Inoue Takehiko | Real (R13)

Japanese: リアル
English: Real
Type: Manga
Volumes: 14 +
Chapters: Unknown
Status: Publishing
Published: 1999 to ?
Genres: Drama, Sports, Psychological, Seinen
Mangaka: Inoue Takehiko (Story & Art)
Serialization: Young Jump

Synopsis: Tomomi Nomiya, former captain of his high school's basketball team turned delinquent, decides to drop out of school after he is crushed by the guilt of ruining a young girl's life in a traffic accident. As he dedicates his free time to helping her, he stumbles upon Kiyoharu Togawa, a former sprinter who has lost the use of his right leg and now plays wheelchair basketball as an alternate outlet.

After challenging Kiyoharu to a one-on-one game, Tomomi is completely defeated. Inspired by this encounter, he realizes that he can't let his love for basketball die so easily and decides that he will do what he can to help others while striving to become a professional player. Meanwhile, Hisanobu Takahashi, Tomomi's replacement as the high school's team captain, gets into an accident and finds himself permanently paralyzed below the waist. Real tells the touching tale of these three young men as they struggle to overcome their disabilities and inner conflicts in order to achieve their dreams while igniting a passion that will bring them together.

Background

Real won an Excellence Prize for manga at the 5th Japan Media Arts Festival in 2001. 

Groups Scanlating

Chibisuke-Scans

Hawks

Illuminati-Manga

Omanga

ShinraTensei

Licensed in English

Viz media (14 volumes, ongoing)

Source: MAL Manga info, Baka updates

Side notes: If not the story the art is one that  draws you to read this manga. It's just exceptionally good and I'm more or less reading just for the art this one... although I'm also liking sports mangas so this is a definitively something to go shopping for when it comes available in my home country.^-^ And good thing is that there is also official English release available so it's possible to have a real copy in hands too. Really recommended if anyone wishes to know... although I'm just in volume 1 so I hope to continue reading soon.^-^

P.S. Age rating 13 comes just for the reason that this is a Seinen and shoud be aimed for people around 17-18 years. And this isn't your every day kids manga to read.

Main characters

Tomomi Nomiya (野宮朋美)


Nomiya used to be the captain in the basketball team of his institute before he left. He had an accident while taking a girl for a ride on his motorbike some time ago and now he often visits her because he feels guilty. He's now trying to make his life better while helping people and trying to help in whatever he can in a wheelchair basketball team.

Kiyoharu Togawa (戸川 清春)


Forced to spend all of his free time after school practicing the piano, Togawa was something of an outcast to the rest of his junior high classmates. During the last PE class of the first semester, Togawa agrees to race the 100M dash against the fastest boy in his class and nearly beats him, earning an invitation to the school's track team. Togawa soon dedicates his life to becoming the fastest sprinter in the nation, but just as his goal seems in reach, he is diagnosed with osteosarcoma and loses his right leg below the knee. Togawa spends much of his time after the amputation in isolation, feeling his life is over until meeting Tora, an older man with an identical disability. Tora, a cool jet-setting tattoo artist, serves as a mentor to Togawa and introduces him to the world of wheelchair basketball through his team the Tigers. Togawa is a fiercely competitive player, and once left the team because he felt the other players weren't as serious as he was. Missing the game, Togawa returns to the Tigers, yet provokes a team mutiny early in the series because of his often "unrealistic expectations." Further conflicts arise when Togawa is offered a spot on the Japanese national team and is invited to join the Dream, the Tigers' arch-rivals. Togawa is rated a "4.5" on the wheelchair basketball point scale.

Hisanobu Takahashi (高橋 久信)

At the start of the manga, Takahashi is a typical high school alpha male—captain of the basketball team, popular with girls, effortlessly smart, and a bully to other "inferior" students. In an effort to give his girlfriend a ride home after school, he steals a bicycle, is chased into traffic, and is hit by a garbage truck, rendering him paralyzed from the chest down. Realizing that his popular days are over, Takahashi feels that he has nothing to live for, and that he has dropped from an "A" class person to lower than an "E" class (Takahashi is obsessed with ranking the people around him—in ranks from A to E, with A being the best). Nomiya, a former teammate, is one of the few visitors Takahashi receives, and the visit is initially enough to upset Takahashi and inspire him to rehabilitate. After realizing he will never recover, however, Takahashi gives up and refuses to help himself, even going so far as to tell his mother to die and never come back. The hospital staff calls Takahashi's father, hoping that a visit to the country will help in his recovery, but Takahashi hasn't seen his father in eight years and the visit remains highly uncomfortable. After spending time with his father, Takahashi breaks down and admits that he has a lot of unexplored anger and resentment toward his father for abandoning the family.

Source: MAL