It took me reading Haikyuu!! To realize that I like sports manga. It took me reading Slam Dunk to realize I love them. This is a manga about high school basketball, and it's a masterpiece. And this is me gushing about it.

First thing’s first: the art is spectacular on the whole. While there are some drawings that felt slightly off (the shot of Haruko after Skuragi’s confession comes to mind), I was constantly in awe of the artwork from beginning to end, and this only heightened whenever a double spread showed up. Without a doubt some of the cleanest and most emotive art I have ever seen, manga or not. Just look at this double spread of Shohoku coming back from a timeout:

Nevermind the background, the layout, the sheer coolness of the shot; what really jumps out to me here is how you can feel the personalities of all five of these characters jumping off the page.

That’s another thing I grew to love about this series: the characters. Sakuragi, Rukawa, Akagi, Ryota, and Mitsui are all so different and yet all so brilliant that when they are brought together on the court (or off it) you can’t help but to be entertained. They play off of each other perfectly, both as members of a team and as characters in a story, each one dealing with their own dreams and their own struggles. But these struggles (and the dreams) are never so intense that they feel larger than the story or too grand for a manga about high school basketball. All these characters, all these story beats feel real. That's what makes them so engaging.

The supporting cast from Shohoku are all pretty serviceable characters, but for me at least aren’t too memorable in the long run (except Anzai-sensei—I would do anything for that man). Where the side characters really shine is in the opposing teams on the court. Sendoh and Uozumi from Ryonan, Kiyota and Maki from Kainan, Sawakita and Kawata from Sannoh—even their coaches are cool. All of these dudes just seep personality and make every match Shohoku is in that much more memorable and impactful.

But ultimately, the heartbeat of Slam Dunk is in its central story, that of Sakuragi becoming a basketball player. Even though he proclaims himself a genius from the very beginning, we’re always meant to see him as in way over his head, as a brash and high-flying troublemaker who accidentally wound up on the basketball team, with no idea what that actually means. But with the way Sakuragi changes over the course of the manga, realizing his own limitations and moving beyond them (albeit always with his trademark self-confidence) makes it impossible not to root for him. And the manga never gets too big for its britches—this isn’t about Sakuragi becoming the genius he proclaims himself to be, and it’s not about him becoming the best. It’s simply a journey from innocence to experience, from an upstart punk to a bonafide basketball player. While the power to never give up might be a tired trope of shounen at this point, I always have a soft spot for series that make it feel real, that make it feel earned. Sakuragi is nothing if not dedicated, and I love him for it.

I won’t get too deep into the plot here, and this being a shounen sports manga you can probably guess the jist of it even if you haven’t read it. But I do want to point out how much I love the final match between Shohoku and Sannoh. The entire time—and I mean the entire time—I was reading this last match, I expected Shohoku to lose. I thought they would give it their all, get out-played, rebound for a last-gasp push and then come up just short. Needless to say, I jumped out of my seat when that last shot went in.

The beauty of this match, however, isn’t in the outcome. It’s in the feelings it gave me, in the way this manga got me to cheer for these characters as if I were in the stadium watching them and the way it pulled me along its emotional rollercoaster every step of the way. Every single story beat from the rest of the manga is resolved in this final match in the most beautiful, epic way imaginable. It would almost be a disservice to spell it all out again here, because no words could ever capture the pure hype, shock, and emotional investment I felt when I was reading. It’s truly one of the best arcs I’ve ever read in a manga, up there with Enies Lobby from One Piece and the Dark Tournament from Yu Yu Hakusho.

Just like Haikyuu!!, what I love about Slam Dunk is that it’s never a matter of life or death. At the end of the day, it’s just high school sports. It’s about the joy of playing a sport you love as a team, working together and coming together for the love of a game. Slam Dunk isn’t as explicit about this as Haikyuu!! is, but that idea is still at its core. It tells you that it’s never about the outcome; it’s about the experience of giving yourself fully to something you love and pushing forward with all of your being.

And out of all the incredible things Slam Dunk does, that might just be my favourite.