Real (manga)
Real is a Japanese wheelchair basketball-themed manga series written and illustrated by Takehiko Inoue. It has been serialized in Shueisha's manga magazine Weekly Young Jump since October 1999, with the chapters collected into 16 volumes as of August 2024. The series has been irregularly published in the magazine. In North America, the series is licensed for English release by Viz Media.
By November 2020, the manga had over 16 million copies in circulation. In 2001, Real won an Excellence Award at the fifth Japan Media Arts Festival.
Plot
The story revolves around three teenagers: Nomiya Tomomi, a high school dropout, Togawa Kiyoharu, an ex-sprinter who now plays wheelchair basketball and Takahashi Hisanobu, a popular leader of the high school's basketball team who now finds himself a paraplegic after an accident.Real features a cast of characters who find themselves being marginalized by society, but are all united by one common feature: a desire to play basketball, with no place to play it in. Nomiya, being a high school dropout, has no future in his life. Togawa, being a difficult personality, finds himself constantly feuding with his own teammates. Takahashi, once a popular team leader, now finds himself being unable to move from the chest down. Real also deals with the reality of physical disabilities, and the psychological inferiority that the characters struggle against. The characters break through their own psychological barriers bit by bit.
Characters
Main characters
;Kiyoharu Togawa;Tomomi Nomiya
;Hisanobu Takahashi
Supporting characters
;Fumika Honjo;Kumi Azumi
;Hitoshi Yamauchi
;Mitsuru Nagano
;Hisayuki Takahashi
;Kiyoharu's father
Publication
Written and illustrated by Takehiko Inoue, Real started in Shueisha's manga magazine Weekly Young Jump on October 28, 1999. Its chapters have been collected by Shueisha into individual volumes, with the first one published on March 19, 2001. As of August 19, 2024, 16 volumes have been published. After an indefinite hiatus started in 2014, the series resumed on May 23, 2019; since then, the series has been published sporadically.In North America, the series is licensed for English language release by Viz Media, who announced the acquisition in November 2007. The first volume was released on July 15, 2008.
Chapters not yet in ''tankōbon'' format
- Chapters 97–103
Reception
By November 2013, Real had 14 million copies in circulation. By November 2020, the manga had over 16 million copies in circulation. The sixteenth volume had an initial print run of 250,000 copies, making it Shueisha's 15th-highest first-print manga volume of 2024–2025.Real received an Excellence Award in the Manga Division at the fifth Japan Media Arts Festival in 2001. The committee noted that while Inoue was already well known for his basketball series Slam Dunk, Real explored the novel theme of wheelchair basketball. The committee reported anticipating the next installments, and while they awarded it the Excellence Prize, they remarked it would not have been surprising if Inoue had won the Grand Prize for a second consecutive year following his success with Vagabond.
David P. Welsh of The Comics Reporter observed that all the skills Inoue demonstrated in Slam Dunk had evolved further in Real, concluding that its emotional content was presented with a poise and certainty he found remarkable. The series was praised for its realism and for breaking away from conventional portrayals of disabled individuals as uniformly weak or innocent. Wheelchair basketball player Kazuyuki Kyoya endorsed the series, expressing his impression with its call for understanding of people with various disabilities and its elaborately expressed rehabilitation scenes. Deb Aoki of About.com listed Real as the best new manga of 2008.