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Kaede Rukawa has made his intentions of wanting to go play basketball in the United States and approaches Coach Mitsuyoshi Anzai, but is shot down. 23 continues where the previous tankōbon left off and contains the next nine chapters (198–206) of the on-going manga series. He seems more interested in basketball now than Haruko and the change has been so subtle and drawn out that I feel like he's a real character when clearly no one as confident but also as talented like him could exist. Love that you have to practise 3x to catchup. Also loved his character development here when he finally understands why Rukawa is so great cause he went through the motions himself too. I love the brash and abrasive nature of Sakuragi man. That long haired guy on Kainan gets called stupid monkey too. Also I'm glad to see its not as racist as I first thought. I love the interaction between Sakuragi and Kainan, especially when in a former volume he called Maki "UNCLE" LMAO LIKE WTFFF. This volume was very funny often times, especially when Sakuragi shoots the ball. Rukawa starts to fire up but in what shocked my balls off, he gets intentionally elbowed in the eye by the opponent team.
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All of them are nervous and their usual style of play isn't working. They are clearly demarcated as lower ranked.
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