Ever since the latest episode of Slam Dunk aired at noon, the buzz around the series had kept building throughout the day.
In the Parallel World, Slam Dunk had originally been a slow-paced manga. After all, it updated one chapter a week, and each chapter contained about as much story as a single anime episode!
In the Parallel World, the story of Shohoku defeating Shoyo had taken nearly two years of serialization to reach. Under Chu Yu's prolific-output strategy, though, only two months had passed since Slam Dunk began airing.
The series had sped through the early filler and entered its main storyline before fans' anger and impatience could reach their limits!
So, judging by market data alone, predictions about Slam Dunk's performance in Dragon Country were somewhat skewed at this point.
After all, despite Zhao Qinyin's immense popularity and all the money Chu Yu had poured into producing and promoting Slam Dunk, the story had still been outperformed by Tianxing's Lan Feng. This was a classic case of the story lagging behind its popularity!
Because the series released so much content at once, its story had already advanced a long way before its popularity could catch up! To give an extreme example, imagine a masterpiece novel having millions of words released all at once in a single week. It would still take months, or even longer, for its influence to spread!
Based on Slam Dunk's performance the previous week, things had seemed normal. But it was clear that the Shohoku–Shoyo match and that cliffhanger at the end of Episode 44 had finally stirred up all the lurkers!
That was why, in just one afternoon, searches and comments about Slam Dunk had skyrocketed online!
The major anime websites and platforms were all flooded with discussions of Slam Dunk and Mitsui