Inoue Takehiko’s epic sports anime The First Slam Dunk begins with a showdown between two high school basketball teams: Shohoku’s scrappy over-achievers and Sannoh’s well-oiled winning machine. We don’t know any of the players involved yet or what this match really means to them. All we get is the game itself—and it’s one hell of a spectacle.
Adapted by Inoue from his own manga series, the film uses a mixture of computer-generated and hand-drawn animation to capture the explosive physicality of basketball. The players’ movements are fluid and lifelike, with just a little extra oomph added to their more ostentatious moments. And the film’s sound design is enveloping, neatly mimicking the sound of a ball as it rolls off a player’s fingertips and lending a seismic boom to each slam dunk.
The film’s hyperkinetic style turns Shohoku and Sannoh’s showdown into an exhilarating experience. That’s important because rather than sticking to the standard sports movie script of saving the “big match” for the finale, The First Slam Dunk has the game play out over the course of its runtime, cutting away from it intermittently to dig into the stories of each Shohoku player.
In a flip from the manga, Ryota (Nakamura Shugo) serves as the film’s protagonist. Still mourning the death of his older brother and sporting mentor, Shota (Kajiwara Gakuto), Ryota is seeking some sense of closure through the sport that they both loved. As the team’s point guard, he’s a devastating speedster, flashing past his opponents in a Dragon Ball-style blur.
When it comes to the more dramatic scenes, like those depicting Ryota’s home life, the film’s art style initially seems a little distancing. Something about the blending of digital and hand-drawn leaves the faces a little less expressive than they usually are. But as Ryota grows from a child into a sullen teenager, this uncanny valley-like effect helps the film capture the death stare that teenagers are so uniquely predisposed to direct at others. And as we move on to the more vibrant members of the team, the film has no trouble conveying their personalities either.
Teenage delinquent and self-proclaimed basketball genius Hanamichi (Kimura Subaru) is the manga’s protagonist and the film’s most captivating character. A wild man on the court who hurls himself after every rebound, he’s a maverick in the mold of Dennis Rodman, with dyed red hair to match. Takenori (Miyake Kenta) is the team’s powerhouse, bellowing orders and delighting the crowd with his thunderous, two-armed “gorilla dunk.” Kaede (Kamio Shin’ichiro) cuts a more aloof figure, provoking his teammates into playing harder with his pointed insults, while Hisashi (Kasama Jun) is a former hoodlum turned three-point specialist.
The Slam Dunk manga spans 31 volumes, and the film does creak under the pressure to cram all that high school drama into a coherent two hours. We get a full picture of Ryota’s story but only a rough sketch of the others: from brief glimpses of Hanamichi as a teenage gangster to hints of a romance between him and Takenori’s sister, Haruko (Sakamoto Maaya). There’s a fistfight between Hisashi and Ryota that’s brutal and exciting, but it’s hard to place it in the context of their relationship beyond the simple fact that they used to hit each other and now they don’t.
Even if there are times when it feels like crucial chunks of Inoue’s epic story have been left off the screen, The First Slam Dunk consistently finds vivid and creative ways of providing us with a deeper understanding of its characters. At one point, Takenori is shown at one point battling off literal inner demons, while the film breaks into a whole new animation style to show us the bizarre inner workings of Hanamichi’s brain, rendered in his own jagged scrawls.
And everything comes into focus once the ball is in motion. From Hanamichi’s savage brilliance to Ryota’s fierce determination, the film suggests a battle shonen anime or a martial arts movie where the characters’ inners selves are given thrilling physical expressions. And because of its unique structure, drawing out the big game over the course of its 124-minute running time, The First Slam Dunk is able to throw a relentless series of new gambits, twists, and reversals at the screen that will keep even seasoned sports film fans on the edge of their seat.
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