What is The First Slam Dunk, and why did Inoue direct it himself?

The basics. The First Slam Dunk opened in Japan on December 3, 2022, produced by Toei Animation and DandeLion Animation Studio, written and directed by Takehiko Inoue in his directorial debut. It adapts the final match depicted in the manga, Shohoku against the inter high champions Sannoh Kogyo, and rebuilds it around Ryota Miyagi: original flashbacks tell his life, from his older brother Sota, who inspired his love of basketball, to a new epilogue, all centered on the shortest starter on the team instead of the manga's hero, Hanamichi Sakuragi.

The road to it took nineteen years. Producer Toshiyuki Matsui first approached Inoue's office in 2003, proposing a movie continuing past where the TV anime stopped, and was rejected; Inoue has said he did not think it would be possible to convey the reality of a basketball game. In 2009 Inoue's office reopened the door, and Matsui's team spent nearly five years building prototype videos in 3DCG. The second prototype, which cost nearly as much as a whole movie, was rejected because the characters did not feel alive. The third, blending 3DCG with hand drawn 2D, became the film's foundation. At a dinner in December 2014, Inoue gave the green light, and it was Matsui who suggested Inoue write the script and direct it himself, as the person to be trusted most with the characters' dialogue, appearance, and expression. Inoue accepted, began the script in January 2015, and motion capture work followed in 2018.

His own reasons for stepping behind the camera are on record. He was encouraged by the prototype team's enthusiasm, and one image settled it: seeing Sakuragi's face in the test footage, drawn as he had drawn it in the manga's final chapter, he felt getting involved would make it better. In his summary, his main job as director was to make sure blood was injected into the characters and that they were brought to life; he corrected and retouched scenes in both 3D and 2D and drew multiple storyboards himself. Even the new voice cast follows from that standard: he has said he could not ask the TV anime's actors to return and throw away the understanding of the characters they had professionally cultivated for years, so the film recast, favoring natural voices.

Why Ryota, and why "First"? Inoue has said he aimed for a new look into Slam Dunk, from a new perspective: instead of a protagonist of endless possibilities, the film follows living with pain and overcoming it. He had rehearsed the idea as far back as 1998, in the one off story "Pierce," which experimented with Ryota as protagonist, and he told The Korea Times: "If I were to make Slam Dunk again, I would write it from another character's perspective. I have always wanted to add more of a narrative to Ryota's character." His own statement on the film says the rest: thirty years on, there were "perspectives that I could not see" when he drew the weekly series, and the movie "was drawn from a new perspective." The title states the ambition: audiences who know the story should experience it as if it was their first time, and newcomers should get their first Slam Dunk from it. In his words: "A new Slam Dunk for those who are new to us. A familiar, yet new Slam Dunk for those who are not."

It worked, on a scale nobody budgeted for. The film grossed $279 million worldwide, becoming the sixth highest grossing Japanese film and the highest grossing basketball film of all time; in Japan it took over 15.7 billion yen, ranked first at the box office again on its final day of screening nine months after opening, and won the Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year in 2023.