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I don't know the reason, but the last game of the basketball manga 'Slam Dunk' was never adapted into the anime series. Every cloud has a silver lining and that gap is used to create a movie dedicated exclusively to that game, to close the series and relive it for those who already knew it, or to discover it to the new generations.
I think that even anyone who hasn't watched the previous series can enjoy the movie because it intersperses a game that is perceived as important with the story of one of its players from his childhood until that moment.

About this I don't remember ... if the manga touches on the story of Ryota Miyagi, his brother and his life in Okinawa, if not the truth is that it's touching and has charm.

About the game, well, the usual, very good, very entertaining and exciting, I don't specially care about basketball and this makes true again that idea of the best genre of manga/anime is probably sports; any sport is made to look like a matter of life and death, intense, exciting and entertaining. A better option than watching a random NBA game.

It's good because it's not the usual seinen but something towards a "mature audience", that doesn't necesarilly mean it's more mature, it's just that is a serious manga, not something like Berserk that I find better but is not salaryman, teacher or whatever pov.
Everything here is filtered through Yomawari Sensei (a real person, Osamu Mizutani and his story as a night patrol helping boys) lenses and in my case his views on things or his profile is not so interesting.
We never know about his past, and I suppose he never has been in the situation of the boys and girls he helps, he is a ... teacher who wants to save them because of his heart, but I would have found much more interesting how someone who had a troubled childhood / adolescence would interact with those boys, having a deeper understanding of them.

To me Yomawari feels too interventionist, there are ocasions where you do more harm than good for wanting to enter and intervene in the life of everyone you cross paths wanting to fix their entire life without a real knowledge of the big picture of things. He is not streetwise as also happens with many people like socialworkers that at the end relly on heart but lacks knowledge; a bit of god's complex to want to fix lives of everyone maybe because there is something about you that you can't fix (Ichi the killer has really interesting points about this, about being a voyeur, a critic, to want to live things through others, and in the end as I said at the start less serious manga as Ichi the killer in this case could be deeper in those things than one that just is mature / serious. as a person, it's just a way of being, a personality, doesn't necesarilly mean they are more profound people).

Anyways a good and different manga with some powerful moments and situations.

I already watched long time ago the live action adaptation by Takashi Miike (really recomended movie for anyone who is interested). I'm a big fan of Miike and I thought his adaptation was the interesting thing, not the original work itself. A few months before I realized Koroshiya 1 author was the one of Homunculous, I haven't read that one yet but I know it's a respected manga and so, so I decided to give it an oportunity.

The movie has some different aesthetic / style choices, but everything else was already in the manga, Miike did not expanded the original with his imagination but Koroshiya ... 1 by itself is really original, interesting, deep, dark and risky in many aspects.

The most important thing is the importance of Ichi and his story, in the movie Kakihara is the important one (because you don't have the time a manga has and you need to decide on what to focus). Here the story is expanded and better explained and you know each one of the characters and motives. As an example Kaneko in the movie is just an extra, here he could be the counterpart to Ichi, someone who because of being bullied can't really activate the switch and just pretends, when Ichii uses those moments as his activation.

Ichi was bullied as a boy / teen and all those traumas are used by Jijii (the mastermind behind everything, and really interesting too as the ultimate voyeur, spectator, creator, not an actor or someone who participates but someone who creates that playground).

Jijii creates with Ichi the ultimate killer, a deranged guy who revives his traumas and expands / intermingles them with current reality to enter in a killing mood in which he destroy everyone since Jijii made him think everyone is another bully, another one of those guys that made him suffer so much in the past. That psychotic panic attack is much better aproach to that idea than other similar things like Crying Freeman, that is just a romantic ideation without real sense behind those tears.

I really like many things about this, the aesthetic, the locations, taking place almost in its entirety in a building, all those psychological explanations that may be or not real but I like them because they are not the comfortable ones, they create some twisted but sincere explanations and motives behind things and behaviours of everyone, Kakihara, women, Ichi; in line with his past work Voyeur where all this surface behaviour vs secret desires / pulsions / motivations / nature are what really drive the characters.

Enters into my top 25 favorite manga.

Big fan of Taiyo Matsumoto here, but Tekkonkinkreet was kind of a letdown for me.

The artstyle, drawings and so are still really good, but at the same time they seem too european without a personal soul. The narrative was probably the main flaw of this manga, I don't really understand what Matsumoto wants to convey, and I'm not saying what he want to tell or what story, since in his case he is not someone who creates impressive stories but feelings, emotions, beautiful moments and so, more related to poetry than narrative. But in this case I don't really find that narrative nor poetry (just ... in small moments).

It has a feeling of being in your childhood and seeing and thinking like in that era, maybe a boy under 13 or so could like something like this, and if he does then props; maybe I can't connect with that mental frame anymore.

Really good. It has a feeling of being a small and very personal work of Yoshitaka Amano who is going to push for his creation to exist even if it's outside of the industry. Really clear watching it that for Amano this is one of the works of his life.

That's why it can feel at times like the amateur story that a child (who draws wonderfuly as Amano) imagines in his mind, drawing it, creating the voiceover, making some animation that sometimes works so good but other can be a bit strange.

Very heartfelt and passionate artistic creation with beautiful black watercolour paintings.

I'm a good target for this since the author is heavy on k1 and combat sports as me, but even so this is not that good. I feel his love for it and that passion, but the execution is too farfetched. Always in a really narrow line between being based on realistic fights but also on absolute fantasy as if they were superheroes.

Who I find believable and somewhat rooted on the personality of some women is Baki's mother, usually portrayed as one of the worst manga mothers. And yeah the main motive for it it's her sex drive and animal instincts that the ones that ... are like that are notchs above almost any man, Yuujiro is more important for her than her son who is just what keeps her in contact with Yuujiro. And without spoiling anything for her to gain Yuujiro again she needs that Yuujiro feels proud of Baki's strenght so she would do anything she could to regain that ultimate man, more manly and agressive than anyone, don't know if this term exist but yeah a "thug digger" that usualy ends thrown stabbed in a road after upgrading 4 boyfriends each one crazier than the previous one because of loving that feeling of being the woman with the ultimate motherfucker around.

Sometimes Baki it's fun because of being so hyped up but at other times it just doesn't feel engaging. I would not recomend it since if you don't even are into these things I don't see what could be the appeal of almost 42 volumes that 40 could be fights. Only recomended as I said before if you really like fighting things or if you find really worth an anime / manga just for the sake of having strong man or love those chad alpha sigma homoerotic memes for betas ;P hahaha

I like many of those GAR mangas and could be one of my top genres but not just because Guts is such a MAN, what a chad, pff..

I really recomend Shamo that could be similar in some thing to Grappler Baki and that it's only problem is its TERRIBLE ending, everything else is great.

Berserk is a complete masterpiece and the best manga I’ve read. It has its flaws and up and downs, but when it reaches its heights no other manga is even close. As decades will pass only a 5% (being generous) of mangas and authors will be remembered. Of those Miura and his creation Berserk will stand the test of time and will be the example of the heights that manga could achieve, a work that will remain forever.

The creation of the world, how everything interlaces, the richness of each character, the drawings, the battles and then and most specially those quiet, calm and reflexive moments ... that make Berserk something else.

As an example how crazy is the power of Griffith's mentality and determination.
To have someone as strong as Gatsu following him blindly, first because he defeated him in the duel that decided so, but after that because of Gatsu admiring and realizing that Griffith was superior to him as a whole and his leader is impressive.

While Gatsu is strong in the physical, survival and estoic field, Griffith is in all, he has a conqueror mentality as Mike Tyson talked some times about that concept, to be so extremely driven by ambition that you think the world is gonna be yours and nothing could change that destiny, you feel you are the center of the world so what you decide will become. One can't be around people like him thinking you are his friend, because all their life they were fitting pieces to that final objective they had, and if you are one of his pieces even if you are his friend that piece will be deleted when it stands in front of his path.

Griffith is not a struggler, he is an achiever. The only time he struggled he reverted that situation to his definitive step, becoming a god.

One of the best character ever created. One of the greatest virtues of Berserk is to have an antagonist as good as him, something is as good as the bad guy is; and that's what creates in the main character a need to grow, to oppose him and to become someone with a really rich background and personality.

The people who were reading Berserk up to date in a really slow pace may had lost focus and thought this had a lot of pace issues that are not really that clear if one reads this without stops, as I did rereading it after Miura’s death. It sure has some mini arcs as the pirates and the Sea God who were a bit boring but they didn’t felt as long as if one stays for years in the same situation. Also, this didn’t ended in the time for Guts revenge towards Griffith. Right now Guts is no match at all for Griffith, if so he could try with Zodd and other apostoles under him in the new band of the hawk.
A lot of things need to happen for Guts to be even able to touch him at this time. When the Skull Knight couldn’t and is already miles ahead of Guts in experience and power, saving him a lot of times and guiding him through a path that he already walked due to his history.

Also, after Casca regained her memories comes the time when Guts wanders if the way to go is to kill Griffith or to stay with her now that she could be better. The Skull Knight talked about that in the last chapters, about the void he faced for a thousand years, because of a vengeance he seeked after he had lost everything, Guts is not in that situation and following that vengeance could end feeling meaningless and making him lose all that he has now and his soul on the process. It all depends in what is the next objective of Griffith and how that could affect Guts and the world.

I’m not saying what will happen but that if Miura was here things would not be as clear, and also that the end of Berserk is far from being near, there is a lot of things to explain and resolve in ways that couldn’t be a shounen fast powerup by god’s will.
I really doubt this could have ended in a satisfactory way in at least less than 10 more volumes. Where the fantasia arc is headed, the new reality of Guts, Casca, and the group, the wizards of Elfheim, the wedding of Griffith, Falconia, The God Hand, their stories. I’m sure this is not still at the conclusion and many things need to develop.

And here comes the problem, sadly Miura is not here anymore. One could think the best way is to stop Berserk and end it at the point it is now. It looks like the respectful way to him, to respect his legacy, his work and don’t continue his creation without him. But at the same time Berserk was the work of his life, this can’t compare to someone who was in the middle of making a movie or a book, Miura wasn’t for one or five years immersed in this project but his whole life. Also making really detailed double page pannels so one could understand the time he took for that. He was increasing his workload and level of detail with the passing of years instead of decreasing it as it usually happens.

Berserk was his life project, at a level that we could imagine but can’t really understand the importance it had. I think someone in that situation couldn’t rest thinking all that effort he put didn’t had a proper ending and developing of everything that he created.

The issue is to know if he left a document, or talked with his assistants or a friend about the direction this was heading, if that didn’t happen then the way to go is to left Berserk as it is, since this was Miura’s creation and nobody can’t be entitle to create a continuation in another way. If it was the contrary and someone of his team knew more or less where this was headed then I think the deepest show of respect is to continue it, even if it doesn’t have that extremely high level due to Miura’s touch, and those details that can’t be teached to others or told about that at the end make a difference. But it’s a huge responsibility that one may not want to face and it’s understandable. Let’s see what time decides.

Rest in peace Miura, thank you for sharing your dream, you are a true and real legend.

Even if it's usually labeled as that, Ashita no Joe it's not the best option for boxing fans, but for people who appreciate a great storytelling, characters and drama. If you are looking for the best approach to boxing as a sport there is nothing close to Hajime no Ippo.

Some people say it gets boring or is too long, but in fact there is not a single moment when you think you are reading filler chapters, HnI is like following boxing in real life for a decade or so, new fighters arise, others decline, etc. With Hajime no Ippo even if there is a main ... character (Ippo) this is not just his story, but the story of boxing during the years of his career. There you have many weight classes, different boxing styles and the personal life of each one of those boxers.

That's why this series is so long (1311 chapters as I write this review), because usually any pro boxer will have around 30 to 60 fights in his career. You can't rush things, this is not a narrative created by Morikawa, but a translation of a reality to a manga, the perfect portray of that reality (as luckily happens with HnI) needs to be this long, each one of these characters needs to evolve, to train, to change in their weight classes, be the best in their countries to go for the world fights; it's not about repetitive storytelling, it's just about how this reality works. That's why for me right now HnI it's probably at the best moment of the entire series, because many of the characters are approaching or are already in the elite fights, if you think it's dragging too much maybe the problem is that you really don't appreciate this sport, and you are looking for just another story where this is only about a main character who gets bullied and the story ends when he gets his Japan belt and marries the girl he likes.

George Morikawa makes clear his love for boxing and knowledge about it, many of the fighters and situations come from real life and boxing history. If you share that passion for this sport Hajime no Ippo is the way to go, if you are looking for a great and moving story maybe Ashita no Joe is a better option.

Vibrant, powerful, beautiful, colorful.

It's a shame that people like the autor of this who proves to be crazy for it isn't and will not be appreciated, poor man him and all those who like him seek to come up with something special with animation (and have the capacity for it) in an industry with tremendous potential but whose audience only seems to value self-improvement stories for weaboos (I'm not wanting to attack that people, to each their own, but the effect they have).

Go draw backgrounds for the new ultra popular anime series, it seems to be the only future you have, even marketing and ... adds value people like you more than your industry and its consumers.

Impossible that a movie like this was not animated, for good and for bad.

The good:
· Incredible color, aesthetics and visual power. The spectacular nature of some moments during the races.

The bad:
· That unfortunately in the world of anime everything is too stupid but at the same time they take their stupid things too seriously.

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It's like watching Star Wars II with all those political plots that take themselves so seriously, those romances that seem like the world is at stake, etc. Anime in general is like the mentality of considering that movie "the mature one" of the saga, because it deals with "adult themes"; that it ... treats these adult subjects like a preschooler does not matter.

All this that I comment does not exactly go for Redline, since this is something common in that industry and this movie is just one more in it (it is not even one of the best examples, much less "geek/weird" than others). The thing is, 'Redline' has some important virtues that others don't have, and it manages to be a good movie despite that; but it's a shame that it gets lost in plots of shadow organizations, the robot planet and talks that don't go anywhere.

If 'Redline' was reduced to a great visual experience where the narrative does not matter just for two or three details that advance the plot such as the issue of gambling and fixing races + the possible romance between JP and Sonoshee + races and shots of space or whatever for the downtimes you would have a top movie; simple, but powerful and quite an experience.