The First Slam Dunk is sports anime distilled to its essentials

In the climax of the original manga, our central five characters from Shohoku High School play against Sannoh Kogyo High School, the reigning champions. However, this final match was never featured in the anime adaptation – as it was discontinued before they got around to that. Almost 30 years later, The First Slam Dunk features this climax, except that this particular adaptation adds backstories never seen in the anime or the manga to provide an experience that not only builds on top of its already established legacy but stands its own ground as a standalone film.

While all five from our motley crew get enough spotlight in the film to shine, the central character here is clearly Ryouta Miyagi, Shohoku's speedy Point Guard. The movie goes to great lengths to provide a backstory not present in the manga in order to give his character more weight in the film and on the court. The results, though at times a little disjointed with the excessive reliance on flashback sequences, can be magnetic. The added material feels organic to the character of Ryouta—and provides a solid emotional cadence for the movie to follow.

The dynamics shared on the court between the players are also a blast to watch. The struggle these characters face against their seemingly infallible opponents reminds me of exactly why sports anime will always be such a joy to watch. The First Slam Dunk has, in many ways, perfectly distilled everything that makes sports anime good— starting from its colourful characters to the amazing grunge rock that drives the momentum of the match to the opponent team filled with characters just as colourful and fun to watch as our group—the movie knows the essence of good sports anime. And given that Slam Dunk is one of the progenitors of the modern style of shonen sports anime, it makes sense why all the elements work so well in this film as well.

The narrative is also aided in two particular ways—one comes from the director, Takehiko Inoue (who was also the author of the manga), and his deep understanding of the sport of Basketball. No play here seems too unorthodox or unrealistic, the group dynamics and how the ball moves and sounds feel fresh and without any of the added bells and whistles of the heightened reality presented in other sports anime. Realism adds a layer of tension you really cannot recreate by giving your players some sort of visual metaphor akin to a superpower. Takehiko Inoue clearly understands this, and it is his direction that makes the spectacle of the match hypnotic to watch.

Then there is the animation, which will most certainly raise eyebrows. The First Slam Dunk utilises a mix of conventional 2D animation for off-the-court scenes and 3D for all the on-court sequences. The result is, to my surprise, spellbinding.

3D is often looked down upon by fans of anime for how poor the execution tends to be overall. Here, the kineticism that only 3D movement could provide worked greatly to the movie's benefit—couple that with the frankly gorgeous shading on the characters and certain sequences that evoke moments from the Spiderverse movies, and what you have is something that can serve as the standard for anime films moving forward.