What other manga has Takehiko Inoue made?
Four serials. Two of them are among the best-selling manga ever made, and only one is about basketball players in high school.
Inoue's bibliography is short enough to read whole and strong enough to define an era. Chameleon Jail taught him the trade; Slam Dunk (1990 to 1996) made him a phenomenon with more than 170 million copies in circulation; Buzzer Beater loosened him up; Real, from 1999, is the wheelchair basketball serial that has accompanied Vagabond's entire life and outlasted its pauses.
The shelf matters to Vagabond readers for one practical reason: it explains the hiatus better than any rumor. This is an author with two other masterpieces to tend, one of them still running, who works at the speed the work demands.
THE SHELF
Four serials, one filmmakerChameleon Jail (1989)
Inoue's first serialization, drawn with writer Kazuhiko Kiuchi: a professional "jailbreaker" for hire. The apprentice work, apprenticed to no one's style but his own beginnings.
Slam Dunk (1990-1996)
The basketball phenomenon: 31 volumes in Weekly Shonen Jump, over 170 million copies in circulation, and the series that made Inoue famous before he was thirty. It ended on his terms, at its peak, which is the first clue to everything after.
Buzzer Beater (1996-1998)
Basketball again, but stranger: an intergalactic league, serialized online and in print, made in the breathing room between Slam Dunk and Vagabond. The bridge work.
Real (1999-)
Wheelchair basketball, in Weekly Young Jump, running parallel to Vagabond since 1999 and still running. The most personal of the serials, and the proof that the hiatus belongs to one title, not to the artist.
And the film (2022)
The First Slam Dunk, written and directed by Inoue, released December 3, 2022: Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year, and the return to his first hero as a filmmaker rather than a cartoonist.