THE FIRST SLAM DUNK

I was pleasantly surprised in every way, from its relentless basketball sequences to the compelling human drama underpinning it all, it's pure excellence.

Much like everyone else, I wasn't that big a fan of the use of CG when the first footage was revealed, and looking back, the choice of footage was quite misleading. That was the inescapable elephant in the room and I was still admittedly skeptical going into the theater room. Thankfully, all that prejudice flew out of the window once the ball started rolling. The expressiveness of the models and their rich precisely timed motion instantly grabbed my attention, but what really sold me on it was the match's ludicrous dynamism and flow enabled by that same CG.

It's an edge-of-your-seat experience that builds and builds toward an explosive climax. Which leads me to the other reason for concern or skepticism about the movie, though to a lesser degree. On top of penning the script, Takehiko Inoue also directed the movie. While it's undeniable that no one knows this story and its characters better than Inoue, this was still his directorial debut, and helming a two-hour film is very different from serializing manga, two separate mediums require their own skill sets. And I'm beyond glad to be proven wrong, his grounded approach showed equal skill in and out of the court.

Inoue also created the movie's designs alongside Yasuyuki Ebara, preserving the manga's iconic art style yet still giving them their own identity with pronounced black outlines. This trait lends itself well to the CG models, giving them an almost 2D-animation-esque sense of volume.

The result is a visually cohesive final product, impressively so, switching between hand-drawn and CG animation without it ever feeling jarring or even noticeable at times, thanks to Shunsuke Nakamura's strong and heavy photography work.

And by god is that visual cohesion beautiful to look at. Kazuo Ogura's art direction breathes life into the various landscapes and settings, imbuing them with just enough realism to match the general aesthetic and Inoue's grounded storytelling.

Beyond the technically competent CG cuts, the movie featured incredible hand-drawn animation from ace animators like Arifumi Imai, the legendary Toshiyuki Inoue, and the movie's character designer and animation director Yasuyuki Ebara.

Satoshi Takebe and 10-FEET's Takuma composed the soundtrack, characterized by energetic rock and electronic music with strong emphasis on tempo to reflect the basketball match's ticking time as well as gentle piano and strings underscoring the movie's flashback scenes.

Earlier I mentioned two main reasons for concern before watching, but I purposefully omitted a third one. The movie adapted the manga's final match but with a twist - the focus would be on Ryota Miyagi to flesh out his character instead of Hanamichi Sakuragi, the manga's iconic protagonist. And once again, Inoue blasted my worries out of the front door. I can't speak as a long-time reader or fan of Slam Dunk here as I only recently picked up the manga (and read up to the end of volume 18), so I have no way to compare it to the manga's version of the final match. Still, judging it on its own merits, it was fantastic. Inoue created a script that worked well both as a self-contained story of Ryota Miyagi's life for those unfamiliar with the series and an explosive finale that brings the manga's story and cast to a very satisfying closure.

Obviously, your experience will differ depending on whether or not you know the characters and are familiar with certain past events. However, as someone who went out of her way to read 160 chapters over a weekend in a frantic rush to get a complete experience, I have no regrets. It raises the stakes and almost makes you jump out of your chair and cheer in excitement while giving you the dumbest smile imaginable when you see scenes from the manga animated on a big screen (like me). Side effects include going from liking Ryota Miyagi to loving Ryota Miyagi.

However, the script's greatest quality lay in its show don't tell approach to storytelling. It allows the direction and the characters' emotions to speak for themselves while also letting the deliberate moments of silence and reliance on white noise fully immerse us in the story.

As it stands, The First Slam Dunk is one of the best experiences I've had in cinemas and I only imagine it growing on me once I finish reading the manga it draws from. It's an event, a poignant tale of perseverance, a celebration of basketball and the undying passion it elicits. It saddens me to see how little it was talked about outside Japan, a series like Slam Dunk and a movie this excellent deserve more. With the English Blu-ray releasing later this month (June 25), I urge anyone who hasn't yet watched it to check it out, you most likely won't regret it.

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