A greater miracle than winning against 1% odds is not giving up.
Song Tae-seop has never faced an opponent smaller than himself. 59 kg at 168 cm. To him, who is on the small side among ordinary high school students, Lee Jeong-hwan of Haenam, who has the highest level of power in the province, whom he met on the basketball court, and Lee Myung-heon of the King of the Mountains, who has enough pressure to tie even such Lee Jeong-hwan, are not metaphorical, but physically a wall. He has flashy ball handling, high speed, and shot fakes, but in the end, he must muster the courage to hit the wall at some point and break through it in order to charge toward the opponent’s rim. Without that courage, stopping in front of a wall and performing all the arts is an empty struggle for self-proving. Anime released on January 4th <더 퍼스트 슬램덩크>is a story of challenging and breaking through that wall. original cartoon <슬램덩크> In this work, which contains the confrontation between Sanwanggong High School and the main character, Buksan High School, the last episode of the series, Sanwanggong High School, the strongest in the country, is already like a wall with its reputation itself. Even when they deploy an all-court press tactic that presses from the front with terrifyingly trained stamina, the wide court becomes extremely narrow as if surrounded by a strong wall. There is no space to break through with the dribble, and there is no space to pass the ball. So it had to be Song Tae-seop. <더 퍼스트 슬램덩크>Including the past history that did not exist in the original work,
Song Tae-seop and the Buksan High School basketball team
A story of ups and downs and defeats
The underdog facing the battle with life
All you can do is ‘don’t break’
And the slim chance of victory
between a much greater chance of defeat
running with grit
‘Slam Dunk’ still loved after 26 years
The narrative power of challenging prejudice
make our hearts beat again
Almost everyone knows the result of the match against the King of the Mountains, as it was the original work that a generation was enthusiastic about. Buksan, who was the ‘underdog’, won, and lost like a lie in the next game after pouring out all his stamina. Of course, as with most successful and old IPs, sometimes the taste of knowing is more enchanting and <더 퍼스트 슬램덩크> It is also the same. As a fan of the original work, it’s hard not to be thrilled watching the opening as the Buksan members complete one by one with pen lines. but <더 퍼스트 슬램덩크>does not stop at stimulating nostalgia. In the animation production that uses 3D to make use of texture, space, and speed, Sanwang is truly overwhelming. Shin Hyeon-cheol’s body, which protects the rim to the extent that even the strongest center in the province, Chae Chi-soo loses confidence, is like an iron wall, and with a fast first step that even Seo Tae-woong can’t react to, Jung Woo-sung tears the space in an instant and tramples the paint zone. And above all, Lee Myung-heon’s defense, looking up through Song Tae-seop’s eyes, leaves even the audience breathless. At the beginning of the game, the work depicts the mismatch between Lee Myeong-heon and Song Tae-seop through Song Tae-seop’s perspective. Height is never just a number. He is 12 cm taller than Song Tae-seop and has excellent predictive ability, and as he closely defends, Song Tae-seop’s field of vision becomes extremely narrow. In the original work, center Chae Chi-soo and power forward Kang Baek-ho described rough physical fights under the goal, but for a short main ball handler, finding space to pass in front of a defender is a kind of physical fight. There is an attack time limit to waste time, and if you make a hasty pass in a situation where visibility is not secured, the opportunity to attack itself will be lost. As the difficulties faced by Song Tae-seop, the starting point of the Buksan attack, become more visible, the wall of the mountain king feels even more gigantic.
And the past history of Song Tae-seop that appears here. When he was three years old, his older brother, a local basketball prospect, dies while out fishing. Although he had some dribbling and passing sense, he was much smaller than his older brother, so he easily collapsed under strong pressure and was compared to his older brother. Even after moving, he practiced basketball diligently, but now there is no older brother who sticks with him one-on-one, defends strongly, and motivates him. He cannot break through his absent brother with any skill. That is impossible. More than defeating the mountain king. It is unknown whether Song Tae-seop would have grown into a special ace like Kim Soo-gyeom and Lee Jung-hwan, whom Tae-seop Song had dealt with just because his older brother was alive. Likewise, it is unknown whether the day will come when he stops at a similar height around the late 160cm range and loses to Song Tae-seop after growing old together. And that unknown creates the endless depth of absence. How far can he catch up with his older brother and replace his older brother? A question that cannot be resolved or closed in any way. All I can do is keep playing basketball. Even if you can’t win forever, you can always try to win. Even if he is scolded by Chae Chi-soo for not playing the standard game, and even if he is lynched by Jeong Dae-man’s gang, a promising basketball prospect of yesteryear, Song Tae-seop does not give up basketball. Buksan coach Ahn says that if you give up, the game is over, but that doesn’t mean you can win if you don’t give up. Rather, Song Tae-seop’s past history is more like a record of repeated defeats because he did not give up. In the fight against life, sometimes the only thing an underdog can do is not give up. Instead of willingly accepting 100 percent defeat, you jump between the slim chance of victory and the much bigger chance of defeat.
The stories of other Buksan members intersecting around Song Tae-seop’s past history do not explain the development process of them growing up and moving forward to the miracle of winning the Battle of the Mountain. Rather, it tells of the fact that the moment-to-moment choices that they didn’t give up in every moment of the countless ups and downs they went through were all miracles. Dreaming of national domination while maintaining a one-man team in Buksan, which is not a prestigious basketball school (Chae Chi-soo), admitting his mistakes after a long wandering and returning to the basketball team (Jung Dae-man), Even devoting himself to the basketball team (Kang Baek-ho), who has no interest in trying to become a member and has a scary claim, all those moments that seem to prove nothing in themselves are actually miracles. It is not a miracle to win against 1 in 100 odds; The miracle of winning against the strongest mountain king was not achieved by not giving up during the 40-minute game. It’s more like adding another miracle by gathering countless miraculous moments that didn’t give up for a much longer time than that.
At the end of the game, her mother, struggling with the grief of losing her eldest son and the complex feelings about her second son Tae-seop Song, who follows him to play basketball, comes to see Tae-seop Song’s game in person. Her mother shouted to him, who was struggling with Lee Myeong-heon and Jung Woo-sung’s double team defense, to break through, and he broke through between the two, saying that the only way for a short player to survive was dribbling. Except for the appearance of the mother, it is a scene that appears in the original work, but in the original work, if it was a kind of feeling close to the main character team correction <더 퍼스트 슬램덩크>In the scene, it seems that he is finally breaking through the wall he has been bumping into without giving up. Buksan’s quick attack, which develops with his breakthrough, confirms how wide the court was. Song Tae-seop’s movement is absolutely free in that wide space. Within that freedom, a round ball opens up numerous possibilities that are unknown where it will bounce. The possibility that a miracle might happen today. if <슬램덩크>If it was a self-improvement narrative that gives meaning only to victory through perseverance, it would not have been loved for so long. It shows how many possibilities of youth can be unfolded on a court free from numerous prejudices and stereotypes. <슬램덩크>and came out after 26 years of completion <더 퍼스트 슬램덩크>still strikes our hearts.
The original ending of this work, which was not in the original, thus reveals a fairly unexpected yet consistent message. As time goes by, Song Tae-seop meets the strongest and worst match-up opponent, possibly surpassing Lee Jung-hwan and Lee Myung-heon. But it’s okay. Song Tae-seop had never faced an opponent smaller than himself, and despite that, the match continued without giving up. In that ongoing fight, sometimes wonderful things can happen. maybe just today