Synopsis
Three lives, three injuries, one sport. Nomiya caused a motorcycle accident that hospitalized a girl and ended his own athletic future. Takahashi was a basketball star before bone cancer took his leg. Togawa is the only one of the three already in a wheelchair, a former sprinter who found purpose in wheelchair basketball. Real (Takehiko Inoue, creator of Slam Dunk) is a manga about the specific, complicated process of rebuilding a life after physical catastrophe — not as an inspiration narrative but as a document of how hard it actually is, and how much time it takes, and what basketball has to do with any of it. Serialized irregularly in Weekly Young Jump, new chapters release when Inoue is ready and not before — which means Real occasionally goes years between chapters. It is consistently, devastatingly worth the wait.