This is Part Four of my ongoing quest to review manga that I would normally never, ever bother reading. This session’s genre: the sports manga.

I’m not a sports person, really. I enjoy the occasional sumo match or baseball game (and, head hung with shame, I admit to enjoying Princess Nine). So sports manga rarely even register on my radar.

The series I chose to tackle was Takehiko Inoue’s Real.

Nomiya is the bad high school kid, the bully, the perpetual troublemaker. The only thing keeping him from being a full-on criminal is being on the school’s basketball team. But after a motorcycle accident in which a girl is rendered paraplegic, he quits the team. Shortly afterward he drops out of school altogether (leaving his relieved classmates a farewell, er…’present’ on the front steps).

While visiting Natsumi- a girl he barely knows, who just happened to accept his offer of a ride that fateful night- Nomiya sees a guy in the hospital gym, practicing basketball despite the fact that he is in a wheelchair. Overcome with desire to play again, he borrows Natsumi’s chair and challenges the guy to some one-on-one…and is amazed when he’s beaten. But that skirmish reawakens Nomiya’s passion for the game.

In driving school, Nomiya meets Azumi, a girl who manages a wheelchair basketball team. Her brother Togawa, who lost a leg to bone cancer, quit the team in disgust over his teammates’ lack of competitiveness and their, “We’re disabled, what do you expect?” attitude. Unsurprisingly, Togawa turns out to be the same guy who beat Nomiya in the hospital gym.

A chance encounter gives Nomiya a bright idea: he and Togawa start challenging random players to two-on-two pickup games, betting large amounts of money. The marks invariable try to go easy on Togawa, and end up poorer for it. Meanwhile, Nomiya’s enemy from his high school basketball team, Takahashi, steals a bike and is promptly run down by a truck. The accident irreparably damages his spinal cord (and we can all predict what happens next…). As Togawa contemplates rejoining his old wheelchair team and turning them into real competitors, Takahashi tries to deal with his new life.

Real is a sports manga that isn’t all about the sport. Well, okay, actually it’s mostly about the sport. Takehiko Inoue’s (also the creator of the more popular Slam Dunk) intense love of basketball is evident in every lovingly rendered panel set during a game, and every detailed conversation about game strategies. A couple characters even wear hairstyles dedicated to their favorite players; Nomiya’s modest afro is “The Kobe Bryant Look”. You see, too, Inoue’s own dissatisfaction with basketball’s status in Japan; the boys have a great deal of trouble finding places to practice, as almost all courts belong to high schools or private sports clubs. It appears that, despite everything, basketball fans in Japan are still a minority, and it’s definitely not accessible to everyone.

Real has the added element of wheelchairs, of course, and it doesn’t feel as if the addition is just a novelty; you get the feeling that this version of basketball is something that really interests Inoue. The true story of course is about these young men using their passion for basketball to overcome their disabilities, which could easily become patronizing and predictable. But it’s not, mostly thanks to the characterizations. These guys are not wide-eyed Pollyannas determined to show the world they can be just like everyone else. They’re angry, and rightly so, at the hand fate has dealt them. They’re not cheerful and optimistic and full of hope. They can be jerks, and their psychological problems can’t all be solved, even by basketball. Basketball is a way for them to escape their unhappy situations. If the world notices that they are like everyone else, that wasn’t their intention; they play basketball purely for selfish reasons. Nomiya isn’t even a particularly lovable punk with a heart of gold, which you’d expect from a character with his setup; he’s just trying to assuage his guilt about Natsumi. Story-wise and character-wise, Real is miles above Inoue’s earlier work Slam Dunk. It’s meant for more mature audience, and it delivers admirably.

The art style is also changed (dare I say improved?), resembling Inoue’s Vagabond much more than Slam Dunk. The characters in Real look like more-or-less actual people. There’s no cookie-cutter pretty boys or shoujo beauties. The characters aren’t even particularly attractive, which, if you look around, is pretty much how most people are.

Real is released by Viz Signature, which puts out mature series in a format that is much more attractive and high-quality than their general releases. It’s an attractive package, in a slightly larger format than is normal for American-released manga.

I was surprised by the heart and the complexity of Real. If you’re going to read a sports manga, this is definitely one to try.