Summary
Blending multiple animation styles, sports films are rarely more exciting or immediately gripping than this debut from the creator of the original manga.
During the ’90, the Chicago Bulls ruled US basketball but it was Takehiko Inoue’s manga series Slam Dunk that dominated Japanese sales, with 170 million copies sold. Now the original manga creator has made his directorial debut, adapting his own work to the screen and winning the Japan Academy Film Prize for Best Animation of the Year in the process.
The feature film version concentrates on Ryota Miyagi (voiced by Shugo Nakamura), the point guard of Shohoku high-school’s basketball team. Cutting back and forth between his traumatic youth and the present, we see that Ryota lost his brother some years before, but his influence remains.
THE FIRST SLAM DUNK is a remarkable achievement. On a technical level, Inoue blends 2D and 3D animation to lift his characters off the page and give them texture. The source material’s look and feel is baked into the film, with black and white sketches and still frames during titles and key transitions.
For the action sequences, we get something truly amazing. Using motion capture technology, the animation is mapped to authentic movement. As a result, the game sequences are fast, fluid, and never anything less than exciting. We aren’t just watching an animation recreation of a basketball game, but seeing ballers in action.
This all builds to the climactic final game, the very definition of a white-knuckle event. As the sound drops out, and the animation becomes a blend of styles from all along the development pipeline, you will be unable to tear your eyes from the screen. There was a moment during the film’s final game that this reviewer, the least sportsy person you’ll meet, audibly gasped in sheer exhausted joy.
It’s all the more powerful because Inoue has managed to make us care for these players within the compact format of the film’s running time. Like all the best sports films, it’s the dramatic core that makes the victories and near defeats all the more impactful. A series of flashbacks, often rendered as intentionally crude sketches, showcase the interiority of these characters. It’s the culmination of these seemingly disparate moments that morph into an emotional finale.
THE FIRST SLAM DUNK might have been previously adapted into an anime and various offshoots, but this thoroughly original piece is a standalone entity. Not simply a terrific sport movie, it’s also something new in animation – and one that’s never anything less than gripping.
2022 | Japan | DIRECTOR: Takehiko Inoue | WRITERS: Takehiko Inoue | CAST: Shugo Nakamura, Jun Kasama, Shinichiro Kamio, Subaru Kimura, Kenta Miyake | DISTRIBUTOR: JAPAN CUTS, GKIDS | RUNNING TIME: 99 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 26 July-6 August 2023 (JAPAN CUTS), 28 July 2023 (US)
