Kainan University Affiliated High School basketball team
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The Kainan University Affiliated High School basketball team is a fictional Japanese high school basketball team depicted in the anime and manga series Slam Dunk from Kanagawa Prefecture. Kainan has won the Kanagawa Interhigh Tournament for 17 years running and are known as the "Kings of Kanagawa." Their entire team is composed of elite players and demonstrates incredible stamina and defensive ability. The team has no notable weaknesses. Kainan lost in the semifinals in the previous National Championship, where they faced the defending champion Sannoh, losing by 30 points. At the end of the manga, they are ranked number 2 in Japan.
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[edit] Players
[edit] Soichiro Jin
(神 宗一郎 Jin Sōichirō)
- Year: 2nd Year
- Height/Weight: 189 cm, 71 kg
- Jersey Number: #6
- Position: Shooting Guard
- Birthday: Oct 27
- Voice Actors: Nobutoshi Kanna
Jin is one of the best, if not the best, sharpshooters in Kanagawa, matched only by Mitsui. He originally used to be a center, but his slender build, slow movement and weak leaping ability never allowed him to perform well in this position. Instead of being discouraged, he became a shooting guard, where he could put his talents to better use. Jin became well-versed in 3-pointers as a result of making 500 3 point shots a day after practice. His coach was very much impressed by his tenacity and dedication. Jin has a very mild personality and is always looking calm and agreeable. Jin knows Fukuda from junior high school because they were both on the basketball team.
[edit] Nobunaga Kiyota
(清田信長 Kiyota Nobunaga)
- Year: 1st Year
- Height/Weight: 178 cm, 65 kg
- Jersey Number: #10
- Position: Small Forward
- Birthday: N/A
- Voice Actors: Toshiyuki Morikawa
Nobunaga Kiyota is what could be called the personification of arrogance (something like Kainan's parallel to Sakuragi, only slightly more skilled). He is always bragging about how he's the real star rookie of Kanagawa, instead of Rukawa. However, he tends to underestimate other teams, especially Shohoku, and this can lead to embarrassing situations, such as when Akagi flattened him with a dunk, and also when Sakuragi faked past him and scored. Kiyota likes to call Hanamichi "Red-furred Monkey" while Hanamichi calls him "Wild Monkey." Despite being so arrogant, Kiyota has a high level of respect towards his teammates, especially towards his captain Maki.
Kiyota is known for his leaping ability and ball-handing skills. Despite being only 178 cm, he can dunk and block shots quite regularly. He memorably dunked over Uozumi during Kainan's match against Ryonan despite Uozumi's height. Kiyota is the only starter for Kainan who is a 1st year.
[edit] Shinichi Maki
(牧紳一 Maki Shin'ichi)
- Year: 3rd Year
- Height/Weight: 184 cm, 79 kg
- Jersey Number: #4
- Position: Point Guard/Power Forward
- Birthday: December 23
- Voice Actors: Hisao Egawa
Shinichi Maki is reputed to be the best player in Kanagawa, and was crowned prefectural MVP twice. As team captain, he exerts great leadership over his teammates, who follow his orders to the letter. Though his personality belies it, he can be as strict as Akagi, but mostly only towards Kiyota. Sakuragi calls him "Middle-Aged Man" because he looks older than he really is; Maki responds by pointing out that Akagi looks even older. Kenji Fujima of Shoyo is considered his primary rival.
Maki plays mostly as a point guard, although he has the all-round skills to play in virtually any other position. Extremely muscular and strong, he likes to use his physical attributes to drive into the lane to score while drawing fouls. He also asks his team mates to foul other players if necessary. Sakuragi did on one occasion manage to surpass Maki in physical strength while scoring a dunk, despite Maki fouling him. His scoring ability is incredibly difficult to stop and in one game four players from Shohoku (Akagi, Rukawa, Mitsui and Miyagi) were needed to completely shut him down. When teams double or triple-team him, he can then pass the ball to open teammates on the perimeter, such as Jin, for open three-point shots. Maki uses his height and power to create mismatches against other point guards, which his team usually capitalizes on effectively.
[edit] Yoshinori Miyamasu
(宮益義範 Miyamasu Yoshinori)
- Year: 3rd Year
- Height/Weight: 160 cm, 42 kg
- Jersey Number: #15
- Position: Shooting Guard/Point Guard
- Birthday: N/A
- Voice Actors: Shinobu Satouchi
Yoshinori is something of a sixth man for Kainan. His unimposing presence (by comparison, he is 5 cm shorter and 10 kg lighter than Hikoichi Aida) distracts opponents from his real basketball skills, especially his reliable 3 point shooting, the accuracy of which is comparable to Jin's and Mitsui's 3 point shooting. Yoshinori is an example of the overall high quality of Kainan's players, achieved thanks to three years of hell-like training. Though he has to wear glasses, when called to play, he replaces them with a pair of goggles. Sakuragi calls him an "alien" because of his strange appearance. Yoshinori plays his first game when he is called in to take the court by Coach Riki Takato in order to shut down Sakuragi. Takato correctly deduces that Sakuragi will not take Yoshinori seriously enough to properly mark him, enabling Yoshinori to be effective.
[edit] Tadashi Muto
(武藤正 Mutō Tadashi)
- Year: 3rd Year
- Height/Weight: 184 cm, 75 kg
- Jersey Number: #9
- Position: Power Forward
- Birthday: N/A
- Voice Actors: Kouzou Shioya
Muto has the most discreet presence among the players of Kainan, even though he can fulfill his role well as both a marker and a playmaker. He does a great job in the Interhigh Match match against Shohoku, nullifying Mitsui's ability to score from long distances. He is also the only starting player along with Jin that played in the Takezono match where Muto acted as the leader while Maki and Takasago are on the bench.
[edit] Kazuma Takasago
(高砂一馬 Takasago Kazuma)
- Year: 3rd Year
- Height/Weight: 191 cm, 80 kg
- Jersey Number: #5
- Position: Center
- Birthday: N/A
- Voice Actors: Yasuhiko Kawazu
Unlike other centers like Akagi and Uozumi, Takasago does not rely too much in physical strength when playing. Instead, he prefers to search for the best possible alternative to make the game flow. He is also very mobile and agile for his position, much like Hanagata. Takasago bears a resemblance to Akagi, which led to Hanamichi confusing the two of them in the closing seconds of the Kainan-Shohoku league round match. He did an important job in the Ryonan match, shutting down the offensive powers of Uozumi due to forced fouls.
[edit] Coach
[edit] Riki Takato
- Voice Actor: Masaharu Sato
Riki Takato is Kainan’s coach and a contemporary of Ryonan’s Moichi Taoka, who is a year older than him. Both of them have known each other since high school, when Takato was known as the "Rookie from Hell" in his first year. It appears that he attended Kainan, and Taoka compares him to Rukawa while comparing himself to Sendoh. How long Takato has been Kainan’s coach is not made clear. However, he has been responsible in some degree for the team’s domination of the Kanagawa Interhigh Tournament for the past 17 years. Kainan’s training regimen is so tough that it weeds out half the incoming players within the first week, and another half within the first month. After a year, barely a fifth of the new players remain. This means that the overall quality of Kainan’s players is very high, even for benchwarmers like Yoshinori, who has been on the team for three years, as evidenced in the National Interhigh tournament, where Kainan plays through the second half only with reserve players and manages to keep their advantage over Mamiya West High. The previous year, Takato also coached the team to the semifinal of the national championships, which they lost to Sannoh.
Takato is perhaps the only other coach besides Anzai who does not underrate Sakuragi in spite of his lack of basketball experience. He is able to read Sakuragi’s character well enough during the league round match to substitute in Yoshinori for Jin, which causes Sakuragi to lose focus and allow Yoshinori to compound this by being effective at shooting. Normally cool and collected when his team is dominating, Takato becomes very agitated and anxious when they get pressed, when he starts to yell at his players.
He is named after Takatoriki, a popular sumo wrestler when Slam Dunk was being released.
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