▪	RELEASED BY:		VIZ MEDIA
		▪	AUTHOR / ART:		TAKEHIKO INOUE
		▪	FORMAT:		JAPANESE / B&W
		▪	PAGES:		216
		▪	RATING:		OT
		▪	RELEASE DATE:		10/20/2009
		▪	REVIEW DATE:		02/09/2010
		▪	REVIEWED BY:		SCOTT CAMPBELL

In volume six, Takahashi has an awkward reunion with his father, who has been absent from his life for the past eight years. As father and son struggle with the difficulties of Takahashi's adjustment to life in a wheelchair, they must also come face to face with how much damage was done to Takahashi as a young boy facing the reality of growing up in a broken home.

This was a really tough volume. It was masterfully drawn and written, but quite emotional – enough so that it leaves you feeling down and sorry for the characters. Any book that can depict characters in this kind of way and really make you feel for them is an accomplishment. It’s not always easy to involve the reader, let alone have a real affect on them. It was sad to see how Takahashi wanted his dad to notice how well he played basketball when he was younger, and then by the time he was reunited with his dad he was in a wheel chair and felt like he couldn’t do anything worth his dad being proud of him for. It was a very hopeless situation with a lot of loss and wasted time/life behind it – it really makes you think about your own life and making sure we make use of the time we’ve got and the privileges we have. It had a good moral to it even if it was very sad – it was a good section of story for this series.

One of the best continuing attributes that this series has is the fact that the characters themselves are some of the most believable and realistic representations of human emotion that I’ve read in a while – the author really has everything bang on in this series when it comes to portraying people and their honest emotions. On top of that, the art is very mature and professional – it actually counts as being closer to “art” than what one would perhaps describe as “cartoon drawings.” It’s fairly interesting art – very sketchy and rough at times, but always very artistic. It’s easy to take a serious manga like Real seriously, if the art reflects this feeling – which it does. The characters are drawn very close to proper human proportions, with the usual “manga-esque” stylistic normality’s making their way in there to keep things the way we like to see it. It’s obviously a mature work, and I mean that in the sense that it is drawn with a mature sense of style, not that it is a work which can only be enjoyed by an older audience. Also, if it hasn’t been said before, the larger format of the book makes it so the images can be larger, and this really helps add further worth to the manga. Bigger pictures mean more room for detail and a better ability to see those details. All in all, it’s a great series with a lot of thought and ingenuity put into its creation – I look forward to future volumes.

A bit about the author for you: Takehiko Inoue is the creator of one of the most popular manga of all time, Slam Dunk, which sold over 100 million copies worldwide. He followed that series up with two titles lauded by critics and fans alike – Vagabond, a fictional account of the life of Miyamoto Musashi, and Real, a manga about wheelchair basketball. Inoue is the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious Tezuka Osamu Culture Award and the Media Arts  Festival Award. In addition to his work on manga, Inoue has worked on television commercials, character designs for video games, and is the founder of a scholarship to foster Japanese basketball talent.

IN SUMMARY:
Real is full of feeling and emotion, and sometimes human loss. This is a difficult volume because it deals with such loss, but it has an important message. The usual amazing art and professional writing make this series a real mature work, and one worth noting.