Before anyone realized it, the plotline about Mitsui Hisashi getting into fights as a delinquent in Slam Dunk had reached Episode 27.
Ever since Episode 19, the anime had featured no basketball at all. Forget games—even scenes of the team practicing had been few and far between.
Before this week's episode aired, fans had said that if Mitsui Hisashi's storyline wasn't over by Episode 25, they'd drop the series!
But in reality, this had probably been the episode they'd watched most attentively all season.
Because although this storyline had nothing to do with basketball, it had undoubtedly made Mitsui Hisashi's character unforgettable.
One line—"Coach, I want to play basketball"—couldn't possibly move so many Slam Dunk fans in the Parallel World on its own. Mitsui Hisashi's burning passion for basketball, conveyed in that one sentence, had been built up over six or seven full episodes.
Looking at Slam Dunk as a whole, after watching every storyline, including the National Tournament, most people would feel that Mitsui Hisashi was the one who loved basketball most purely on the Shohoku Team—even Akagi Takenori fell a little short.
The two most moving scenes in the entire series for this guy were this one and, during the National Tournament, his moment of surpassing himself against the formidable Sannoh!
And now, after Chu Yu had addressed some of the original anime's weaker details and avoided rushing the buildup just to keep the runtime down, nearly everyone was completely absorbed in the storyline!
On top of that, this storyline was also one of the rare shining moments for Megure, the Shohoku Basketball Team's vice-captain.
Episode 27 opened by showing Mitsui Hisashi's desperate anxiety in the hospital after injuring his leg during a practice game. After all, his goal was to lead Shohoku to become Japan's top high