his head and said that you will understand when you grow up.
I didn’t find the answer to this question until after I was 30. After finishing the Mountain King, Xiangbei, who was physically exhausted and injured, was doomed to be impossible to win the national championship, but they achieved something that even the national champions could not do: beat King of the Mountain. The five members of Xiangbei burned their lives and broke through the limit in this game, allowing Sanno to use his signature full-court oppression + ace Zebei Eiji to fire twice and pull the gap to about 20 points, but in the end they were still defeated by the first-year and second-year duo in Xiangbei lore.
The king of the mountain is really strong. The momentum and physical strength shown throughout the game, and even the last wave when Fukatsu stabilized the team and handed over to Zebei, made everyone feel: this is the king. From falling behind by more than 20 points, Shohoku started a 19:3 counterattack with Sakuragi’s rebounds. The general team may have collapsed and vented thousands of miles, but Fukatsu can lightly tell Kawada Masashi and Sawakita Eiji: If you let If the one-on-one grade partners play aggressively, we will be in trouble. Then there was Eiji Zebei’s solo show, which aroused his competitive spirit, and then pulled the gap to 19 points.
According to the teams Shanwang has encountered in the past, the gap of nearly 20 points is close to 5 minutes left in the game, and it is probably time to call it a day. The gap has been reduced to five points, and Sanwang probably has never faced such a team. So when Mitsui made a three-pointer plus a penalty to narrow the gap to one point, Domoto would say that the game is now a struggle of willpower, because even if it is as strong as the mountain king, it has never met such a team that will not give up.
If the game is two or three minutes longer, Xiangbei may not be the winning side. But the whole basketball game is 40 minutes, this is the rule. Sakuragi told Coach Anxi: I only have now, and maybe I also realize that I may not be able to beat the national champion like now. The pain that I have never felt in my body makes him afraid. Maybe this is his last game.
Inoue Takehiko chose Miyagi Yoshida as the protagonist in this movie, and his personal thoughts and other incisive analyzes have been analyzed one after another. Starting with five players in northern Hunan, Miyagi is the setting closest to the average person. He does not have Akagi’s tall stature, Sakuragi and Rukawa have extraordinary physical condition and basketball talent, and he does not have Mitsui who has interrupted basketball training for nearly two years, but can return to compete with Rukawa for the trump card of Xiangbei in a short time after his return. Every day. In addition to the innate condition of speed, all the dribbling and organization that he is praised for are all due to his own guilt for his dead brother and guilt for his family.
If you are a little older, you should have the impression that even Lin Jianping, a dwarf tiger in Taiwan in the 1990s, was 171 centimeters. Miyagi’s 168 cm is the one destined to be slapped on the field. From Fujima Kenji, Maki Shinichi, Itakura Daijiro to Fukatsu Kazunari, each of them is almost 10 cm taller than Miyagi. From the moment he stood on the field, he was You have to fight against your inherent disadvantages. There is no fairness on the basketball court. Just like fate, no matter what kind of opponent you meet, you have to fight to the end.
Of course, Miyagi knew that it wasn’t his words that caused his brother’s accident, but compared to his father’s death and his mother crying and bewildered, his brother, who was only three years older than him, stood up and took care of the family without hesitation, whether it was in In life or on the court, my brother is the one who is far better than myself. After his elder brother passed away in an accident, Miyagi couldn’t carry the family together, and was severely defeated on the court. When his mother chose to put away all his elder brother’s belongings, the relationship with his mother also came to an irreparable cold war. However, the mother’s choice of changing the environment caused Miyagi, who had just hid herself in the shell, to be rejected and bullied by her classmates, and made Miyagi walk even more into the lonely protective shell.
Inoue set up Mitsui and Miyagi to meet on the field by chance. Although it was just a one-sided relationship, Mitsui’s enthusiastic suggestions and whispers reminded Miyagi of his brother; Disapproving, but Miyagi spoke out his thoughts and began the first step of integrating into the team. After the senior high school senior’s last battle, his bitter words towards Akagi and his satire towards Miyagi may also make Miyagi realize that he is not the only one who feels pain and powerlessness on the court.