2023-07-29 04:30:00
On the occasion of the presentation of the film during the Annecy Festival 2023, the Japanese producer Toshiyuki Matsui evoked for us the release in France of the film “The First Slam Dunk”, one of the biggest animation successes of all time in Japan!
How did the idea of revisiting this cult manga come about?
Toshiyuki Matsui (film producer): The reason I wanted to produce The First Slam Dunk is that I’m a big fan of the anime series. I was very impressed by the final scene of the anime, and I really wanted this moment to be reproduced in a film intended for the big screen.
I worked on the reissue of Slam Dunk on DVD produced by Toei Animation. We received a lot of positive feedback, and fans started asking us for new content around the franchise. So we knew that a Slam Dunk movie would have a great chance of finding its audience in Japan.
Why do you think Slam Dunk was so successful in Japan?
Slam Dunk addresses many themes, such as collective effort and the quest for victory, and it is a work that has really crossed the generations. Despite the discontinuation of the manga, the series never gave the impression of being out of date.
It is a series that has remained popular with new generations, which continues to be read and appreciated by young readers. It is thanks to its many qualities that Slam Dunk continues to be so popular today!
The particularity of this film is to adapt the manga, while managing to offer something new thanks to a new point of view. What can we tell us about this new approach which totally revisits the history of Slam Dunk?
From a technical point of view, thanks in particular to the size of the boxes and the onomatopoeias, it is easy to make the manga more comical. In a film, on the other hand, you cannot change the screen size, so it was more difficult to bring humor to the story.
But I would say that the more serious tone of The First Slam Dunk compared to the manga is also explained by the number of years that have passed since the publication of the work. The author Takehiko Inoue has gained experience and maturity, which explains this change in the style of drawing and narration.
Toei Animation
How did the idea come about to entrust Takehiko Inoue, the author of Slam Dunk, with the controls of this animated feature film?
It is rare that an author himself adapts his manga to the cinema. But I was quickly convinced that no one other than Inoue-sensei could carry out this mission, because he had his own vision of the progress of each sequence and he alone had the knowledge to make the necessary corrections to the project. We didn’t consider anyone else, he was the only choice for us as director.
By moving from paper format to the big screen, The First Slam Dunk managed to transform a popular manga into an auteur film.
Of course Takehiko Inoue is himself an artist, but we must not forget that there are also other artists who participated in the production of this film. Therefore, this rendering stems from the combined talent of these different profiles, but I think that the particularity of this film was the very precise vision that Inoue had in mind. What I particularly admire about him is his ability to transcribe what he has in mind, whether on paper with his manga or on screen with this film.
Toei Animation
The First Slam Dunk was a triumph in Japan, to the point of overtaking Avatar 2 at the box office. Did you expect such success?
(laughs) To be honest with you, yes.
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What message would you like to send to the French public who for the majority will discover the universe of Slam Dunk with this feature film?
We wanted the film to also appeal to those who have never read the manga. The plot of the scenario follows the path of a young boy until he is 17 years old, and in parallel we attend a very intense basketball game for 40 minutes. Everything has therefore been done so that the public understands the stakes of the scenario without having to know the details of the Slam Dunk license.
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