Kuroko No Basuke Review: Basketball Shonen

Preset of Kuroko no Basuke goes like this: In Teikou middle school there was a generation with five players with a talent that exceeds any other's. They were called the Generation of Miracles. There was still one more player that the five players acknowledged: the phantom sixth player named Kuroko.

Middle school is over and everyone from generation of the miracles have gone their own ways in different high schools. This series follows players called Kagami Taiga and Tetsuya Kuroko who aim to conquer all the other schools in high school basketball.

Kuroko no Basuke is pretty entertaining. Even if the reader wouldn't like basketball, it still manages to keep people interested with traditional shonen qualities. It's pretty much all about of the players individual skills and almost superhuman abilities which they demonstrate to the reader. In that way it is very imaginative in it's use of character abilities and subtle hype of the future characters. Of course you can't call series like this realistic by any means, but that's basically the reason why it's so enjoyable.

Art of Kuroko no Basuke can be described as good or decent, since there really isn't a lot different kinds of scenes for him to draw. He manages to pull out the natural looking basketball moves pretty well on the paper.

Characters of Kuroko no Basuke are it's strength. In my opinion it's almost fully character driven manga, it's all about their unique skills and how they put it to use, I have to admit that the author has succeeded in making most of the pretty interesting and engaging. Character relationships are not as important as the individual qualities and there isn't that much of chemistry that I would like to point it out.

Story of Kuroko no Basuke is pretty generic and it's of secondary importance. Of course it's all about winning and overcoming hardships which are present in all of the sports mangas, so it doesn't really differ from any of them at all. Also the usual "growth" element is very much present in this manga, I really can't imagine a sports manga without it. I have to say that the story doesn't really have anything to give to the reader: I'd say that the best part of this story belongs to the character side, leaving the story to the background.

I'd say that Kuroko no Basuke is like an upgrade to Slam Dunk, what it does better is that it uses more of the individual's qualities rather than teamwork and character chemistry. I have to say that it's pretty suitable for sports manga to do that, since traditional Shonen qualities of "super powers" have usually been pretty popular when used right. So if you like sports mangas Kuroko no Basuke may be suitable for you.