#like generally they're a very fair person who believes in being sporting and supporting the community but

[leavingautumn13]

tonight i'm wrestling with the fact that i've always listed hrissock as being lawful evil on their character sheets but they have the aura of someone who has absolutely committed tax fraud and i don't know if that tracks.

[shipcestuous]

This is probably gonna be a blast from the past for some people... or at least, I really hope someone will remember this classic sport anime!

So, lately I've found myself thinking about Takenori Akagi and his younger sister Haruko from Slam Dunk. To tell the truth, I've never found their interactions particularly shippy... maybe I just liked other ships with them better and so never really considered the incest angle. Or maybe I was just more shallow while I was first watching Slam Dunk and thus focused more on prettier boy characters, lol. But they're both great characters and I think there's some solid bases there, if someone wanted to ship them. Who knows, maybe if I found more fictional sibling relationships like this in anime, even I would find myself more open to shipping them!

Anyway, one thing that is immediately apparent about them is the contrast between them, which is often highlighted, to the point other characters even struggle to believe they really are brother and sister. Haruko is cute, petite, and fair-skinned, with a sunny disposition. While Akagi already looks like an grown-ass adult man in his last year of high school, is very muscular, and has a darker complexion and a strict personality, leading him to be quite demanding of his team as their captain. There's even a big height difference between them, which can be a lot of fun, if you're into that kind of thing!

However! They both share a great love for basketball. Haruko is the biggest supporter of her brother and his team, to the point that the series itself starts when she meets the main character, Sakuragi, and invites him to try out for a spot on the team right away because she's impressed with his height and she knows there's a need for new, strong players for the team to have any hope to reach the national championship, Akagi's goal since he was a freshman. She never misses any of their games, if she can avoid it. Akagi even taught her to play basketball when she was a child, but she's never had as much success as him in the sport, in part due to her own clumsiness, even if she remains very passionate about it.

Which actually makes for an unexpected yet adorable parallel, as it is reveleaed that while Akagi did start out with a nice dose of raw talent and physical fitness... he also used to be pretty clumsy himself! He did became a fantastic player, but it took him relentless discipline and sacrifice to get there, dedicating himself body and soul to the game and his dream.

Another similarity between them is how neither of them is quite how they appear at first glance. Haruko is genuinely sweet, kind, and very supportive, but in addition to her clumsiness, she also has a goofy side that can get vocally boy crazy when it comes to the guy she has a crush on. While Akagi can seem scary at first and people expect him to be a bit of a brute, but he's really quite good at understanding, motivating, and appreciating his teammates, and he's very smart and a good student to boot.

Sometimes they bicker a bit, like any pair of siblings, but they generally seem to have a very good relationship, with Akagi even listening to Haruko's opinions and advice about the team. He's also pretty protective of her... especially when guys show too much of an interest in her.

Speaking about her love life, remember main character Sakuragi, the boy Haruko recruited for the team? He falls in love with her at first sight and she goes from sort of instinctively liking him to caring a great deal about him, with the friendship between them having pretty romantic overtones even from her side... but with Slam Dunk being an old school sports anime, that romance element never really goes anywhere. Also because, as mentioned above, Haruka is already crushing on someone else... Rukawa, an incredibly talented player also on their team, who doesn't seem know/care about or requite her feelings in any way as he's pretty much solely focused on basketball. Which is fair, as Haruko doesn't even know Rukawa that well, loving an idealized version of him from afar. Meanwhile, Aota, captain of the school judo team and Akagi's close friend and rival from childhood, has had a crush on Haruko since they were kids... but being mostly a comedic side character, he doesn't really have a chance with her.

But what about Akagi, in all of this? Well, he doesn't have even a shadow of a love interest... which means he's free to occasionally get angry about guys being over the top about his little sister without going through any romantic drama of his own! All while said little sister's potential love life and feelings are inextricably tied to his favorite sport and his team... as much I like Sakuragi/Haruko, imagine if one day, perhaps while cheering during a game or keeping an eye on new developments during the team's practice, she suddenly realized, "oh! I don't really want any of my brother's players... I want my brother!"

I'll end this write-up with a little funny moment from the anime (which is itself hilarious, and the humor still holds up to this day). It's the scene where Sakuragi finds out Haruko is Akagi's sister! ... and awkwardly realizes he completely got off with the wrong foot with the big brother of the girl he likes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-JKFBy2W_Y

They seem really cute. I enjoyed the clip. Wow, Akagi is enormous. I love his strong silent disposition and Haruko's more smiley energetic vibe. Great dynamic.

Thanks for the rec!

[all-pacas]

chase cameron and foreman all went for drinks regularly on s1, then again on s3. they might not have been best friends but they weren't hostile at all unless things got bad at work.

they have very few non work related interactions in the season, weirdly - i wouldn't say they get along or not. the first time we see them getting drinks is halfway thru the season in sports medicine. we don't actually see them do so all that much: a few times in that episode (one of which was dinner with a drug rep) but again until s3. i do think they generally get along as coworkers, but… friends?

even when things are fine, they certainly do have a lot of moments of snark and animosity. just off the top of my head, foreman openly dislikes chase (and chase tells a patient such), and he openly derides him over the vogler situation. cameron gets teased by the guys for being naive and for her crush on house; she in turn picks on chase a little, and expresses frustration with them both. chase picks on foreman a little (most notably his telling a patient while foreman is in the room that "foreman doesn't like me, either").

in s2 there's a lot more. there's Article-Gate, of course, but we also get foreman complaining to stacy about how fake and annoying chase is, we get cameron's little comment in euphoria about foreman being terrible with patients, we get foreman trying to manipulate cameron and we get the start of "i couldn't have made a mistake, it was obviously chase" from foreman; . on a slightly more… meta?… level, we get cameron doing meth and hooking up with chase on the assumption that he would fuck her on meth; she even tells him she doesn't think he's a "good guy" when he hesitates, and later she gets pretty snarky towards him about her performance.

s3 there's yet more! cameron and foreman both make fun of chase for being a spoiled rich kid and assume he's going to rat to tritter because of it: cameron also has a quite rude comment about how chase's dad never loved him in 'lines in the sand.' chase and foreman have a whole Thing in 'cane and able' about whether or not chase fucked up a test, with foreman really going for it: foreman outright tells chase he never liked him later on, and chase refuses to help him with his job application: foreman is also generally exasperated with chase and cameron's fwb thing, which, fair enough, but also makes a fair number of comments about how cameron is 'insufferable' (as in, don't dump her, chase, she's annoying enough without heartbreak). foreman also implies cameron is weak/needs to toughen up (she calls him on it, and he does apologize although he doesn't take it back).

conversely, what about times they do show friendship or compassion? they get drinks 2-3 times. cameron tries to support (slash pry) chase when his dad is around, but chase shoots her down flat. chase is worried-ish about cameron when she might be infected with HIV, but house calls it fake: cameron doesn't throw chase under the bus when stacy is digging in the mistake. foreman does call cameron a good doctor and a good person in euphoria, but she makes it clear she knows he's manipulating her, so who knows how much is sincere or she believes. cameron is nice to foreman when he resigns, and chase is nice to foreman and offers to get drunk with him after he kills the lady in s3. neither of the guys reaches out to cameron in s1 when she's upset about the dead baby (foreman criticizes her openly); neither foreman or cameron react that we can see when chase is broken up about the dead baby in s3.

of the three, foreman is actually pretty damn open about the fact that he does not like chase, but he's dismissive about cameron as well. cameron and chase get along slightly better - they're less likely to have major arguments, i think mostly because they're passive-aggressive in similar ways - but she can be pretty mean to him, and he can be pretty bitchy towards foreman. aside from 2-3 times socializing after work, we never hear of them being friends: foreman is adamant that they're not, for all that cameron and chase become an Official Couple they really aren't close either. they're coworkers who work together. they get along, but they aren't friends. they are far more likely to snark than to bond, it's very rare they are supportive, and when they are it's usually cameron doing the reaching out. (to foreman, i think. the two actually do seem to get along when they aren't having huge blowouts about articles; i think they respect one another more than either respects chase, lol)

i'm not saying you're wrong. i don't think, jokes aside, they sit around plotting to undermine and destroy one another. but they also are not friends. it's really not until s4 and 5 we see them go out of their way to socialize.