What do you feel is the biggest anime in Japan? Hayao Miyazki movies certainly make a ton of money every time he releases one. Dragon Ball Z and Pokemon rank pretty high as well. One Piece holds the record for sales in manga (and is one of the longer running anime to boot). Many of the most popular anime in Japan are also big in the states: Sailor Moon, Naruto, Bleach…why, even Detective Conan (known here as Case Closed) has finally started to gain an audience thanks to Crunchyroll and Netflix streaming the series.

Yet there is an anime that is one of the biggest hits in Japan that has never really caught on in America. Oh, you can access the show legally in the states (which might not be a bad idea considering how good it is) and has been legally available for years. Yet despite many attempts to bring it over and turn it into a hit, this particular show just never caught on despite the rave reviews, strong word-of-mouth from people who have seen it, and having the backing of several big companies. The series in question is Slam Dunk, one of the biggest anime to never catch on in America.

What is Slam Dunk?

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According to Crunchyroll’s website, the story of Slam Dunk is as follows:

Hanamichi Sakuragi, an entering freshman at Shohoku High, holds a record for being rejected by 50 girls during middle school. Ever since the last girl turned him down for a guy on the basketball team, Sakuragi's been traumatized by the sport.

That’s the abbreviated summery. What the series ultimately is about is a teenage boy who joins a basketball team in order to impress a girl he likes, and ends up falling in love with the sport in ways he never anticipated. The series is known not only for it’s exhilarating basketball sequences, but is noted for the warm and lovable characters. Sakuragi starts out as a clueless idiot who is playing basketball just to impress a girl, yet slowly becomes one of the teams best players as he falls in love with the sport.

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The captain of the team is the older brother of the girl Sakuragi likes. He doesn’t think much about this red-headed idiot, but eventually comes to respect him as a great basketball player. As for the girl herself, she initially has eyes for the star freshman Rukawa, but comes to find she may have more in common with ‘nice guy’ Sakuragi. Slam Dunk is a very unexpected crowd pleaser as it perfectly balances action, romance, comedy, and drama. All wrapped in an epic story about a high school basketball team trying to make it to the championship.

Everyone who watches it instantly understands the appeal of the series. Many even express surprise that more anime fans haven’t seen it. You may think that the reason may be that the series was never given a proper (excuse the pun) ‘shot’ in America. The reality is that Slam Dunk has been given more shots that most anime in America. It’s constantly being built, but unlike Field of Dreams, no one comes.

What Attempts Were Made to Release it?

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The first attempt to bring the series over was by the now defunct Gutsoon. Entertainment. They licensed the manga and made it a cornerstone title of their weekly manga anthology Raijin Comics. The magazine never caught on with the public due to the high cost and weekly release (not to mention stiff competition from Shonen Jump, which had the wildly successful Yu-Gi-Oh! and Dragon Ball Z as launch titles). Five volumes of the series were released before ceasing publication.

The manga got a second chance when Viz Media made it part of the Shonen Jump lineup. A few chapters were printed in the magazine before releasing the rest in book format. While the series did get completed, it was never a bestseller, and there are rumors that many first print copies are still available in book stores across the country despite ending over five years ago (it’s not currently available on the Shonen Jump app).

In terms of the show Toei Animation tried to bring the anime over to America themselves. They produced a dub for it and everything. The DVDs were of poor quality and sold terribly as a result. Another attempt was made by Geneon to continue the series, but this release was also canceled. Years later a company called Flatiron Film decided to give the series another chance and released the first 14 episodes on DVD on a Slam Dunk: Season 1, Vol. 1 release. These episodes were in English and did not contain the original Japanese version, so most hardcore fans didn’t want it and future releases have yet to surface.

Finally, after years of false starts, the entire series was made available in subtitled format on various streaming sites like Hulu and Amazon. Today the entire series can be bought digitally from Amazon Prime, but physical media fans are out of luck.

Why Has it Never Caught on?

Slam Dunk anime team

The simple answer is that Slam Dunk – despite the high quality behind it – is primarily about basketball. Sports manga and anime have always struggled in America because comics and sports tend to attract different audiences. Most kids America who read comics don’t particularly like sports, and prefer reading stories of fantasy and superheroes. Likewise, when was the last time you saw a kid in high school who was going to baseball practice in the afternoon and attending an anime club on Saturday?

No one is saying that there aren’t people that don’t like both, only that it’s very rare that someone will like both (heck, despite the fact that superhero movies dominate the box office hardly any of those ticket buyers are reading the comics the movies are based off of). Slam Dunk is a great series whose audience is frustratingly low in America, and unless there is a culture change in the future on comic fans who start playing more sports and sport fans reading more comics, a series like Slam Dunk will always be a tough sell.

In Japan the series ran for over 100 episodes, had four feature films, sold millions of manga, had merchandise, video games, and countless sports merchandise based on it. In America the books just barely got past the finish line, the anime never sold enough to be completed on disc, and despite the significance of the franchise in Japan is still practically unknown in the states. It’s one of those great series that just simple may never find an audience. The good news is that after years of struggling, viewers CAN watch the show in its entirety on Crunchyroll (whether that will result in a large audience at some point is harder to say).

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