After a long 20-year wait, Slam Dunk is back. We finally saw the end that was not animated that year - the national competition, Xiangbei High School vs. Sanwang Gonggao.
The beauty of the high school campus, the passion of competitive sports and the regrets necessary for growth depicted by Yuhiko Inoue in "Slam Dunk" have long surpassed the attributes of simple "sports manga" and become.
And the charm of "Slam Dunk" has not faded 20 years later, and it continues to affect this generation of young people. Many post-00s who have not seen "Slam Dunk" before have called for the completion of the animated version of 101 episodes and the original comics after watching this movie.
This phenomenon confirms what Yuhiko Inoue said in an interview, this is not a sentimental work only for fans, but a "Slam Dunk" for everyone - The First Slam Dunk.
Slam Dunk animated version
In order to make a "Slam Dunk" for everyone, Inoue Yuhiko made many trade-offs between emotion and innovation.
Fans who have seen the original work are looking forward to seeing those classic scenes and lines again, and Inoue Yuhiko must know this, but he did not do it, but deliberately omitted some of the most familiar lines like a strong man.
Among those classic lines, the most famous is definitely the sentence that Mitsui Shou said after returning to the arena, crying and kneeling in front of Coach Anzai while bleeding from his nose: "Coach, I want to play basketball!" ”
In the movie, with the help of Miyagi Ryota's memories, Inoue Yuhiko restores the cause and effect of the whole incident, and even Mitsui's knee injury, the source of a junior high school prefectural competition MVP that degenerated into a gangster, is mentioned in a close-up of the game, but he omits the most out-of-the-loop line in the entire work.
"Coach, I want to play basketball!" from the anime! ”
In this trade-off, Inoue Yuhiko's creative approach is very clear - he understands what is important and what is not.
This is important because it can connect the history of the characters, so that we can understand why Mitsui Shou insists on standing on the court with a shaky body even if he is already physically exhausted, and can still shoot that crucial three-pointer; This line is not so important, because the story itself already says it all, the line does not provide richer meaning outside of the story, if it can only provide emotional bonuses, then simply do not.
The same phrase "I am Mitsui and a man who never gives up" has also been omitted, because the three-point shot he can still shoot when he is exhausted already shows his determination, and if he can explain it clearly with actions, he no longer needs to supplement his lines.
Inoue Yuhiko's decisive gesture of abandoning these classic lines is reminiscent of 2004, when he did not hesitate to erase "Ten Days Later", which had been drawn in chalk on the blackboard for only three days.
"Ten Days Later" painted on the blackboard
Moreover, "replacing lines with actions" is actually a very cinematic creative idea. When the screen does not have a line frame on the drawing paper, silence becomes sound, stillness becomes movement, and many lines that have a supplementary illustrative nature or show psychological activities in comics are no longer suitable for appearing in the movie, which is determined by the nature of the medium itself.
Inoue Yuhiko undoubtedly knows this, but he still retains the words that Sakuragi Hanamichi said to Coach Anzai in order to stick to the field after suffering a back injury: "My most glorious moment is now. ”
First of all, this line has a reasonable and necessary context, it is the communication between the player and the coach before making a joint decision.
Secondly, this line reflects a moment that belongs only to campus sports - when professional competitive sports face similar injuries, there may be career, business factors and other considerations, but campus sports are different, it has the purest blood of youth, for the present moment can give everything, desperate.
"I only have now!" in the manga! ”
As for the other trade-off, it is more obvious, that is, Inoue Yuhiko chose Miyagi Ryota as the protagonist of the movie, rather than the more popular, powerful and comedic Sakuragi Hanamichi and Rukawa Kaede.
Regarding this choice, Inoue Yuhiko said in an interview: "It is because the senior is centered on Akagi, and Mitsui also has his own story, Sakuragi and Kaede Rukawa are first-year opponents, and Ryota, who is a high school sophomore, is caught in the middle." So I wanted to talk about Ryota this time. ”
Miyagi Ryota propaganda poster
Inoue emphasized Miyagi's identity, a man "caught in the middle". This characteristic is not only reflected in his age and identity, but also in his "player" attributes. As a player, although Miyagi has the speed of electric fire, excellent ball control and organizational skills, his height is only 1.68 meters, which is particularly thin and short in front of the talented elder forest.
Still, Miyagi is looking for his way to survive on the pitch. In the movie, Miyagi finds the answer under the bag of the mountain king - dribbling. But more important than dribbling is his courage and determination to face all opponents who are taller than him.
When we count the opponents in northern Xiangbei, it is not difficult to find that the point guards in those teams always bear the name of genius or trump card: Kazusei Fukatsu of the mountain king, Xiandaichi of Lingnan, Mushinichi of Hainan, and Kenji Fujima of Xiangyang.
Miyagi has never had a similar aura, and he is nervous and timid in the face of these geniuses who are taller than him, but he will still rise to every challenge with determination, and smile and call himself "Kanagawa's No. 1 defender".
Admittedly, the genius Sakuragi Hanamichi and Kaede Rukawa are the well-deserved protagonists of the manga "Slam Dunk". But more like ordinary people, Miyagi Ryota is suitable for the protagonist of "The First Slam Dunk" dedicated to everyone.
The lack of talent shows Miyagi's struggle on a physical level, but also links it to his long-term trauma on a mental level. The main content of the film is the match between Shonbei and the mountain king, while interspersed with a large number of memories of Miyagi in the middle. The older brother is the one who inspired Miyagi to enter the path of basketball, and at the same time a player with better physical talent than Miyagi.
This gap is highlighted after the unexpected death of his brother, and under his mother's longing for his brother for many years, Miyagi is inevitably placed in a position to be compared, and this comparison is destined to be silent and repressed.
At the same time, Miyagi is also burdened with unspeakable guilt - the unintentional words he cried and shouted to his brother "You never come back" turned out to be true.
Just looking at Miyagi's family story, we will find that it is very similar to Hirokazu Kore-eda's "Walking Around". In both cases, the unexpected death of the eldest son who had high hopes in the family became a shadow that everyone in the family knew but avoided talking, and had a lasting impact on family relations like a ghost.
The color of "Walking Around" is bright, and the game of "Slam Dunk" is hot, but there is a gloomy undertone of death hidden underneath.
In "Walking Around", a lot of tension with the father is partly because the child has been relieved. In "Slam Dunk", the person who punctured the thin layer of window paper is also the youngest sister in the family.
On her birthday on the eve of the Miyagi National Competition, her sister usually tells the fact that she knows her brother is dead, and before that, Miyagi and her mother tell her that her brother has just gone to live on a remote island.
What seemed to be the influence of a child's unintentional words back then is now through another child's unintentional words, which makes the two parties most affected open their hearts.
Although there are many memories inserted, they do not seem lengthy. Inoue always cleanly breaks the memories and cuts back to the arena. For example, after Miyagi returned to Okinawa alone, he cried on the beach, and Inoue ended the memory with a turning back and running kicking motion, without letting the memory fall into the strange circle of indiscriminate sadness.
All the memories expand the single arena space in an emotional dimension, connecting each player's life experience off the pitch more closely to the stadium they love.
Although memories take up most of the film, the stadium is still where Inoue focuses on ink.
Inoue Yuhiko has greatly retained the sense of line in the manga, making the characters' movements smoother, the fluttering posture of clothes and the changes of light and shadow more natural, and the audience's eyes can be more focused on the characters.
Some storyboards in comics are used directly in movies, and the real sense of movement brought by the production method of three shades and two further strengthens the focused line of sight impact effect in the original comic storyboard.
In the film, the combination of hand-drawn and three-shaded two is like Inoue's self-description of his own creative concept - he is making a new attempt, breaking the seemingly insurmountable boundary between static comics and dynamic images, and combining the strengths of the two mediums to show "action".
The final rounds of the game were the ultimate demonstration of this concept. In these rounds of the manga, not a single line frame appears, and Inoue Yuhiko does his best to depict every movement and expression of the players. After Sakuragi threw the killer goal, Inoue used extremely exaggerated lines to depict his high-fives with Kaede Rukawa.
And in the movie, there is not a single line in this paragraph, not even a little sound, and the audience can only hold their breath and gaze at everything on the screen. After Sakuragi threw the killer goal, the voice still did not appear, and the incredulous expressions on everyone's faces still delayed the tension of the audience.
When this emotion was pushed to the peak of impatience, and a small but crisp high five resounded in the dark and silent theater, the audience's emotions were finally released. In terms of narrative function, this crisp high five is an alternative to the exaggerated lines of the original comic high-five.
This "Slam Dunk" combines the best of both mediums of comics and video, and its visual expression on the court is definitely the pinnacle of sports animation works.
In addition to this strong visual expression, another very important reason for the audience's immersion when watching the game clips is Miyagi's perspective as the protagonist.
Miyagi is the point guard, the man who holds the ball the longest in a game, and the team's offense is initiated and combed by him. Only by following his perspective can we get deeper into the game – perhaps the simplest reason why Miyagi can be the protagonist.