‘The first slam dunk’ crowns the great saga of slam dunka successful basketball sleeve and adolescence written and drawn Takehiko Inoue that would later happen to the television series and to the cinema. Inoue himself is in charge of making this film, which is something like a compendium and end point of the saga.
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It can be enjoyed without being a basketball lover or a fan of Japanese cartoons, with their established rules. Inoue’s work may seem somewhat academic, far from the radicalism of other ‘mangakas’ and anime authors, but his drawing and movement are very plasticof diluted colors like watercolors, general shots in which nothing is neglected and close-ups with a type of expressiveness that sometimes makes one think of the stroke of a Jiro Taniguchi.
The story reveals another overcoming through sport and affective relationships. Through sequences located in different temporal planes, we are told the story of a lost bullet, his relationship with the world and with the ball. The choral confrontations between the teams of the institutes of different prefectures are the framework of the conflicts and individual resolutions of the wayward hanamichi, protagonist of the saga. Being quite long, the sequences of the matches are very meticulous and believable, sometimes almost in real time to better capture markings, dunks and baskets.
