The manga that brought basketball to Japan gets a new adaptation which thrillingly embodies the sport’s high-flying action.
As summer stretches onwards, basketball fans around the world hit the midpoint of the NBA’s torturously long offseason. Thankfully, The First Slam Dunk has arrived to fill that void. Directed by Takehiko Inoue, who also wrote the 1990s manga on which the film is based, the film has a keen sense not only of what makes basketball so fun to watch but also of what makes the sports drama such an enduring cinematic genre.
Despite its title, The First Slam Dunk is something like a finale to the 90s anime, which ended before it could adapt the manga’s final arc which saw the protagonistic Shohoku High basketball team compete in a climactic national championship game. You’d never know this from going into the film blind. Inoue plays it more like a new beginning than an ending, interspersing the on-court action (the game takes the film’s entire runtime to play out) with flashbacks that explore the teammates’ melodramatic backstories and fraught relationships. The lead character, point guard Ryota, lives in the shadow of a deceased older brother who had more natural basketball talent. The flashbacks unravel Ryota’s troubled home life and emotional isolation, depicting the coming-together of his teammates as full of roiling tension and restless rivalry.
Contrary to what one might expect from the genre, the off-court drama here is played with remarkable subtlety. The flashbacks contain an ambient quietude that one rarely sees in sports movies; the genre typically mirrors the explosive action of the games in the spectacle of interpersonal conflict. Here, the narrative is communicated more through subdued gestures and implication, with a few startling interjections of physical violence.
It’s a tonal choice accentuated by the use of a technique called “3DCG”, which uses CG animation to approximate the look of traditional 2D drawings. Animation studio Toei Animation used the technique to mixed effect in last year’s Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. They’ve applied it much better here, where authentic hand-drawn detail blends harmoniously with 3D models and camera moves, resulting in a visual approach that can capture both the subtlest and most bombastic gestures.
The film’s real theatrics, of course, happen on the court. The original manga was widely credited with popularizing basketball in Japan, and its early chapters serve as an introductory course in the game’s rules to readers. The film, by contrast, expects you to know the basics going in, but the on-court activity is choreographed so thrillingly (and with such clarity) that even basketball neophytes will get caught up in the action. Inoue captures the way a ball or player on their way to the hoop can seem to defy gravity and hang briefly in the air with ecstatic, indulgent slow motion. He also focuses on little details which would be invisible in a real game, like the way mountainous center Akagi positions his foot so he can spin around the player guarding him for a layup. I found myself wishing I could watch a real game directed by Inoue, with such careful attention to detail and an acute sense of drama.
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Published 30 Aug 2023
Could be some nice offseason filler.
As thrilling as any real game.
Like the title says: a total slam dunk.
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