Slam Dunk: Takehiko Inoue, the 90s Anime, and The First Slam Dunk's 2022 Return

Slam Dunk occupies an unusual position in modern anime history: a 1990s Weekly Shonen Jump manga that defined sports manga conventions in its decade, an animated adaptation that ended without covering the source material’s climax, and a 2022 theatrical film that finally adapted that climax and reignited the franchise globally three decades after the manga’s conclusion.

The franchise’s structural shape — defined by Takehiko Inoue’s authorial control across both the manga and the eventual film — is unusual enough to be worth examining on its own terms. Few works have had this kind of split lifecycle.

This is the publishing history, the original anime’s incomplete adaptation, the 2022 film’s production, and what Slam Dunk’s late-career global success says about the durability of 1990s sports manga.

The manga, 1990-1996

Takehiko Inoue began Slam Dunk’s serialization in Weekly Shonen Jump in October 1990 and concluded it in June 1996. The completed series ran 31 tankōbon volumes and, by various estimates, has sold around 170 million copies across its publishing history. The work is consistently ranked among the highest-selling Shonen Jump manga.

The premise is structurally simple: Hanamichi Sakuragi, a delinquent first-year, joins Shohoku High School’s basketball team primarily to impress a girl, gradually develops genuine commitment to the sport, and competes with his team through prefectural and national-level tournaments. The work’s narrative ambition increases as it progresses — early arcs are character-driven prefectural play, later arcs build to the climactic Inter-High national tournament where Shohoku faces the dominant Sannoh team.

Inoue’s draftsmanship across the series is among the most studied in sports manga. His basketball action sequences combine technical accuracy (he is a basketball player and the technique on the page is real) with cinematographic page composition that influenced subsequent sports manga directly.

The 1993-1996 Toei anime, and what it didn’t cover

Toei Animation’s Slam Dunk anime adaptation began in October 1993 and ran 101 episodes until March 1996, alongside four theatrical short films. The adaptation followed the manga arc-by-arc through Shohoku’s prefectural matches.

It did not adapt the climactic Sannoh-Shohoku Inter-High match.

The reason is a matter of broadcast timing — the manga had not yet completed when the anime began, the anime caught up to current chapters, and Toei concluded the broadcast before Inoue had finished publishing the Sannoh arc. The arc was published as manga but never received animated adaptation in the 1990s. Subsequent attempts to relaunch the anime did not materialize for nearly three decades.

This created an unusual situation: the franchise’s most-discussed climactic match existed only on the manga page. Generations of readers in Japan, Korea, China, and elsewhere knew the Sannoh game from the printed work but had never seen it animated.

The First Slam Dunk (2022)

In 2022, Takehiko Inoue himself directed The First Slam Dunk, a theatrical film produced by Toei Animation and DandeLion Animation Studio. Inoue also wrote the screenplay. The film adapted the Sannoh-Shohoku Inter-High match — the specific game that the 1990s anime had never covered.

The production decisions are unusual. Inoue had not previously directed animation. The film uses a hybrid of 3D CGI and 2D-style rendering to handle basketball action, a choice that initially generated discussion before becoming widely accepted as fitting Inoue’s draftsmanship. The narrative structure restructures the manga arc, foregrounding Ryota Miyagi (a supporting character in the manga) as the emotional viewpoint character rather than Hanamichi Sakuragi.

The First Slam Dunk premiered in Japan in December 2022. The reception was substantial: it became one of the highest-grossing Japanese animated films of its year domestically. Its international release through 2023 produced an extraordinary result, particularly in Asia.

The China and Korea reception

The First Slam Dunk’s release in China in 2023 produced the franchise’s most consequential commercial outcome. The film became one of the most successful Japanese animated films in Chinese box-office history, generating widely reported figures that placed it among the top Japanese theatrical animation performances in the market.

The South Korean reception was similarly substantial. The original 1990s manga had been culturally formative for Korean readers in the 1990s, and the film’s reception there reflected three decades of accumulated audience.

The film’s success across Asia is a useful case study in how a 1990s sports-manga franchise can retain audience durability across decades when its eventual film adaptation respects its source material’s authorial intentions. Inoue’s direct involvement — both as director and screenwriter — was central to the reception.

The franchise’s cultural reach

Slam Dunk’s cultural impact on Asian basketball is documented widely. South Korea’s basketball culture in the 1990s and 2000s is consistently attributed in part to the manga’s serialization there. Chinese basketball discourse references the work as foundational reading for the sport’s enthusiasts. The work’s reach into Southeast Asian basketball cultures is also widely noted.

This long cultural footprint is part of what made The First Slam Dunk’s 2022 release more than a nostalgic exercise. The film operates simultaneously as a closing of a 26-year-old adaptation gap and as a current-cultural product whose audience had been waiting through generational time.

Where the franchise sits now

The First Slam Dunk’s success has not produced an announced continuation. The manga’s narrative ends at the Sannoh game (with brief epilogue material), and the film’s adaptation of that arc closes the franchise’s main narrative loop. Whether further theatrical adaptations of earlier arcs eventually follow remains an open question.

For Otakira’s encyclopedia coverage, Slam Dunk is tracked across its manga publication, 1990s anime broadcast, 1990s theatrical short films, and 2022 theatrical film with regional licensing and availability information.

Slam Dunk is, in 2026, the most successful late-career adaptation in modern anime — proof that 1990s sports manga can produce global theatrical hits decades after their conclusion when their authors take direct creative control of the eventual adaptation.