The film follows Ryota Miyagi, the point guard of Shohoku High School's basketball team.
Ryota and his teammates Hanamichi Sakuragi, Takenori Akagi, Hisashi Mitsui, and Kaede Rukawa challenge the inter-high basketball champions, Sannoh Kogyo High School.
[6] The film adapts the final match depicted in the manga and features original flashbacks and a new epilogue, all centered on Ryota.
Then, Matsui assembled a team led by Naoki Miyahara and Toshio Ohashi that, over a period of nearly 5 years, developed proposal prototype videos of the visual look that can be created using 3DCG, as it appeared to be more realistic to move the large number of characters together in the basketball court than hand-drawn 2D animation.
The second prototype, which cost nearly as much as a whole movie, was rejected, as it strayed far off Inoue's vision and did not evoke that the characters were "alive".
The third prototype, which had to be the final one, combined 3DCG with 2D animation, and it was the version that laid the infrastructure for Inoue's work as a director.
Matsui, then, suggested that Inoue should write the script and direct, as he was the person to be trusted the most with the characters' dialogue and their visual appearance and expression.
[13][14][15] On July 1, 2022, five new character posters were installed in theaters across Japan, where the release date of December 3, 2022 and the title The First Slam Dunk were officially announced.
He, also, stated that his main job as a director was to make sure that blood was injected into the characters and that they were brought to life.
[31] In Latin America, the movie had screenings in its subtitled Japanese version and also dubbed in neutral Spanish, using most of the original cast of the TV anime.
[44] The First Slam Dunk set several opening records in China, including the highest pre-sales for an animated import.
[48] In Chile, it debuted at the top of the box office, surpassing Barbie and Oppenheimer, blockbusters released two weeks prior.
The site's consensus is "A heart-pumping, breathtaking, wonderfully crafted manga adaptation, The First Slam Dunk shoots and scores.
"[50] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 79 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
Those who can't name the Shōhoku High School starting lineup by heart may leave the theater quietly satisfied.
When a character catches a pass, drives toward the paint, steps back, squares up and releases a clutch 3-pointer, the movie slows time, drops the sound and homes in on exactly the right detail — the perfect, crystalline swish of the ball passing through the basket and gently grazing the net.
The flashbacks are well-written and add off-the-court dramatic interest, but it’s the basketball action that is the movie’s claim to excellence.
Expertly staged and beautifully rendered using a combination of computer-generated imagery and traditional hand-drawn animation, it’s often so spectacular that I am eager to watch again.
Takehiko Inoue remixes his own manga to deliver a fresh new experience for longtime fans, as well as the best introduction to this '90s classic for newcomers.