I AM DAI MIYAMOTO, AND I AM GONNA BE THE BEST JAZZ SAX PLAYER IN THE WORLD

Funky.
Lively.
Colorful.
Blue Giant tells the chronicles of Dai Miyamoto who wanted to be the greatest jazz sax player in the world, along with his bandmates. Quite cliche motivation isn't it? Welp, as cliche as that sounds, Blue Giant executes the plot and its themes so well.

The movie is an adaptation of the original manga series of the same name. I was quite worried because an 80-chapter manga would definitely not fit well into a two-hour movie. Thinking about it, it is not possible to adapt that much content into a movie with time restrictions without reducing its quality... or so I thought.

The film does not dwell deep too much as much as the manga did, and it all goes straight to the point. If you are worried about character depth then, I might have something to say to you. When it comes to character development and character depth, the film encounters challenges in executing all of these due to time restraints (well imagine compressing all of the content into one movie lol), quite particularly on our main character, Dai Miyamoto, Compared to the manga, the manga had so much depth when it comes to all of these, while the film skips the first 20-30 chapters. However, the question is, do all of these affect the quality of the film? Definitely NOT.

The film exceeded my expectations on literally EVERYTHING. While the film does skip contents from the manga, to be fair, the contents skipped are mostly just an introduction and background of our main character. The flesh, blood, and bones of the original story were adapted SO. FUCKING. WELL. From Dai traveling to Tokyo looking for opportunities as musician, Dai looking for bandmates for his jazz band, as well as performing in gigs. The film manages to produce a coherent storyline and even added some scenes that weren't in the manga. I love it even more that the main theme of this is jazz to begin with, as jazz isn't given much attention in modern times compared to the contemporary and popular genres such as pop and rock. The film tackles how hard it is to be a jazz musician, given that it is underecognized in modern times. One by one, step by step, slowly but surely, the film manages to capture the ongoing success of jazz artists in slow but graceful manner.

▶ Video

Oh boy, do you wanna talk about the art and the sound designs? All the camera movements, the light directing, the compositing, literally all of these will make you ask for a minute: is this even a musical film? How can a musical film be this flamboyant? From the start until the end, mostly especially during their performances, it was such an eyegasm and eye-candy to look at. Oh and the sound designs? My jaw literally dropped because I never expected to be THAT GOOOOOOOOOD. I've been waiting for this film so much ever since I read the manga because I keep wondering how will the film portray such scenes. The film added so much more than I expected and god that last performance was amazing. Such a once in a lifetime experience, better t wear your headphones at max volume when you watch this.

Words cannot describe how I believe that this film was such an extraordinary experience I had in all the films I have experienced, reading this review isn't enough, GO WATCH IT.