Rather of building tension within the designs and dynamics that initially make the chosen game so famous, most sports movies focus on the drama and families surrounding a sport. One of the most well-known baseball films is The Sandlot, not because it explores the complexities of the game and people’s relationships to it, but rather because it evokes a strong sense of nostalgia for an America in the early 1960s. Similar to this, The Blindeside is completely fake and focuses more on how high school football player Michael Oher’s life and relationship with his adoptive family were altered by the sport than it does on what it’s like to be a player. The First Slam Dunk, on the other hand, skillfully captures the sensation of playing a single high school basketball game.
The First Slam Dunk, written and directed by Takehiko Inoue, the mangaka behind the first Slam Dunk manga, shares my passion for basketball. I have played basketball since I was a young child, and without it, I don’t think I would be the person I am now. While I played from fourth to twelfth grade, my team only managed a few victories, but that’s how I discovered that success isn’t the ultimate aim of any endeavor. Basketball taught me the value of committing oneself to a craft since it leads to fulfillment and frequently camaraderie, as I experienced while learning and playing the game. It taught me to pursue my interests regardless of how fulfilling they are right away, and I doubt that I would be writing about anime now if I hadn’t picked up that lesson at a young age.
The First Slam Dunk understands right away why basketball is so important to so many people. Basketball is a compelling enough game to enjoy on its own, thus this movie stays clear of many of the mistakes other sports anime make. If you’ve ever touched a basketball, you should watch the video since it does a fantastic job of capturing the mindset and sensation of playing on the court through animation.
Sports series have always been among the most popular in the manga and anime mediums, despite their rare international success. Shonen Jump first published manga centered on baseball, martial arts, and kendo. In the anime fandom, it’s hard to be in the know without coming across titles like Haikyu!!, Blue Lock, Prince of Tennis, or Captain Tsubasa. But there are two types of sports series, and it’s important to understand the distinctions between them in order to comprehend the genre.
There are those that, in an effort to engage their audience, incorporate more general genre clichés into the story and plot, and there are those who concentrate on the nuances and reality of the game. Comparisons between Speed Racer and Initial D provide a compelling illustration of this contradiction. Both are groundbreaking racing-themed anime; but, whilst the latter is a sincere portrayal of Japanese street racing and its accompanying culture, the former is whimsical and fanciful. Although neither is fundamentally superior to the other, they take rather distinct approaches to discussing the same topic.
One of the most realistic sports anime series available is The First Slam Dunk, where story points and events never get wilder than what you might see in a real basketball game. Although the actors are among the best to portray at their age, the movie places their skill level at that of real high school students. Watching The First Slam Dunk is like turning on a genuine basketball game, especially when contrasted with its contemporary basketball anime counterparts, such as the frequently absurd Kuroko’s Basketball. For those who have ever participated in the sport, this increases the movie’s impact.
I initially became aware that The First Slam Dunk was a film made by and for basketball players and fans based on the editing choices made in the film. During the final game between the wealthy private school Sannoh and the underdog Shohoku, players would frequently be completely stuffed when attempting to drive to the basket or make a shot. The experience is shown in the movie with a sudden cut to a frame or a slow-motion image of an opponent player stopping the ball in the middle of an all-white background. The shock and humiliation of getting blocked during a basketball game are captured in this directional decision to an extent that I have never seen in any kind of media, even if it may be written off as poor blocking or a simple way to depict this action in an animated format.
You are focused when you are playing in a close, important basketball game. You seize the chance to score when you observe a player briefly distracted or out of position. The world typically disappears when you decide to make a basket, and your entire attention is directed toward accomplishing that objective. The First Slam Dunk skillfully captures the startling and humble feeling of having someone abruptly step in and stop you.
There are a ton of other scenes and moments in the film that you can only really understand if you’ve had any prior on-court experience. This movie does a better job than any other in capturing the experience of a seventeen-year-old facing a zone press! When two or more players aggressively guard the point guard of the opposing team during an inbound pass, they prevent them from setting up a play or moving the ball across the halfcourt line. For those who are not aware with the term, zone press is what happens. This aggressive defensive tactic takes advantage of a team’s longer bench to intimidate a point guard into giving up the ball.
Having to play against a zone press is really annoying, and witnessing Ryota Miyagi, the main character in the movie, suffer it triggered my previously suppressed memory of being the target of that tactic. It is heartbreaking to see the score differential grow as your team’s inbounding play becomes more and more inefficient, and it might feel impossible to break free from this stifling defense unless your point guard is exceptionally skilled with the ball.
The First Slam Dunk, however, also masterfully depicts how a team can rally against this defense by forcing a missed foul call by the officials, grabbing a rebound, and eventually scoring once more on a fast break! This scene in the movie demonstrates how well-relatable and knowledgeable it is about basketball. Anybody who has played the game will tell you that fouls are given for a reason and that points on the board count the same regardless of how they are scored. However, many basketball stories condemn this type of dishonest play. Basketball games are morality-free because they are really about two teams competing fiercely to win, and this film surpasses its predecessors in its comprehension of this basic truth.
The First Slam Dunk also does a fantastic job of encapsulating the mindset and attitude of basketball players. Hanamichi Sakuragi of Shohoku, the team’s best player but also its most important member, committed what should have been a foul. Even if he only manages a mediocre number of points during the game, he puts out the most effort on defense and grabbed the rebound just as his teammates were about to lose hope in him. The value of having someone on a team who maintains motivation cannot be overstated. The fact that PJ Tucker took offense at every foul called against him and refused to back down from Kevin Durant’s personal protection when he and his teammates stormed the court to harass him helped my favorite professional team, the Milwaukee Bucks, win the championship in 2021. A team is motivated by a player like this, and their desire to win is heightened. My high school squad was terrible because we lacked a leader who could inspire us!
I came to the realization that The First Slam Dunk understood basketball in a manner that only former players could when it came to how it was portrayed in small moments, along with the personalities of other players. Is Ryota a little too dramatic in his habit of gazing at the phrase scribbled on his palm to get fired up before a game? Of course! But it’s precisely the sentimental and foolish thing that actual athletes do to get themselves in the right frame of mind before or during a game. This movie has a ton of great trash talk as well! Masashi’s little flex on Akagi following his guard-breaking dunk was amusing and purposefully devoid of foul play, akin to the kind of tiny antics players engage in during real games.
The tiniest elements in this film are accurate! Coaches instill this type of technique in players through hours of practice, such as Mitsui’s beat-long pause before shooting, so players can automatically place the appropriate amount of power and angle on a shot. It’s also adorable and relatable to see Ryota seem surprised when he and Hanamichi score an alley-oop to start the game. You don’t rehearse that kind of play, especially at the high school level, because it’s more crucial to have your offensive screen patterns and basics down perfect. A less confident player like Ryota would stumble when he successfully executed an alley-oop, one of the coolest ways to make a basket, and Hanamichi, who always tried to brag about himself, would try to no-sell it. That’s exactly what makes basketball such an engaging sport—two people expressing themselves through the game in this brief sequence at the start of the movie!
The universal appeal of sports stems from the personalities and humanity of the players. Nonetheless, a basketball game involves a succession of highs and lows for teammates due to its fast-paced nature and reliance on small-team collaboration. This explains why I adore basketball, as do a ton of other people. I can’t recommend The First Slam Dunk enough because it understands basketball on a deeper level than any other piece of media I’ve seen, even though the plot is primarily made up of amusing sports clichés.
