One, two, three, DEFENSE! Let’s review this basketball manga!
Story:
The story is interesting yet ends too fast. I won’t spoil to much but it really ends in the middle of the teams road.
Focusing mostly on basketball and training for this sport, the story has no real plot twist or anything it’s just a story about a team with two genus players and their love for basketball.
It indeed has some romance in it with a lot of comedy, but those are really like side genres for this manga.
In short it’s the old story of a small town team wanting starting to win against big teams thanks to their hard practices all to defeat the one team, the best of all of them.
Characters:
There are cheerleaders and team managers and a few coaches beside our starting five and two reserves. The spotlight is unequally divided into 3 parts.
1) The Story of the team manager and one of the genius players
Tachibana Mitsuki and Ogata Natsuki . Ogata is the newest player of the St. Mariannu High School and the sole reason he joined this team was because he wanted to beat the best team in Japan, by whom he was scouted, Fujiwara All-Boys High School.
So those two are the main characters and are having a sort of friendly relationship in the start that turns into a almost one-sided love from the team manager Mitsuki since Ogata has only basketball in his mind.
2) Star players who joined St. Mariannu
Along Ogata, who is a short guy yet a huge basketball prodigy, there was a new freshman who was extremely talented, Katayama Eiji. This guy is a huge talent, he is the tallest guy on the team and the most skilled defender. His natural position was shooting/point guard, which is usually given to the shortest player, but he was forced to play center.
The second star player joined a lot later, he was a huge guy. Really tall and skilled but he had a hard time joining the team do to a event that happened to him in the past (not spoiling it). That event made him unable to jump, hence he wasn’t at his best. This guy,Christopher Knight, who was half American was the missing piece to the team for them to be great.
Many people put those two in the supporting role, but I actually think that those two are as important to the story as Ogata and Mitsuki.
3) The Rest
The rest is basically the other guys, the cheerleaders, other star players and so on.
There are a lot of them but they get a least some spot light that makes them important to the story.
If you want to read more about them(short descriptions), just check out the wiki here.
Art:
If you read Suzuka and Fuuka you could see some similarities in them from Cross Over. The artist, Seo, is a genius in my mind when it comes to the story part, combining sports with romance, but his art is a bit average. It’s not the best but it’s not the worst.
Personal Enjoyment:
As I mentioned in the start of this review, it ends in the middle of the journey. That’s the only reason why this doesn’t get a 10 rating for personal enjoyment. Many of you know that I love basketball and that I even play professionally, thus it is no wonder that I enjoyed this. This would be easily recommended for people who love Kuruko No Basket or Slam Dunk. Compared to those two it has more unrequited love. It just never happens and it is annoying. But it was still enjoyable, even though it ended half way through.
My Rating:
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