The First Slam Dunk

I gave this movie a 9/10 but to be honest, big part of the score goes to the original Slam Dunk manga, which is a legend, and big part of my youth growing up.

I seriously thought it was an April fool joke when I read 2 years ago Inoue-san announced he was going to make a movie version of slam dunk. And I've been looking forward to this then, and it did not disappoint.

The biggest headache for Inoue-san was probably how could he re-tell such a classic story, which the fans must have re-read hundreds or even thousands of times by now, without making the movie redundant and unnecessary. And he's made some really smart choices here. The smartest choice of all, imo, is to re-tell the Sannon battle from Miyagi's perspective, and adding a lot of backdrop stories.

And manga fans get to re-live the Shohoku - Sannon battle with new backdrop stories, and re-live all the monumental touching moments in the story. And for fans like me, the 2 hours in the theatre felt like re-watching my first love right in front of my eyes years later, feeling like it's just happening for the first time.

The movie is not without flaw. I think for people who have not watched the original manga, the movie will feel pretty choppy. The editing would feel awkward. Especially in the Mitsui story. That would feel so incomplete and even a lot of "WTH" moments. Or likewise when Sakuraki saw flashbacks from his past when he was injured. But maybe there isn't a flawless way to re-tell a 31 books manga (or even the Sannon battle is like 4-5 books?) in a 2 hours movie.

Which is not to say new audience cannot enjoy this movie, but this would simply be a good sports movie to those not being familiar with the original manga. For the fans though, this is an amazing movie.

I can only hope Inoue-san would come up with the Second slam dunk, the third slam dunk, the forth slam dunk .... but hopefully it won't take another 26 years.

It is a very challenging task to adapt a manga that had 100+ million copies sold, where lots of people have read and known all the plots and details of the story, and still bringing new materials and also fresh back lots of the classic moments into this movie for old and new audiences to watch and find all these excitements......and Takehiko Inoue really have done it at the perfect way EVEN this is his directorial debut.

I've been his long time fans since the beginning of the manga released, the passion of the sport and all these little moments in the stories really gave me such great memories of my childhood. However, hearing this movie released after 20+ years after the manga series ended, did give me little worries.

But after I watched it last night at a cinema, and nothing but want to give a salute to the creator/director Takehiko Inoue. He have done it perfectly, even this is his first directorial debut, but totally understood the concept of movie flow and storytelling, so he had to cut down lots of classic scenes and incidents from the manga.

Furthermore, while he knew and understood there are lot of fans who have read the manga, or even memories every single plot and scenes, while there may still some new audience attending, so he cleverly used a different narrator to bring a completely new and different perspective to look at this classic basketball story instead of the original narrator. It really gave us lots of new elements on the backstory and histories of the new narrator, but still bringing us back all these classic moments and scenes that gave us hooked. Takehiko really balanced these new and old materials in the films that even long time fans like me can still find new elements in the story and never get bored of it.

I also like to give a big respect to Takehiko is that he brings the whole story flow and atmosphere from the manga 100% into this movie version. All the intense moments and scenes, the flow of the stories and excitement of the whole environment, and funny moments and scenes from the manga, EVEN I have read all these scenes 1000 times from the manga, I KNEW what will happen after one to another, I could still feel those humour, those excitement, that passion of youth, and intensity that takes you out of breathe, all these can still feel in the cinema. This is just unbelievable.

Even you are a long time fans, or you never read this manga, you will still have really good time in this movie. ( even though for audience who never read this manga, you may find little confusing plots on some of the scenes, I recommend you watch the whole manga after finish this film, you will have a completely wide open perspective of this basketball story and why it becomes one of the classic in the Asia area for 20+ years even now )

Why I said that? I watched the movie with my 15 years old son who knows nothing about this story.

Like others said, this movie is from Ryota Miyagi's perspective. That's why you won't see many Sakuragi's funny moments or know why he plays basketball as the base story of this title. But Inoue created too much drama and deep story about Miyagi's background and it makes the movie pace slow down drastically many times. Inoue also remove Miyagi's crush toward Ayako. My son got bored in this part. For children this story is too hard to understand. That can be seen from movie rating that <18 audiences gave the lowest score.

Other members don't get enough introduction. For first-timer audience, they won't know that Akagi is so dominant under the ring, Sakuragi has extraordinary body, Mitsui is a 3 pointer or Rukawa the ace of the team. The relation between characters also won't be explain here.

For die-hard fans, this "side story" and Miyagi's perspective is interesting. The animation also amazing. You will get the feel of the match. Every characters look alive. And it's a great nostalgia for us.

The conclusion.is, I still prefer original story as its title The First Slam Dunk, so it also should be for first-timer. My son doesn't attach to this story and still doesn't want to read my Slam Dunk manga collection.

For those who know Takehiko Inoue, the author of the manga, he is definitely not the kind of person who likes to repeat what he did in the past. To him, his work on Slam Dunk is done 25y ago. He declined so many times to reboot the manga. When I heard that a movie on Slam Dunk was in production, I didn't expect him to be the director of this movie but the guy is such a perfectionist and he wanted it to be done in his way so he took the challenge, So it's his first movie and what a movie!

On an artistic level, there is a perfect balance between the 3D actions and the painting styles of the original manga. It gives you feeling that you are really in a basketball game. The whole movie is very detail oriented, I found that truly amazing technically. Bravo to the director and his team on that. The music gave the dynamic to the movie, it was a perfect fit.

For those who know the scenario of the original manga, even though the outcome is the same, it was not the copy paste of the original manga. You will discover the same facts under a total different angle and some additional stories which make the movie very consistent. I like the way how Takehiko Inoue described relationships between some characters. That was done in a very elegant way, never too much, quite inline with the Japanese culture.

One of the main reasons why the original manga is legendary is because the whole story was very inspiring for teenagers with a lot of stories that can be seen as life lessons. Besides the characters have strong charisma but stay very real. If you never read the manga, this movie is a good start to discover it.

Although there's been a lot of advance reviews expressing disappointment mainly from die-hard TV series fans, this animation movie has just completely blown my mind. Being one of an original comic fan for more than twenty years, I am truly amazed how beautiful this animation is, which should come from incredible hard work of creators. Members of the opponent team are now animated and all the characters act lively, this could not been better. New stories added, at the same time, some original parts are effectively cut off or omitted, I think I should call it creativity. Without any knowledge about original series, or even rules of the sport, you will be satisfied with this realistic sports movie and teenagers' hilarious&touchy drama.