Nearly 30 years later, "Slam Dunk" has successfully revived the "rose-colored memory" of people of the same era.
And regardless of whether the film fulfills its expectations or not, it is rare that at this "last" time, it is still trying to find its own vitality.
After half his life, Inoue seems to be trying to touch real life from a new angle, and after more than 20 years, he rethinks the meaning of youth and the weight of dreams; While recreating memories, open the floodgates of a parallel world, leading the audience to peek into the hidden corners of the familiar story from another perspective.
Author: Yichao
Editor: Blue Two
Format: Wang Wei
"I thought it would be hot, but I didn't expect it to be so hot" - "Slam Dunk", which is creating many records in film history, once again verifies the weight of "feelings" among fans, dominating the film market this weekend with unexpected momentum.
Especially for the post-80s and post-90s crowds, whether or not they deliberately put on the red jersey of Xiangbei, everyone seems to have returned to the campus atmosphere where everyone talked about "Slam Dunk" when they were young. Why did this big movie derived from the "old" anime IP regain such vigor after nearly 30 years? After reconstructing the narrative perspective and changing the picture style, when it met with old loyal fans and new audiences with the appearance of the movie, what kind of state did "Slam Dunk" release?
The 80s are reveling, and the 00s are approaching
After the mainland box office of "Journey to the Bell Bud" exceeded 770 million, surpassing the local performance in Japan, the super momentum of Japanese comic films in the Chinese market has recently been pushed to a new peak of topics due to the release of "Slam Dunk".
At present, "Slam Dunk" has successively created a number of achievements such as "the pre-sale box office champion of imported animated films in Chinese film history (breaking 115.6 million)", and has also driven the popularity of the "zero point field" in theaters that has been lost for a long time in recent years, with the total box office of point screenings and pre-sales exceeding 100 million, winning the "top ten box office of zero point field" in the mainland market, and "the cumulative number of people champion on the opening day of Japanese animation". As of April 23, "Slam Dunk" is leading the list of national cinemas before May 1st with a box office of nearly 400 million in 4 days, and has achieved a surprisingly consistent first wave of high scores on all platforms across the network.
Keywords such as "fulfilling dreams", "feelings" and "youth" frequently appear in movie reviews, indicating that fans have used the movie as a time machine to retrace memory, the carrier of the image has become a fermentation ground for emotions, and the audience's feedback on the film has a broader extension. Compared with other Japanese comic movies, "Slam Dunk" has super coverage and appeal to people over 30 who are regarded as non-"main consumers" of this type of film market. Comparing the "cat's eye want to see user portraits" of "Slam Dunk" and "Bell Bud Journey", we can roughly see that the age distribution of "Slam Dunk" is more extensive, with 62.2% of users over 30 years old, while the audience of "Slam Dunk" is mainly distributed among people under 24 years old, and users over 30 years old account for only 20.4%.
A group of "middle-aged people crowding the theater" collectively watched a youth sports animated movie, inadvertently creating another interesting possibility for youthful and enthusiastic theme movies. Although the post-80s and 90s ridicule themselves that "at first glance it is a senior in high school, and then it is three high", their enthusiasm in the face of the things they love is no less than that of young people around 20 years old; As a result, we saw the private viewing organized by the post-80s and 90s, the "middle-aged support group", and the "WeChat group uncle group building", saw the former "middle two youths" who reached middle age to welcome the two-hour "youth limited time return" with great enthusiasm, and saw the post-00s complaining in the circle of friends that "being caught by the middle-aged leaders of the 80s 'slam dunk master crazy'"...
A series of ripples brought about by the hit of the "Slam Dunk" movie once again recreates the cultural phenomenon of more than ten or twenty years ago: people can see it outside the cinema, continue to talk about it, and reconnect it with their own experiences and lives. In public: The "ballgame-style" premiere held on April 15 at the Debalt Gymnasium in Baking Daegu made all "Slam Dunk" fans envious; The West Lake canopy screen of Hangzhou Federation of Trade Unions Shopping Center scrolls to play classic lines and pictures, causing countless passers-by to watch and check in; The sense of watching movies and supporting ceremonies for fans around the world has also been renewed. In the private field, people who have seen the movie post their love with "Slam Dunk" and basketball in the circle of friends, and recall their youth.
Is this craze just a "carnival of the 80s and 90s"? This year, he has successfully planned the logic behind the two film marketing events of "Lingbud Journey" and "Slam Dunk". President Cai Gongming once said in a media interview that the two times have different ideas, ""Lingbud Journey" is expanding from young people to the outside, and "Slam Dunk" is expanding from a less active group in the market to younger people."
We observed that while the old fans of the 80s and 90s smiled, the post-00s and new viewers of this IP are also trying to get closer to cultural hotspots - questions such as "I haven't touched this IP, can I watch it" and "Is it friendly to people who are not familiar with this IP" frequently appeared in various comment areas, and also received an affirmative answer from "new audience friendly". The premise of realizing the propaganda logic of "expanding from middle age to youth" is actually that the "Slam Dunk" movie itself is not only a "feeling" work, but also a new work for all audiences; While honoring the 1996 "See you in our national competition" agreement, the film clearly wants to achieve more.
The vitality of IP is extended, and "fan memory" reappears and expands
The "Slam Dunk" manga serialized in Japan's "Shonen Weekly" from 1990 to 1996 is a classic of sports Japanese comics in the last century, and the animated version of "Slam Dunk", which was born in 1993 and completed simultaneously with the manga version, has widely caused a viewing boom among domestic audiences. Looking back, in the late 80s and early 90s of the 20th century, the US NBA began to enter the field of vision of domestic audiences, especially young audiences, through the broadcast of CCTV; It is said that the main characters in "Slam Dunk" are based on NBA stars.
The synchronous input of these two cultural contents made the "basketball fever" heat up rapidly among teenagers at that time: some researchers once gave a "Slam Dunk" youth animation consumption performance data, in terms of the "post-viewing behavior" of the interviewed population, 94% of the audience produced derivative behaviors - 15% of the audience chose to buy basketball, 37% of the audience chose to buy equipment, and 44% of the audience chose to play basketball; In the memories of many post-80s and 90s, every school always has the "elected version" of "Rukawa", "Sakuragi", "Miyagi" and "Haruko", and teenagers are happy to substitute themselves into the characters and plots of anime, trying to realize the basketball dreams in the story and replicate the youth of virtual characters.
As a result, the movie version this time has become a "must-see" for fans to make up for their youth regrets because it describes the "peak showdown between Xiangbei and the mountain king" that has not appeared in the TV animated version; The vitality of IP also first completed the first round of rebirth by paying tribute to "unfinished" after nearly 30 years.
Some scholars have defined "the ability and attributes of the media to retain certain information" as "media memory", that is, "human beings can reproduce and restore past events and information in reality as always through the media, and thus affect human personal, collective and social memory". If "Slam Dunk" is also regarded as a "media memory", when it reappears through the film, it projects a whole era and people in the era, carrying the superposition of social and personal memory, so we may say: in the reproduction of this common memory, the film work becomes a carrier and trigger; Its long vitality stems not only from the quality of the work itself, but also from the fact that it once completed the rhythm of the times just right, and successfully revived the "rose-colored memory effect" (referring to the glorification effect of people's past experiences) under the "rose-colored memory effect" (referring to people's glorification of past experiences), people's collective memories of an era.
But Yuhiko Inoue, the original author of the manga who personally wrote and directed the film, obviously did not want to stop at feelings. He once made it clear in an interview: "If you just do the same thing according to the original work, it is really not very desirable for me." He wanted to give the film to both Slam Dunk fans and friends who saw the story for the first time, which is why he named the film "The First Slam Dunk."
This time, Ryota Miyagi, who is 168cm tall, replaced Sakuragi Hanamichi and became the protagonist of the movie. Inoue Yuhiko once said in an interview: "The third-grader is centered on Akagi, and Mitsui also has his own story, Sakuragi and Rukawa Kaede are rivals, and Ryota as a second-year student is caught in the middle, so I want to tell about Ryoda this time." The youthful blood got a different expression in the story line of Miyagi Ryota, and some netizens sighed in the comments: "I know the slam dunk master, but I have seen such a slam dunk master for the first time!" The movie still continues the core of "Slam Dunk" "youth always has regrets and imperfections, but it is still worth trying and should not be given up", but it has a little more connection with the cold reality. As netizens said, "Miyagi is like us, ordinary, but burdened with expectations", people speculate that Inoue Yuhiko, who is 167cm tall and has experienced the first half of his life, wants to use this role that is closer to himself and ordinary people to try to touch real life from another angle, and rethink the meaning of youth and the weight of dreams more than 20 years later.
At this point, the vitality of the "Slam Dunk" IP began the second round of rebirth after reflection; Whether or not it is related to Inoue Yuhiko's personal experience or the reality of Japan's current so-called "low-desire society", the creators try to recreate memories while opening the floodgates of another parallel world, leading the audience to peek into the hidden corners of familiar stories from another perspective.
The presentation of the film gives this "rebirth" a new stage. "Slam Dunk" continues the texture of sports movies, and some viewers commented that "as a viewer who has watched more than a thousand NBA games in the past 25 years after watching the comic and animated versions, I can responsibly say that the movie version of the game scene is very real." There is no doubt that modern film technology is the basis for the big screen dream, and fans have been waiting for nearly 30 years for a pact, which is what Yuhiko Inoue has always wished: he said that without mature CG technology, "a sports picture of 10 people running around the field" cannot be achieved with strokes alone. Although the "three-shaded two" technology - that is, modeling through 3D technology and then rendering the model as a 2D color block effect, so that the object looks like it has both three-dimensional perspective and two-dimensional look and feel - was questioned at the beginning of the official announcement, it is undeniable that this technology does make the rebounding, dunking, and dribbling actions that were once presented between frames more realistic and vivid, and the scenes that originally appeared in the storyboard finally became coherent images, greatly enhancing the visual shock.
The ending theme song and interlude brought by the Japanese rock band 10-FEET build the track framework with a distinct rhythm and build a direct expression with three major instruments, which is more suitable for the three-dimensional viewing atmosphere of the theater in terms of hearing, which is easy to fit the atmosphere of "burning", and also adds a new aural dimension to the familiar characters and story scenes, which further highlights the natural advantages of cinema movies in the all-sensory appeal.
As Cai Gongming summed up the experience of promoting "Slam Dunk" in the mainland as "a collision of rationality and sensibility", the strong vitality of this film burst out after many years is a grand emotional projection of "fan memory" in the present, and it is also a re-integration and re-start of the film from creation to publicity, making the classic IP achieve a remarkable continuation of vitality across time.
After "Slam Dunk", what will the audience revel about?
From the perspective of the animation industry, Japan has a relatively mature ACGN industry cluster development model, and the release of this movie has also completed another round of closed loop in the IP industry chain of "Slam Dunk". The film is not only popular in Chinese mainland, but also has caused a lot of repercussions in Hong Kong and Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and other countries and regions, and the influence of the IP of "Slam Dunk" in Asia can be seen.
Perhaps there are various coincidences in this carnival belonging to the 80s and 90s, but the anime and animation works represented by "Slam Dunk" that cover more "all ages" are showing their vitality and influence again and again. In China, with the emergence of the concept of "animation industry" in relevant national policy planning at the beginning of the 21st century and the continuous combination of upstream and downstream industries of animation, the coverage of industrial audiences is also expanding; The "2022-2027 Animation Industry In-depth Survey and Development Status Trend Forecast Report" pointed out that China's animation industry is in a period of rapid development, "the trend of the development of China's animation industry at all ages", and suggested that industry-related institutions attach importance to high-quality IP content, combine IP with the industry, and generate sustained attraction to maintain long-term core competitiveness.
In recent years, animated films adapted from traditional myths such as "Jiang Ziya" and "Nezha" have received praise from the audience, which has also given domestic animation the confidence to take root in the local area and explore its potential; While the animated films of Miyazaki series, Disney and Universal become part of the childhood memories of generations of young people, we also see more new, homegrown "two-dimensional" stories being told with their natural affinity, carrying the meaning of cultural inheritance and education.
More than 20 years ago, there were groups of teenagers who liked basketball because they saw the blood in "Slam Dunk", and learned not to give up because of the bravery and persistence of the characters in the story - everyone who is in their youth or middle-aged anxiety may need a "Slam Dunk" to ignite the fighting spirit to face real life; Will the scene of spontaneous pursuit of dreams without the need for "chicken dolls" be reproduced now because of the advent of another work related to youth and dreams like "Slam Dunk"?
Resources:
How did "Slam Dunk" explode? Behind the scenes of the million-dollar premiere revealed (entertainment @ He Xiaoqin)
TRANSLATION|"THE FIRST SLAM DUNK" OFFICIAL PUBLICATION: INTERVIEW WITH YUHIKO INOE (AMATEUR ARTIST MAart, original author Kyo@ douban)
Research on the Causes of Adolescent Media Consumption to Promote Sports Behavior from the Perspective of Social Communication: A Case Study of Slam Dunk (Sports Research, Issue 5, 2019, Zheng Heming, Yu Lin, Zhejiang University of Media and Communication)
The Construction of Fan Memory: An Investigation of the Fan Practice of Slam Dunk (Shanshan Tang, Soochow University)