abstract
| - Sho no Densetsu (翔の伝説, shou no densetsu), translated as The legend of Sho and sometimes also known as The Legend of Show, is a sports drama manga series by Yoichi Takahashi focused on tennis. The comic was serialized in Shueisha shonen magazine Weekly Shonen Jump from issue #39 of 1988 to issue #13 of 1989, accomplishing a total of 25 chapters in its serialization. The series was compiled in three tankobon volumes. On the heels of Captain Tsubasa success, which had ended just four months prior, Sho no Densetsu was announced as the next blockbuster of Takahashi, but it did not live up to expectations and pressure so it failed to deliver and ended up being cancelled quickly. Among the long comic series of Takahashi, it is perhaps the least successful. The story, starting with a mature Sho standing on the Centre Court of Wimbledon, was intended to depict the life story of a tennis star named Sho, and was supposed to end with him becoming the first Japanese to achieve a Grand Slam, hence the "legend" moniker, but the series never got traction and was cancelled very soon, so it never got past the elementary school story arc. One problem that the series had was that it had too many hints of what the story was going to be without properly addressing them. For example, the secret of Sho's birth was only told fragmentarily, leaving many blanks to be clarified in the future (such as his future name, Sho Asuka, shown in the first chapter) which never occurred with the cancellation, and, as a result, Ryo's role ended up being unsympathetic. Also, the story suddenly jumped from a 5 year old Sho to a 10 year old, never explaining what happened in that gap. Takahashi commented in volume 3 that, due to his lack of ability, the manga was over when barely one tenth of its original design was reached, so he apologized for this. The comic was a failure as it was expected to be the next big sports comic, but ended up being cancelled with an incomplete story.
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