黒子のバスケ

KUROKO NO BASKET

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
30
RELEASE
September 1, 2014
CHAPTERS
276

DESCRIPTION

When incoming first-year student Taiga Kagami joins the Seirin High basketball team, he meets Tetsuya Kuroko, a mysterious boy who’s plain beyond words. But Kagami’s in for the shock of his life when he learns that the practically invisible Kuroko was once a member of “the Miracle Generation”— the undefeated legendary team—and he wants Kagami’s help taking down each of his old teammates!

(Source: Viz Media)

Note: Chapter count includes Chapter 62.5 "Tip Off."

CAST

Tetsuya Kuroko
Taiga Kagami
Daiki Aomine
Seijuurou Akashi
Ryouta Kise
Shintarou Midorima
Atsushi Murasakibara
Satsuki Momoi
Teppei Kiyoshi
Kazunari Takao
Junpei Hyuuga
Riko Aida
Shun Izuki
Yukio Kasamatsu
Shinji Koganei
Tatsuya Himuro
Shouichi Imayoshi
Rinnosuke Mitobe
Alexandra Garcia
Makoto Hanamiya
Kousuke Wakamatsu
Kotarou Hayama
Katsunori Harasawa
Ryou Sakurai
Kouki Furihata

CHAPTERS

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REVIEWS

SpikeWasAlreadyTaken
80/100
Rough around the edges, but that's just a part of its charm
This review is spoiler free.
Disclaimer: I rate manga here based on how well I think they compare to other manga, not just based on enjoyment- so a manga that I find to be average but still a decent read will be around a 50, 60s and 70s are a bit above average, etc. Don't let my 80 score make you think I consider this a bad manga- it's very, very good.

Kuroko's Basketball's appeal, in my opinion, isn't really in the sports side of things. Sure, the games are okay, there's plenty of action to keep things moving, but a lot of the time the pacing is erratic and they just don't stand up to the intensity of matches in something like Haikyuu. Where Kuroko's Basketball does stand out, however, is in the pure emotion packed into both the games and the characters.

First off, I have to praise just how interesting the characters of Kuroko's Basketball are. The mangaka has done a wonderful job creating characters that are quirky without being annoyingly weird. The "Miracle Generation" characters are a great example- an overconfident jock, an overly fastidious and superstitious guy, genius, pretty boy, and bored genius. Are they quirky? Yes, for sure, but they rarely if ever cross the territory from character to annoying bundle of quirks. They feel like the sort of kids you could find in a high school hall, not a bunch of caricatures, which keeps the characters at the least grounded- which is good, because the characters are the focus and then some. Overall the cast has some tropes mixed in, but they're used in pretty natural-feeling ways. It's a good job balancing cast with sport, and Tadatoshi mixes in some wholesome moments that flesh the characters out and make the games way more satisfying. These are characters you want to cheer for, and not just Seirin- a lot of the rival teams are awesome as well. Kuroko himself is, ironically (and probably intentionally) more of a catalyst for the other characters than an attention-catching MC, but he works well as a protagonist for a team sports series, and his "power" is unique and a refreshing take on how skillful a sports shonen MC should be. His rapport with the other heavily spotlighted player, Kagami, is also pretty damn endearing.

As far as wholesome moments go, surprise- Kuroko's Basketball has some slice of life stuff. When there's downtime in the story, rather than rushing to the next game, Kuroko's Basketball mixes in the occasional chapter that's just a wholesome, normally joke-filled chapter that just kind of fleshes out the characters and relaxes the pace of the story. Personally, I really appreciated these moments, and they got me a lot more invested in the characters. I wish more sports manga could have natural feeling breaks in the story, rather than oh, have a day off, oh, have the characters meeting by accident when shopping for new equipment- don't get me wrong, I don't hate the latter, but Kuroko's does a great job in making downtime feel full that I haven't really seen in other sports manga.
Speaking of jokes, Kuroko's Basketball employs a lot of gags. They actually don't feel stale, which is a rarity when it comes to shonen. There's also a little 2-panel "blooper" gag at the end of most chapters, which is a really fun addition to the series and provides a sort of break.

Kuroko's Basketball has a sort of shonen-esque power system when it comes to basketball. Depending on your tastes, that might be a good or bad thing, but I didn't mind them. They're pretty mild "powers"- mostly just special moves, and very few of them are crazy powers like you'd expect from something like Blue Lock. They're closer in scope to something like Food Wars (pre-Blue), where for the most part they just feel like the characters chose to hone one or two aspects of their game to extreme levels. They're one of the main focuses in games, which made the games weirdly fun, even if they weren't always intense.
The games themselves, as I touched on earlier, are okay. The games in the final arc are great, and it did feel like they improved over time. However, especially early on, the pacing is weird and throws off the whole thing. I do like that the series showed several games from teams other than Seirin, though, as it built up other teams a lot more and made the games Seirin was in a lot more satisfying. Even when I didn't fully enjoy the games themselves, the series builds to emotional highs better than most series I've read, which is pretty damn awesome.

As for the art, it's pretty good. The character designs are distinct without being too flashy, the backgrounds are clean, and overall the art is very much readable, even if it's rough.

Overall, Kuroko's Basketball is a very good series. With interesting characters, lots of emotional highs, and unique games, it's one of the best sports series I've read so far. Though the art can be a bit rough and the games aren't always the greatest, I still had a ton of fun with the series, and highly recommend it to anyone looking to get their sports fix.
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