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| ▲This photo provided by the author of 'Garbage Time' show drawing of 'Garbage Time.' (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
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| ▲This photo provided by the author of 'Garbage Time' show scene from 'Garbage Time.' (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
SEOUL March 10 (Yonhap) -- As the Japanese animation “The First Slam Dunk” exceeds total audience of 3.89 million audiences various South Korean Webtoons regarding basketball are attracting a lot of audiences.
South Korean webtoon “Garbage Time” depicts a six figure basketball team of Jisang High School heading to the final match against other high school teams.
Basketball takes a huge toll on player’s physical strength therefore the team is often times formed in 5 starting players with 12 in total. However Jisang high school is short on players therefore only 6 players made the entry.
Six of the players who made it on to the entry are normal players without any special skills.
Protagonist Gi Sang-ho is a bench player who has low shooting rate, and Seong Joon-su is head star and the leader of the team, who transfers to Busan. And Jin Jae-yu is very talented but unfortunately short, therefore he faces obstacles.
Moreover, player Jung Hee-chan is a fast runner but injured player and Gong Tae-seong, a player with intense vertical but low on stamina, lastly, Kim Da-eun a former soccer player who transferred to basketball team recently, all of the players have strength and significant weaknesses.
However, the coach of the team has keen eye for the team and designate individual players with unique style of coaching to be suitable for individuals, leading up to the team becoming more compatible in the competition.
The significant outline of Underdogs winning the strong overpowered competitor is a widely loved format of sports illustration, however, South Korean webtoon “Garbage Time” takes a step further and well blends in the Korean sports culture.
One of the biggest merit of the webtoon is that the “Garbage Time” manages to depict the reality of Elite Sports team.
The biggest concerns within the team is their college and for coaches it’s the player’s college acceptance rate.
Some of the players will participate in the game despite of their injuries because they really want to get into good universities, or if a star player gets accepted to an university the school would make a deal with universities to additionally accept some of the other players who lack in skills with the star players as form of tradition.
Some of the players fall into a wrong path because they have been playing sports since they were very young and lack education.
Throughout the series, authors shines light on scene where some of the players who face the reality that they are not as talented as others, are left with harsh reality that the only thing they are good at is basketball.
Moreover, other interesting factor within the series is that the webtoon is based on the real life story.
In 2012, Busan’s jungang High school which took the second place on the national basketball champions game with only six players on their roster.
Author of the webtoon met with the coach Kang Yang-hyun who led the Busan Jungang High school to learn more about the story to come up with his webtoon.
Webtoon “Garbage Time” is currently being continued on Naver Webtoon.
(This article is translated from Korean to English by Joonha Yoo)
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