THE FIRST SLAM DUNK

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA ComedySLAM DUNK
ANIME ComedySLAM DUNK

REVIEWS

• 

  C00kieMaster

  100/100
  The perfect Adaptation of Slam Dunk's Final Arc

  The First Slam Dunk movie in my opinion is absolutely perfect and it is definitely catered for fans that have read the manga or at least watched the anime adaptation. I would not recommend this to a newbie because they will miss out on significant character arcs and established plots that the movie assumes the viewer has already consumed. The movie adapts the final arc of the manga which I to this day absolutely love and regard as the best sports manga or even story in general that I have ever read. And astonishingly even though I vividly remember the original story and its final arc. This movie still managed to provide me with an elevated experience of its final arc. Even though I knew what was going to happen in the end I was still on the edge of my seat, cheering for the Shohoku team to win.

  The animation is beyond perfection and I think they have achieved what many anime studios were trying to achieve with 3D CGI technology; having the fluid motion of 3D while retaining the flat yet personal hand-drawn style of 2D. I confidently say that this movie has done it, they have solved the problems of using CGI in Anime. It is gorgeous, fluid and has the personal touch that is commonly associated with 2D animation. I am certain that they have set a standard for CGI in anime and many productions will follow this new standard.

  Slam Dunk is the greatest sports manga I have read and also hands down one of the greatest manga, in general, I have read. How it encapsulates the passion and love towards sports is really authentic and grounded, choosing to focus more on the characters and their relationship with the sport rather than the action and hype surrounding the sport itself. And honestly, I have no disrespect for sports stories that choose to focus more on the action and flashy plays of sports, Blue Lock for example is totally insane and unrealistic but sure is entertaining as hell. But I feel a more personal character-centric story with a more grounded approach makes Slam Dunk not just a great sports story but a great story in general. It really tries to give its viewer, a more insightful look at not just sports but something that is fundamentally entertainment and how it could mean so much to a person; how a fun and entertaining hobby for a layman could be the life and blood of someone that dedicates their life towards it.

  As I mentioned experiencing the final arc of Slam Dunk in this movie is just as good if not better. And this is not because the medium of animation is able to offer more than the static pages of the manga from the movement, colours and music. The Movie is basically 2 stories playing out in parallel: The main story is the Shohoku team playing Sannoh in order to advance to the finals and the perspective of mainly Ryota and his relationship with basketball. In the manga, the main character from beginning to end was undoubtedly Sakuragi. But in this movie, they choose to present this arc mostly through the shoes of Ryota the point guard of the team. Even though I remembered his backstory in the manga, I was almost given a wake-up call on how much I have overlooked this character that arguably has always deserved more and also given more to the game than Sakuragi in the manga. Not to say that the movie did not expand and explore the motivations of the other characters as they did but this focus on Ryota gives another perspective on this final arc and definitely raises the stakes and emotional investment of the match compared to the manga.

  Overall I really love this movie, it is animated gorgeously, it is faithful to the source material and it adds more value to its story for recurring fans of the series. Even though it was the second time I experienced the amazing match between Shohoku and Sannoh, it definitely felt as beautiful or even better than the first time simply due to how well-directed it was. The animation, music, voice acting and pacing were perfect to the end. A truly perfect cinematic experience that reminded me why I loved the Slam Dunk manga.

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• 

  AmadisHali

  100/100
  A note to the anime-only fans who don't like how different the movie is

  I've recently seen some complaints about the movie from fans who only watched the original anime and haven't read the manga, such as:

  • Miyagi's backstory comes out of nowhere

  • The humour and funny tone of the anime is missing

  • It doesn't have any of the music from the anime

  • It lacks the charm of the anime due to the humour and the original music not being present

  Before I begin, I should mention that I'm also an anime-only fan, but I did pick up the manga from where the anime left off.

  I agree with you that the 90s anime has its own charm that makes it really special. The night before I went to watch the movie a few days ago, I stayed up late flipping through my series illustration books while listening to the old anime's soundtrack. As much as I truly love the music of the old anime, I feel like it would've been an awkward fit in a modern adaptation like this. This movie needed to be its own thing (one of the reasons why Inoue named it 'The First Slam Dunk' is because he wanted it to be Slam Dunk as you've never seen it before, like you're watching it for the first time), and it really needed to have its own soundtrack to avoid hinging on the old anime.

  As for the humour and funny tone of the anime that you're talking about, this movie was not without its funny moments - the jokes from the manga were there, such as:

  • Sakuragi not knowing the name of the team he's playing

  • The signal that Sakuragi and Miyagi used for the alley-oop at the beginning

  • The silly tutorial of how rebounding works

  The thing is, there's a time and place for the humour. Think back to the really important matches against Shoyo, Kainan, and Ryonan. There were moments of comedic relief, sure (and again, this Sannoh match had those moments too), but overall the tone for those matches was intensity. Moreover, the Sannoh match is supposed to be so much more intense than all of those matches. Too much humour takes away from that intensity, and sometimes the anime's humour was just straight up goofy (and while I personally enjoyed the goofiness, I can see why Inoue may not have liked it and decided to pull the plug on the anime).

  Also, Miyagi's backstory doesn't just "come out of nowhere". A couple of years after finishing the Slam Dunk manga, Inoue wrote a short story called 'Piercing' where the main characters are two young kids named Ryota and Ayako who happen to look like Miyagi and Ayako. When asked whether Piercing was canon to Slam Dunk or had nothing to do with it apart from the resemblance of the characters, Inoue just said "I don't know, I'll let the fans decide if it's canon or not". Well, the movie went and officially made Piercing canon through Miyagi's backstory.

  Overall, even though the movie's very different from the original anime that I know and love, I still thought it was a masterpiece. It adapted the match very well from the manga, it adapted the Piercing story beautifully, and to me it also even matched the theme of the series illustration books. I personally see melancholy as the top theme that Inoue likes to work with as an author (you can see that even more well with REAL) and I just think he's masterful with it.

  It's not like melancholy is absent from the anime either, I encourage you to go back and watch the old Slam Dunk movies from the 90s - the plot of one of them is literally that Rukawa's successor as the ace of his middle school team (and soon-to-be Shohoku student who dreams of playing in the nationals with Rukawa) ends up getting diagnosed with tuberculosis and begs Rukawa to play one last game with him before he retires from basketball.

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• 

  silvpokkii

  92/100
  A potent tour de force that ties everything into what's likely the best animated basketball match you'll ever see.

  I was pleasantly surprised in every way, from its relentless basketball sequences to the compelling human drama underpinning it all, it's pure excellence.

  

  Much like everyone else, I wasn't that big a fan of the use of CG when the first footage was revealed, and looking back, the choice of footage was quite misleading. That was the inescapable elephant in the room and I was still admittedly skeptical going into the theater room. Thankfully, all that prejudice flew out of the window once the ball started rolling. The expressiveness of the models and their rich precisely timed motion instantly grabbed my attention, but what really sold me on it was the match's ludicrous dynamism and flow enabled by that same CG.

  

  It's an edge-of-your-seat experience that builds and builds toward an explosive climax. Which leads me to the other reason for concern or skepticism about the movie, though to a lesser degree. On top of penning the script, Takehiko Inoue also directed the movie. While it's undeniable that no one knows this story and its characters better than Inoue, this was still his directorial debut, and helming a two-hour film is very different from serializing manga, two separate mediums require their own skill sets. And I'm beyond glad to be proven wrong, his grounded approach showed equal skill in and out of the court.

  

  Inoue also created the movie's designs alongside Yasuyuki Ebara, preserving the manga's iconic art style yet still giving them their own identity with pronounced black outlines. This trait lends itself well to the CG models, giving them an almost 2D-animation-esque sense of volume.

  

  The result is a visually cohesive final product, impressively so, switching between hand-drawn and CG animation without it ever feeling jarring or even noticeable at times, thanks to Shunsuke Nakamura's strong and heavy photography work.

  

  And by god is that visual cohesion beautiful to look at. Kazuo Ogura's art direction breathes life into the various landscapes and settings, imbuing them with just enough realism to match the general aesthetic and Inoue's grounded storytelling.

  

  Beyond the technically competent CG cuts, the movie featured incredible hand-drawn animation from ace animators like Arifumi Imai, the legendary Toshiyuki Inoue, and the movie's character designer and animation director Yasuyuki Ebara.

  Satoshi Takebe and 10-FEET's Takuma composed the soundtrack, characterized by energetic rock and electronic music with strong emphasis on tempo to reflect the basketball match's ticking time as well as gentle piano and strings underscoring the movie's flashback scenes.

  Earlier I mentioned two main reasons for concern before watching, but I purposefully omitted a third one. The movie adapted the manga's final match but with a twist - the focus would be on Ryota Miyagi to flesh out his character instead of Hanamichi Sakuragi, the manga's iconic protagonist. And once again, Inoue blasted my worries out of the front door. I can't speak as a long-time reader or fan of Slam Dunk here as I only recently picked up the manga (and read up to the end of volume 18), so I have no way to compare it to the manga's version of the final match. Still, judging it on its own merits, it was fantastic. Inoue created a script that worked well both as a self-contained story of Ryota Miyagi's life for those unfamiliar with the series and an explosive finale that brings the manga's story and cast to a very satisfying closure.

  Obviously, your experience will differ depending on whether or not you know the characters and are familiar with certain past events. However, as someone who went out of her way to read 160 chapters over a weekend in a frantic rush to get a complete experience, I have no regrets. It raises the stakes and almost makes you jump out of your chair and cheer in excitement while giving you the dumbest smile imaginable when you see scenes from the manga animated on a big screen (like me). Side effects include going from liking Ryota Miyagi to loving Ryota Miyagi.

  However, the script's greatest quality lay in its show don't tell approach to storytelling. It allows the direction and the characters' emotions to speak for themselves while also letting the deliberate moments of silence and reliance on white noise fully immerse us in the story.

  As it stands, The First Slam Dunk is one of the best experiences I've had in cinemas and I only imagine it growing on me once I finish reading the manga it draws from. It's an event, a poignant tale of perseverance, a celebration of basketball and the undying passion it elicits. It saddens me to see how little it was talked about outside Japan, a series like Slam Dunk and a movie this excellent deserve more. With the English Blu-ray releasing later this month (June 25), I urge anyone who hasn't yet watched it to check it out, you most likely won't regret it.

  

  If the images don't show up, here is the link (I hope it works):
  https://imgur.com/a/NdTBZWn

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