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ABSTRACT
An adaptation and continuation of Inoue Takehiko’s successful manga Slam Dunk (1990–1996), The First Slam Dunk (2022) opened to resounding success in South Korean theaters, becoming the most viewed Japanese film in the country (animated or otherwise), in April of 2023. Part of the film’s success was due to the manga’s immense popularity, published during the Cultural Ban when it was ostensibly illegal to disseminate Japanese culture. Between its critical role in the semi-legitmization of manga before the Japanese Cultural Influx and the inconsistent localization practices of publisher Daewon CI, Slam Dunk becomes an opportunity to observe an engaged site of dynamic interchange that troubles rigid borders of cultural flow. That hybridity, also evident in The First Slam Dunk, helps us understand the film’s curious crossover success with the built-in audience of middle-aged fans and newer, younger female viewers. As pundits have noted, nostalgia is central to The First Slam Dunk, but like the original manga, the film’s nostalgia does not observe strict boundaries of nation, gender, generation. Instead, it gestures to the broader experience that its eclectic audience shares, namely the post-crisis conditions of the last 30 years.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my mother, Won Kyunghee, who significantly helped substantiate this essay by graciously aiding me with overseas research when I no longer had access to my original danhaengbon collection of Slam Dunk. Midway through the process, she actually began catching inconsistencies of localization that I had missed.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 All Japanese and Korean names are written with family name first. I use the Revised Romanization of Korean for Korean names with the exception of names that have popular Romanized spellings.
2 In English-language contexts, ‘manhwa’ has emerged as a proper noun to specify comics produced in South Korea. But it is important to remember that as is the case with manga, manhwa is simply the term to denote comics or cartoons and in fact, the etymological Chinese roots for manga (漫画) and manhwa (漫畵) share the same pronunciation. Koreans in fact refer to manga as ilbon manhwa (‘Japanese comics’) or simply as manhwa. Bracketing the astronomic ascent of webtoons, incidentally, domestic productions were often referred to as hanguk manhwa (‘Korean comics’) or guksan manhwa (‘domestic comics’).
3 The films are Slam Dunk (1994, Nishizawa Nobutaka), Zenkoku Seiha da! Sakuragi Hanamichi (Conquer the Nation! Sakuragi Hanamichi) (1994, Arisako Toshihiko), Shohoku Saidai no Kiki! Moero Sakuragi Hanamichi (Shohoku’s Greatest Danger! Sakuragi Hanamichi) (1995, Kakudō Hiroyuki), and Hoero Basukettoman Tamashii!! Hanamichi to Rukawa no Atsuki Natsu (Roar Basketman’s Soul: Hanamichi and Rukawa’s Burning Summer) (1995, Akihi Masayuki).
4 Compared to basketball, these are all sports that the country has managed to have some success in international arenas such as the Olympics and the World Cup.
5 The 500 won bootleg was titled Seuram Deonkeu (as opposed to Daewon’s Seullaem Deongkeu) and published as individual volumes and in the pirate anthology Shupeo Jeompeu (‘Super Jump’), allegedly created by Jeong Sang-ung.
6 See for example, Reyeo (@Raremarker) Citation2020.
7 The hit films Friend (2001, Kwak Kyung-taek) and Once Upon a Time in High School (2004, Yoo Ha), which capitalized on nostalgia for South Korea in the 70s, heavily relied on the gakuran uniform.
8 Nearly all international comics require a certain amount of alteration as importers must translate the stylized onomatopeias and Slam Dunk is no different. In fact, in many comics, the text itself is aestheticized, which complicates even the most basic practice of translation.
9 Add in the fact that manga and anime characters commonly feature hair and eye colors other than black and brown, especially blonde and blue respectively.
10 The series also uses racialized images, as the three characters are respectively nicknamed ‘Gorilla,’ ‘Boss Gorilla,’ and ‘Round Gorilla’ (and are on occasion drawn as gorillas). See also for example a Reddit thread of users negotiating the race of these characters (“Guys” Citation2022).
11 Along these lines, fans speculate that many of the characters are based on actual NBA players while they also criticize Inoue for basing a number of images off of photographs from actual NBA matches (Nikolavich Citation2021).
12 One of the keywords that has emerged in the Korean discourse on The First Slam Dunk is ‘Ncha gwanram,’ or ‘Nth viewing,’ as the film was driven by repeated viewings. One woman reportedly saw the film 116 times (Kim Citation2023).
13 Relatedly, Jason Sperb (Citation2014–Citation2015) discusses the nostalgic mode of The Artist (2011, Michel Hazanavicius), Hugo (2011, Martin Scorsese) and Midnight in Paris (2011, Woody Allen) where US filmmakers invoke earlier modes of cinema in order to alleviate the anxiety of the transition from film to digital (2014–2015). The First Slam Dunk operates in the same way, especially in terms of the changing global footprint of Japanese soft power and the hegemonic rise of streaming media, through its CGI animation that expertly mimics Inoue’s art, but remains uncanny due to its machinic origins. The First Slam Dunk thus also challenges historical practices in anime production, where artists (often internationally outsourced) mimic the original creator’s style as closely as possible, as was the case in the original anime.
14 As things would have it, at the time of revisions, Japan’s Nikkei index is within reach of surpassing its 1989 high and ending a 34-year-long dry spell. Wall Street Journal journalist James Mackintosh (Citation2024) writes that the true effect of the recovery will be psychological.
15 Inoue’s knowledge regarding the mechanics and history of basketball and incidentally, basketball shoes (in particular Nike Air Jordans, with Sakuragi sporting Air Jordan 6s and 1s and Rukawa wearing 5s) greatly contribute to Slam Dunk’s realism and its popularity. In 2014, the Jordan Brand actually released a Slam Dunk themed pair of sneakers, the Air Jordan 6 Retro ‘Slam Dunk’ featuring Inoue’s art. Absent parents and fathers in particular are an incredibly common motif in manga and anime, which historically is largely an invocation of men of age leaving the home to join the war effort (and increasingly in the 90s and beyond related to the collapse) (Richard Citation2014).
16 The line is important to fans to the degree that its exclusion in The First Slam Dunk caused mild controversy.
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Se Young Kim
Se Young Kim is an assistant professor in the Cinema Studies Department at Colby College. His research interests include contemporary East Asian and US Cinema with a focus on the use of violence, in addition to digital media such as video games and streaming media. He is currently working on a book manuscript titled “The Intimate Violence of South Korean and Japanese Cinema,” which tracks the proliferation of violence in South Korean and Japanese cinema from 1998 onward and its relationship to economic crisis.