"Excuse me, do you like playing basketball?"

I believe many people are familiar with this line from "Slam Dunk".

In 1996, after a hard battle, the "nameless" Shobei ended the "invincible" mountain king and wrote the "Myth of Shobei". However, in the end, Shohoku did not win the national championship, Sakuragi Hanamichi was troubled by injuries after the game, and Rukawa Kaede did not enter the NBA. Such an abrupt and open ending is not satisfactory. As the author Takehiko Inoue said, because youth is imperfect, there will always be regrets.

Twenty-two years have passed. Although many people and things will be forgotten, the news that "Slam Dunk" may be serialized again has consistently appeared on the pages of major news media day after day.

If you keep thinking about it, there will be echoes. This year, fans finally received exciting news. Takehiko Inoue stated on his Twitter that the original 31 volumes of the classic comic "Slam Dunk" will be made into 20 new editions. . The cover of the first volume of the newly re-edited edition has been released, and volumes 1-6 will be released today (June 1).

In order to build momentum for the new reprint, the "Asahi Shimbun" published a full-page advertisement for the reprint of "Slam Dunk" in today's newspaper. Shibuya, Tokyo, has an average daily traffic of more than 400,000 people. A very large promotional board was also placed at the station. Fans who have purchased it have also begun to post photos of volumes 1-6 on social platforms such as Twitter.

The cover of the new and re-edited volume 1 of "Slam Dunk" released today

"Slam Dunk" has been serialized in "Shounen Jump" since 1990, and soon became popular throughout the world There was a basketball craze in Asia, and in 1995 he won the Shogakukan Manga Award, the oldest manga award in Japan. If calculated as a single book, "Slam Dunk" has sold more than 100 million copies in Japan so far, and global sales have exceeded 150 million copies, which is comparable to "The Little Prince" which ranks fifth in the global bestseller sales ranking. Calculated based on the domestic single-volume stamp tax of 42 yen, from the perspective of copyright alone, Inoue Takehiko has earned close to 6 billion yen (approximately RMB 360 million) in income.

In China, this comic also has an extremely large fan base.

In 1996, the animated version of "Slam Dunk" was introduced to China. Although the Internet was not developed at that time and a mature social network system had not yet taken shape, along with the Air Jordan craze of that era and word-of-mouth spread among fans, "Slam Dunk" aroused the viewing enthusiasm of the generation born in the 80s and 90s.

After 2017, the remastered high-definition version of the animated version of "Slam Dunk" was broadcast on iQiyi and has been played a total of 320 million times. The original soundtrack of "Slam Dunk" on NetEase Cloud Music has received a very high number of comments and likes.

In 2014, the "Slam Dunk" mobile game of the same name, authorized by Japan's Toei and Takehiko Inoue and exclusively published by Baidu Mobile Games, topped the paid list within two days after it was launched on the App Store.

To this day, the real-life locations in "Slam Dunk" are still places of pilgrimage for many Chinese fans. In the "Survey on Consumption Trends of Foreigners Visiting Japan" released by the Japan Tourism Agency in 2016, Kanagawa Prefecture's Enoshima Railway and Enoshima Station ranked second among the "Japanese attractions that Chinese visitors most want to visit". In Mount Fuji, Japan.

With the popularity of this comic, a large number of books have even been published in Japan, such as "Workplace Management Skills Learned from lt; Slam Dunk > Middle School", "Slam Dunk Master Victory Learning", "Slam Dunk Master GT; Books such as "Slam Dunk Master Learns Talent Development Skills". But if that's all, "Slam Dunk" can't be called a cultural symbol.

When "Slam Dunk" was first launched, basketball was still a very unpopular sport in Japan. With the release of this classic about a group of high school students pursuing their basketball dreams, a large number of students in Japan have joined basketball clubs. According to public information from the Japan Basketball Association, in 1996, when the serialization of "Slam Dunk" ended, the number of people competing in Japanese basketball exceeded 1 million, reaching its peak in history.

In a survey released by Yahoo News Japan in 2013, "Slam Dunk" surpassed "Dragon Ball" and "One Piece" to become the first "life-changing manga".

The number of basketball players in Japan reached its peak in the 1990s.

In addition to comics, Takehiko Inoue also chose other ways to continue his beloved basketball.

In the summer of 2004, the total sales of single volumes of the "Slam Dunk" comic book exceeded 100 million copies, and the full-page promotional page of "Slam Dunk" was simultaneously published in six major Japanese newspapers, causing a sensation. Takehiko Inoue said in an interview with the Asahi Shimbun that because of the sport of basketball, "Slam Dunk" was able to come out and received high praise from so many people. "This is really an incredible number, so I want to take this opportunity to do something to express my gratitude and give back to the readers, society, and basketball that support my works."

Since To promote basketball, we need to give the younger generation more opportunities to come into contact with the sport. For a long time, compared to sports such as football and baseball, Japanese basketball has received very little attention. Under such a current situation, basketball enthusiasts' playing careers are often limited to high school and college.