THE FIRST SLAM DUNK, the film based on the popular Slam Dunk manga by Takehiko Inoue, has quickly climbed to the top of the charts that rank anime movies all across the world. The movie dethroned Hayao Miyazaki's Ponyo from seventh position all the way down to eighth place after it debuted in tenth place during the weekend and then settled into seventh place during the week that followed.
The film follows Ryota Miyagi, the point guard of Shohoku high school's basketball team. His older brother, Sota, who's three years older than him, inspired his passion for basketball. Ryota and his teammates Hanamichi Sakuragi, Takenori Akagi, Hisashi Mitsui, and Kaede Rukawa are challenging the inter-high champions, the Sanno school, in basketball. The excitement seems to only build as their skill continues to grow and the tensions of the competition between the two schools grow along with it.
Check out the trailer for the THE FIRST SLAM DUNK below:
Take a look at the history of THE FIRST SLAM DUNK:
The original Slam Dunk manga aired on television from 1993 to 1996, and four anime films were based on it. The storyline follows Hanamichi Sakuragi, an incoming freshman at Shohoku High, who also holds the record for having been rejected by the most number of girls in middle school, which sadly adds up to a whopping 50 total. Sakuragi has been traumatized by basketball ever since he was most recently rejected by a girl for a fellow teammate.
During a December 2014 dinner with Matsui, Inoue gave the film the go-ahead. Then, Matsui suggested that Inoue write the script and direct, as he was the person most trusted with the dialogue and physical appearance and expression of the characters. In January 2015, he began working on the script after Inoue's acceptance. In 2018, motion capture and model development began. Then on January 6, 2021, Inoue unexpectedly announced on Twitter that production had begun on the film.
On August 13, 2021, Inoue was revealed to be the film's screenwriter and director, alongside other production staff members including Yasuyuki Ebara as character designer/animation director and Naoki Miyahara, Katsuhiko Kitada, Toshio Ohashi, Yasuhiro Motoda, Fumihiko Suganuma, and Haruko Kamatani as sequence directors.
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