The First Slam Dunk picks up where the anime left it off. It deals with the adaptation of the latter part of the manga which mainly focuses on the match between Shohoku High and their rivals Sannoh Industry. The series centers around a high schooler named Hanamichi Sakuragi at Shohoku High. He meets a girl named Haruko Akagi and joins the school’s basketball team.
The mangaka, Takehiko Inoue, stated that he created Slam Dunk to express the feelings one experiences when they are playing a team sport. He said that the manga might have been about Soccer instead of Basketball but the core intention was to make people relate to the feeling of playing sports in general.
The First Slam Dunk Trailer
A short trailer for ‘The First Slam Dunk’ was released in November 2022 by Toei Animation. It is a bit brief, but it has got all the fans hyped up. The trailer starts with two kids playing basketball and cuts to Haruko Akagi, thinking on the beach. It then cuts to the star members of the team, and we get a glimpse of Hanamichi Sakuragi, Kaede Rukawa, and Takenori Akagi.
The trailer confirms that the film will be using 3DCG animation instead of classic hand-drawn animation. However, it seems that they have managed to keep the iconic style of the manga and anime series. The characters are heavy-set on the details and this can be due to the involvement of Toei in the animation.
The First Slam Dunk Cast
All the members of the Shohoku High School basketball team are given new voices and Toei Animation revealed the voice actors in November 2022, along with the trailer. Ryota Miyagi is voiced by Shugo Nakamura, Hisashi Mitsui is given the voice of Jun Kasama, Takenori Akagi is played by Kenta Miyake, and Kaede Rukawa is voiced by Shin’ichirō Kamio. The main character, Hanamichi Sakuragi is played by Subaru Kimura.
Apart from that, Maaya Sakamoto voices Akagi Haruko, Ryota Iwasaki voices Kiminobu Kogure, Chikahiro Kobayashi voices Yōhei Mito, Masafumi Kobatake voices Nozomi Takamiya, and Kenichiro Matsuda plays Chūichirō Noma. The reason behind the change of the voice actors was justified by Inoue himself as he stated that if he asked the old voice actors to return, he would be asking them to throw away their perception of the characters. This was due to the fact that Inoue changed the perspective of the story from Optimistic potential to living with pain and overcoming it.
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The First Slam Dunk Production
Toshiyuki Matsui from Toei Animation was the first to offer a production to pick up where the TV anime ended. Unfortunately, the offer was rejected and after a period of 6 years, Toei Animation approached Inoue with a second proposal. This time Matsui took the time to assemble a team of people who were led by Naoki Miyahara and Toshio Ohashi in order to create prototypes for the visuals. After 5 years of hard work, in December 2014, Inoue was on-board with the film. He was given the responsibility to write the script and overlook the direction of The First Slam Dunk.
The work on the film started back in 2018. However, the news was only made public by Inoue on January 6, 2021. Information about the project was revealed to the fans on August 13, 2021, where it was revealed that Inoue was the screenwriter and director, along with Yasuyuki Ebara as a character designer/animation director. Other notable people in the industry like Yasuhiro Motoda, Katsuhiko Kitada, Toshio Ohashi, Naoki Miyahara, Fumihiko Suganuma, and Haruka Kamatani were revealed to be the sequence directors for the project.
Five character posters were released across Japan on July 1, 2022, to hype the fans up for the upcoming movie. The production process was a blend of 3DCG and hand-drawn 2D animation, although the latter was minimum. Professional basketball players also reviewed the animation to ensure realism in the characters’ movements.
The First Slam Dunk Release Date
Details of the project were limited until the limited release was scheduled to be on December 3, 2022, in Japan. Following this, there was a wider release nationwide next week on December 10. The film has been released in the neighboring countries of South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and the Philippines.
Unfortunately, there is no official release date for the movie in America or European countries. However, given the popularity of the series, US fans do not wait to wait too long for the official release date. Cinemark has also hinted at the release of the movie this year!
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