Authors always have some work that influences their writing style and choices, and for Tadatoshi Fujimaki that work is Takehiko Inoue’s Slam Dunk.

In a recent magazine interview, KuroBasu author Tadatoshi Fujimaki talked about what influenced his popular basketball series. Unsurprisingly it was the classic basketball manga from the nineties, Slam Dunk.

During the interview, he states “It was definitely because I loved Slam Dunk that I started. I’d had the experience of reading it and really being satisfied with it afterwards. The vocabulary was suitable for children and the tournaments were also nice to look at. That’s why when I decided I wanted to draw a basketball manga, I thought back on Slam Dunk. From the wording to all the struggles against the rival character, victory despite these circumstances, the national tournament finals, they were all influenced by this work.”

It’s true that Slam Dunk was also a really popular shonen manga during it’s time, and still is among sports manga fans. It’s been gaining popularity again, with one character even appearing in a poll for who female anime fans thought was the coolest, and more recently a new figure release.

He was also asked just how it might end, and warned readers that he was only speaking half-truths when he said how it might end, because if it ended so would his serialization. To keep it going he would have to have Kuroko lose the tournament again and again, before finishing with a revenge two years in the making. As Fujimaki put it “If it ended that way, I think it would be interesting.”

It may be interesting, but it would certainly take a while to reach that ending and doesn’t bode well for the team’s current situation in the manga.

Keep up with all your manga news here on SGCafe!

Feel free to join in the community discussions going on in the forums.

Source: Yaraon!

Leave a comment