Character · Slam Dunk
Takenori Akagi
Three years of carrying a team that loses in the first round, and one season left to do something about it.
In Otakana the clue reads: Team captain nicknamed the gorilla
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Slam Dunk
- Letters
- 5 · Normal
Akagi is Shohoku's captain and centre, built like a door and nicknamed Gori for it by the first-year who arrives to make his life difficult. He has spent his school career on a squad that was never good enough, drilling players who quit, and he has one year left to reach the national tournament. Everything he does in the series runs off that clock.
He coaches as much as he plays. Sakuragi's first weeks are spent on dribbling and layups under Akagi's supervision, delivered mostly by shouting, and the team's discipline is his doing. His long rivalry with Uozumi, Ryonan's captain, gets the same treatment: two big men who have carried mediocre sides for years and respect each other for the wear it shows.
Takehiko Inoue serialized Slam Dunk in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1990 to 1996. It has sold well past 120 million copies, is widely credited with turning basketball into a mainstream schoolboy sport in Japan, and Inoue returned to it with an animated film in 2022.
Spelling AKAGI
AKAGI is the family name, and Slam Dunk uses family names throughout, so Takenori never reaches the board. Five letters, a-ka-gi, three beats, hard G. The characters mean red tree. Several of the Shohoku starters carry names made of trees and water in exactly this way, Sakuragi the cherry tree and Rukawa the flowing river, which makes the surnames worth learning here.