The movie version of "Slam Dunk" is a hit, and with the popularity of the movie, several articles are updated, mainly comics and supplemented by animation.
It is iron powder, how to prove it? Because only fans can/will write such partial articles.
I watch Slam Dunk and love analysis.
Theory connects with actual brains, and imagines stories outside of the plot. For example, can Xiangbei win the championship in the next two years of the plot year? National champion of the drama year? Can Lingnan qualify in the second year? It's all this kind of brain hole anyway.
But what I want to talk about today is not a brain hole, but a combination of the anime setting and the real situation, and talk about the Kanagawa event.
As we all know, Inoue Yuhiko's setting and story processing in "Slam Dunk" are relatively realistic, especially the events and several major college basketball teams, there are realistic prototypes. In the atmosphere of realism, in order to pursue story advancement and dramatic conflict, there are still differences from reality.
For example, "Slam Dunk"'s focus and condensation of the Kanagawa Prefecture event is different from the event arrangement of the Japanese college basketball industry, and at least one event is "omitted" from the manga.
Let's get out of the plot and expand the description. (This article is divided into up and down, this is the previous part)
Overview of national competitions
Not counting practice games, "Slam Dunk" mentions a total of 5 college events in the plot year, and focuses on two of them.
Nationwide, the three major competitions in college basketball - summer HI, autumn national sports, and winter selection, are clearly expressed in the book.
★ "HI Contest"
The full name is "Inter High", which is held every summer (August) and basically covers all kinds of sports (it seems that there is no baseball?). ）。
The national competition that Shonobei participates in is one of the "basketball sports conference", which means "tournament" in Japanese, and we will call it the national competition, which is the most important of the three major events and is known as "the prosperous era in the high school basketball world".
★ "Winter Tryouts"
The full name is the "Japan National High School Selection Contest" and it is held in winter (at the end of December). Also known as the Winter Cup, the tournament is more meaningful, with only one place in each county.
At the end of the plot of the manga, all the teams in the prefecture are preparing for this, Xiangbei, led by Miyagi, will face Xiangyang, who retains all senior high schools, Lingnan, who is led by Xiandao, and Hainan, the national runner-up.
PS, in reality, the event was restructured in 09, and the champion and runner-up of the national competition in the same year directly advanced, without occupying places in the county. If this format is translated to the comics, Xiangbei will not have to play Hainan, and it can compete for a place with the other two strong teams.
★ "Autumn no Kuni Body"
It is the "Japan National Sports Games", which is basically held around October every year, similar to our National Games or Universiade.
Unlike the summer and autumn competitions, which use schools as the participating units, the Autumn National Sports is based on the prefecture as the participating unit, and there is no need for prefectural selection, just send a team.
In the 1998 wall calendar of "Slam Dunk" drawn by Inoue, there is a picture of the Aki no Koku body participating in the prefecture as the representative team, and Kanagawa team masters are gathered in it.
According to the plot in "Ten Days Later", in previous years, the Hainan team participated in the national body, but this time it was to send a mixed team in the county (which coincided with the wall calendar painting), and Coach Gaotou and Coach Taoka were competing for the position of coach of the representative team.
There are so many national competitions of "Slam Dunk", which are covered in comics and various picture books, and will not be mentioned more.
In the prefectural competition, the learning is great.
Vanished prefectural events
The school year of high school in Japan, unlike us, is a three-semester system, with winter, spring and summer vacations.
Admission is generally in April (the opening month of "Slam Dunk"), and the end of the first semester is about July, with summer vacation. The second semester starts in September and runs until the winter break at the end of the December semester. The third semester begins in January, mainly for various entrance exams (entrance examinations), and ends in March with spring break, which ends the academic year.
Along with the beginning and end of the school year, there are also four major competitions in the prefecture - regional competition series, college comprehensive series, winter selection series, and newcomer competition series.
In the whole book of "Slam Dunk", there are only two competitions in the county - the college comprehensive county preliminary round held in the summer, which is called the "county competition" in the animation (this article is based on this below), corresponding to the national competition; The winter preliminary round of the winter winner selection prefecture held in the autumn corresponds to the National Winter Cup.
Why do you say that?
During the battle between Shonobi and Shoyo (43 episodes of the anime), coaches Usumi and Taoka were in charge of the commentary in the audience. When introducing Kanagawa's two superstars Fujima and Amu, Usumi directly said that Fujima's first grade was the main selection + ace (the first time in the history of the Shoyo team), and the first and second years of high school reached the final four times in a row, all losing to Amu.
And these four times were the county contest and winter tryouts for each past school year.
It can be seen that in the world view of "Slam Dunk", the author Inoue omitted the regional contest (Kanto Contest) and the Rookie Contest.
So is it impossible that strong teams like Hainan and Xiangyang disdain to participate in such regional or rookie events?
Of course not, because in reality, these major events are county-level competitions, and are open to all high school basketball teams in the prefecture, regardless of the size of the team (except for the winter selection, only the top eight in the county are limited to participate).
And the events are independent of each other and influence each other. The most important thing is the seeding team allocation of the target event.
To put it bluntly, the seeded team (ranking) of this event is not related to the final result of the previous event, and is determined by the final result of the previous event of the same level - not "last" but "last", in a word, to dispel all doubts.
★ For example, the Kanagawa Prefecture Contest battle picture of Saiko in "Slam Dunk" clearly shows the 8 seed teams in the manga plot year.
4 big seeded teams (Hainan, Xiangyang, Lingnan, Buri), the first three rounds are by, only need to play one game eight to four. 4 small seeded teams (Minowa, Higashi Toyoka, Tsukutake, Hinatawa Nishi), the first round was bye.
These eight seeded teams are not the quarterfinals of the previous prefectural competition, but the quarterfinals of the previous event, and in reality they are the Kanto prefectural tournament held in the spring.
If this event exists in the world view of "Slam Dunk", Hainan and Xiangyang must participate, the ranking of the county competition says it all, if they do not participate, these two teams cannot be seeded teams, and can only start from the first round like Xiangbei.
It can be seen that "Slam Dunk" omits the county regional competition and the rookie competition. Only the Summer Prefectural Tournament and the Prefectural Winter Tryouts/Winter Cup were retained. If you calculate so, the ranking of these 8 seeded teams in the plot year county competition is the top eight of the previous year's winter trials.
PS, this also explains why Miuratai, the first opponent of the Xiangbei team county competition, is not the top 8 seed this year, and they clearly said that they want to defeat Hainan News last year's one-shot revenge. Miuradai was eliminated by Hainan after reaching the quarterfinals of last year's county competition, but the winter selection did not enter the top 8 (or did not participate), it's as simple as that.
The reason for omitting these two events is simple, it is to focus on the event + expand the story. Let the protagonists led by Sakuragi and Kaede Rukawa have a few months to run in the relationship + establish a character. Then he participated in the competition, so that the Xiangbei team made its debut in the county competition a blockbuster.
If according to reality, Sakuragi and Rukawa just entered school in April, and they will have to follow Akagi to the preliminary round of the regional competition, and Sakuragi will probably not be able to play as a "true layman" at that time.
"Slam Dunk" not only streamlines two events, but also streamlines the participating teams, and by the way, brings out a small question in the comics.
PS, the information in this article is based on Qeedo, the author of Baidu Tieba "Slam Dunk Bar", and the official website of the "Kanagawa Basketball Association".
"Street Strong" Xiangbei
As we all know, Japan's prefecture-level units, equivalent to our provincial level, although administratively similar to the two, but the geographical size difference is too far. For example, Kanagawa Prefecture, 2416 square kilometers, is a little larger than Shenzhen.
Don't look at the small place, but located in the Kanto region, Kanagawa, within the Tokyo metropolitan area, the population density is quite large, according to 2022 statistics, Kanagawa Prefecture is the most populous prefecture in Japan, surpassing Osaka Prefecture after Tokyo, so many people, the number of universities is also very considerable.
At present, there are 267 colleges and universities in Kanagawa Prefecture (network data), and according to the current situation of economic and demographic changes in Japan in the past 30 years, the number of colleges and universities has not increased much since the early 90s of the "Slam Dunk" plot year.
In the anime/manga, Saiko once said that there are more than 200 basketball teams in the prefecture, and then Akagi also said, "The regional tryouts are coming", and these words came out of 20 episodes of the auto-picture (basketball shoe episode). But here's the problem.
First of all, you clearly said that the regional competition was deleted by Inoue in the world view of "Slam Dunk", why is it still in the anime/manga? Secondly, the county competition table lists only 64 colleges and universities.
This is a case-by-case analysis.
In reality, all colleges and universities are eligible to participate in county-level competitions, and Saiko's "200 teams" are no problem.
In the face of so many teams, the single-robin knockout tournament is too torturous on the schedule, so the prefectural tournament in Kanagawa Prefecture is divided into two stages.
First of all, there are 4 branch divisions in the east, west, south and north, each branch includes 6-8 groups (roughly divided according to the street), each group is composed of 7-9 teams to play a single round robin knockout, and then the group champion can advance to the county tournament, continue to play a single round robin elimination round, a semifinalist, and then it is consistent with the animation.
The picture below shows the battle table of the East Branch Division of the 2022 Kanagawa Prefectural Competition
PS, the "contract A" in the lower right corner of the picture is a joint team of three universities, because the school has a small team member, so they participate together. Taking the prefectural competition as an example, there are only two joint university teams in the entire Kanagawa Prefecture.
It can be seen that this is the qualifier of the county competition, or the qualifying round, first brush a wave of teams, the winner can participate in the county competition. The "regional tryout" that Akagi refers to in Slam Dunk should be this, not the disappearing (Kanto) regional competition.
And in terms of the title in the anime/manga, the events above the prefectural level have the title of "big competition" - prefectural competition, national competition, then Akagi describes the event as "Kanto Tournament", not "Regional Preliminary Tournament".
Simply, to avoid confusion, we call this regional preliminaries the "county branch preliminaries."
So did the Xiangbei team participate in the branch preliminaries? At least the manga was not drawn, it should be omitted, it was just not drawn.
Because if you want to participate in the county competition, you must pass the branch division and win the first place in your group to advance to the county competition.
The 8 seeded teams mentioned above (determined by the results of the previous event) do not need to participate in the group elimination round of their branch division, and directly participate in the county competition at the end of the month, as shown in the figure below of the county competition East Branch Division performance map, the seeded teams are Tong Guangyuan and Fazhengji (many slam dunk fans believe that this is the prototype of Xiangyang).
It can be seen that before the Xiangbei team, it was not a fishbelly team, at least a medium team, and the qualification from the branch division should be the king of the street where it was located... Be able to be in the top 60 out of more than 200 teams.
Otherwise, how can Taicai's team attract former national player Coach Anzai to retire? Let talented players like Mitsui and Miyagi come to admire?
PS, as can be seen from the battle map of the branch division above, there are also teams in the branch division that are treated in the first round, which is probably also prepared for teams like Xiangbei (before the plot year) that are not ranked in the county, but are considered strong teams in the streets.
Moreover, the time when Akagi and Saiko said those words was just after the Lingnan practice match. It didn't take long for Mitsui to bring Tetsuo to make trouble, and when Mitsui returned, they had a prefectural tournament against Miuradai.
So in the comics, the Xiangbei team is most likely after the Mitsui trouble, several bad teenagers recuperated + confined, and the gorilla took Ki Twilight, Yasuda, Shiozaki, Tsunoda the Great, etc., to finish the preliminary round.
Akagi, a player who shines in the national competition, is estimated to be unbeatable in the street, so he easily qualified from the branch division and entered the prefectural competition. There is no need to present it in comics.
Another testimony, the book said, the Xiangbei team in the two years before the plot year in the county competition and winter selection experience, was eliminated in the first round, and the four teams that eliminated the Xiangbei team were finally completed in the latest movie version of "Slam Dunk".
They are Lingnan, Gangawa Industry (shown in the movie version), Ato Industry, and Ritsawa.
The last two teams, Ato Industry and Ritsuzawa , disappeared from the plot year's prefectural competition battle table, and it was obvious that neither team advanced from the division to which the branch preliminary round belonged, it was as simple as that.
PS, realistic prototype team
"Slam Dunk" is very realistic, and it has also attracted many fans to find prototypes in reality, and has been said a lot by various masters, but because this article is in contact with reality, so again, mainly talk about the corresponding school, if you are not interested, you can skip it.
How is Kanagawa's basketball level?
Not very good, as a prefecture with a large population, Kanagawa's basketball is relatively good in the Tokyo metropolitan area, but baseball and soccer are more popular in the Kanto region, and basketball is generally valued. Therefore, when Kanagawa Prefecture reaches the whole country, the basketball level is second-rate.
So far, the Kanagawa team has reached the semifinals of the national competition a total of 7 times, and the best result is 3 runners-up, and it has never won the championship. The most brilliant team is the Affiliated High School of Xiangnan University of Technology, the prototype of the Affiliated High School of Hainan University in "Slam Dunk".
Shonan University of Technology reached the national final four four times in its history and won the runner-up in 1974. In 1995, after reaching the national final four for the last time, Shonan Institute of Technology began to decline, and did not return to the previous level (basically the level of the prefecture's top eight), and Kanagawa Prefecture has not reached the national top four so far.
Interestingly, the serial time of "Slam Dunk" is from 1990 to 1996, which is also the glory period of Xiangnan Institute of Technology. And the comic series ended, and the Shonan Institute of Technology was in decline.
In connection with the plot, the retirement of the "middle-aged man" A Mu has a deep impact, and A Shen and Qingtian failed to continue the tradition, so Xiangbei was the champion the next year!
Just kidding, the plot time of "Slam Dunk" is 92 years, because this year, the prototype of Sanno Industry, the national hegemonic Nodai Industry, was defeated by an unknown team in the national competition. The plot of the comic book is a reference to the reality of that year.
The prototype of the Lingnan team is Kamakura High School, but it is only a school reference and has nothing to do with the record. Because in reality, Kamakura High School is now a fish belly, not to mention the prefectural competition, even the branch division is enough to choke out.
The prototype of the Xiangyang team has many opinions, in fact, the comics are not clearly presented, because the king battle that shaped this team, Hainan vs Xiangyang, was established with reference to the two giants of the NBA, the Lakers and the Celtics in the 80s (jersey colors are the same).
If you correspond according to the record, the Xiangyang team is the above-mentioned Fazheng II, in reality it has been competing with Xiangnan University of Technology for many years, and after the decline, Fazheng II has stable results, has always been a strong team, and has won several county championships, but the national competition is basically eliminated in the first round.
And the "Xiangyang" in reality is not specialized, just as in "Slam Dunk", after Xiangyang was defeated by Xiangbei, coach Taoka of the Lingnan team said that "Kanagawa is going to enter the Warring States Period" is a joke.
In reality, new forces such as Kirito Koen, Atsugi Higashi, Tokai Dai, and Yokohama Kiyokaze have sprung up in the past 20 years. Coupled with the signs of revival of the veteran powerhouse Shonan Institute of Technology in recent years (winning the prefectural championship in the Kanto Grand Prix in 22), the Kanagawa story after "Slam Dunk" can be regarded as wonderful.
Now Kiriko Park (private high school) is the new hegemon of Kanagawa Prefecture, winning the prefectural championship many times, and also won the first place in the Kanto Tournament, but the national competition is at most reaching the top 8 to burn high incense, and the overall level of basketball in Kanagawa Prefecture is not high.
PS, Kanagawa Prefecture baseball and football are still very strong, taking football as an example, Kiriko Park is a national veteran strong team, and has won national championships many times. From here, Japanese internationals such as Shunsuke Nakamura, Jun Nishikawa, and Hidehide Motegi have walked out.
What the? Why not mention the Xiangbei team?
Because the prototype of the Shonobu team is not in Kanagawa Prefecture. The "prototype" of the Shonobei team is Musashi Nokita High School in Tokyo, including the school gate, plaque, teaching building, etc. are basically the same, and some netizens have posted pictures for comparison.
To be precise, as the protagonist team of "Slam Dunk", Shonobi is a completely original team (netizens analyzed that Shonbei may be in Tengze City, Shonan region), but in terms of campus building facilities, it refers to the Tokyo school.
Only such a complete originality is in line with the identity of the protagonist team, and there can be a wide space to splurge wantonly, just like the movie version of "Slam Dunk" uses Ryota Miyagi as a tandem character, isn't it?
Finally, a list of county teams from the 2022 National Competition (HI) is attached.
It can be seen that the Kanagawa representative team is Kiriko Park and Tokai Daifu, in addition, Yamano Industries' prototype Noshiro Industry (renamed Noyo Science and Technology High School), Kyoto team Luoan's prototype Nakan High School, Changcheng High School's prototype Meisei High School... These familiar old powerhouses have all qualified.
However, the strong team prototypes in the manga such as Toyodama (Higashisumi Yoshi Synthesis), Daiei (Daishang Gakuen), Aikazu (Aichi Industry), and Meibo (Tokai Daimeiden) did not qualify from the prefecture, which can be described as feng shui in turn.
([To be continued] Next:"Slam Dunk" deep pickpocket Kanagawa four major events: Xiangbei team has a chance to lock a championship? See you tomorrow)