Character · Slam Dunk
Hisashi Mitsui
A knee gave out, he quit the sport, spent two years being a problem, and then asked to be let back in.
In Otakana the clue reads: Former MVP who returns after a knee injury
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Slam Dunk
- Letters
- 6 · Normal
Mitsui was a middle school most valuable player, the kind of talent that gets pointed at early. An injury took the season, then his patience, and by the time Slam Dunk finds him he is running with a group of delinquents and picking fights in the gym he used to play in. The confrontation ends with him in front of Coach Anzai, crying, saying he wants to play basketball.
It is among the most quoted scenes in Japanese sports manga, and what makes it work is that the story does not then hand him his old body back. He shoots from outside, beautifully, and he runs out of stamina by the third quarter because two years of smoking and sitting still do not undo themselves.
On the floor he gives Shohoku the range that lets the inside game breathe. Akagi and Sakuragi occupy the paint, Rukawa attacks off the dribble, and Mitsui punishes anyone who collapses to help. Inoue draws his shooting form with more care than almost anything else in the series, the same clean release repeated frame for frame, so you can see the old MVP inside the wreck.
Spelling MITSUI
MITSUI is six letters for three beats, mi-tsu-i, since that TSU is a single kana that English writes with three letters. It finishes on a bare I, which is the tile most people leave off, and nothing in it is doubled. The characters mean three wells, a name shared with one of Japan's oldest merchant houses as well as with a shooting guard who has bad knees.