I don’t think I’ve seen many animated films cooler than The First Slam Dunk.
One high school basketball game interspersed with fragments of youthful experiences plays out over 2 hours filled with a swagger that only basketball has.
Never arrogant, always in control, brimming with an infectious charm that puts a grin on your face.
The film is marketed as a ‘new’ Slam Dunk, separated from the heavy legacy of the 90s manga and anime classic.
Other than a few of the early episodes seen years ago, this was my first experience with Slam Dunk. While there is an unshakable retro feeling in the background of the film, there is also a freshness, perhaps due to the production.
The 3D animation used in The First Slam Dunk works, but only because it is being implemented by an incredibly talented team, led by the story’s original creator Takehiko Inoue.
According to an interview with Inoue, it took multiple pitches from different CGI pilots to convince him to allow the film to proceed, and even then, he found himself having to direct it, having never directed an anime before, to get it just right.
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The result is a film that flies through most of the opening half on a wave of rock-n-roll basketball, with slick, meaningful movements backed by a heavy soundtrack.
The match’s score is irrelevant, such is the excitement and weight of each individual movement and the developing interest in each member of Shohoku’s team, their personalities slowly laid bare through snippets of past events.
Like many sports films, The First Slam Dunk’s vibes-led storyline does lose direction in the middle. A few too many cut-aways and a few repetitive sequences cause the film to slow down, and it suddenly feels like you are just watching one game of basketball.
However, the pause for breath is relatively brief. Once the backstories are all in place, the film races towards a characteristically dramatic finale delivered in an incredibly unique way.
The First Slam Dunk feels like something that could have only been achieved by a creator with a deep love for basketball and, perhaps more crucially, an intuitive understanding of the role competitive sports can play in young lives.
Now, I’m desperate to go back to the original anime, and maybe explore the original manga, too, just to discover the source of this film’s thrill. For a production that is designed to offer a snapshot of one of Japan’s great sports epics, I guess that’s everything Inoue would have wanted.
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