With the new movie scheduled to premiere in Japanese theaters on December 3rd, the production staff for The First Slam Dunk anime film recently hosted a YouTube live stream, revealing some important details. Within the stream, the hosts revealed the new primary cast members, theme song artists, and the first full trailer ahead of its theatrical premiere.
As noted in the introduction, they announced the names of those who will voice five of the primary characters, with all of them being re-cast from the original series (which makes sense since the original Slam Dunk TV anime ran from 1993 to 1996). The new voice actors who will bring these characters back to life are (character names first):
Ryota Miyagi: Shugo Nakamura
Hisashi Mitsui: Jun Kasama
Kaede Rukawa: Shinichiro Kamio
Hanamichi Sakuragi: Subaru Kimura
Takenori Akagi: Kenta Miyake
As for the music, the opening theme song is being performed by the rock band The Birthday (the title of the song wasn’t revealed) while another band 10-FEET will perform the ending theme song titled “Dai Zero Kan.” It’s also worth noting that two members of the latter band, Takuma and Satoshi Takebe, will team up to compose the music for the movie.
While it’s been reported in a previous article that some fans around the world are worried about the use of CG animation in this movie, knowing that the manga’s author Takehiko Inoue is personally writing and directing this movie at the legendary studio Toei Animation might help ease those concerns a bit.
The Slam Dunk manga began its serialization in Weekly Shonen Jump in October 1990 and ran until June 1996, eventually compiled into 31 volumes (all of which were released in English by Viz Media). The anime adaptation lasted 101 episodes, with four movies also being produced. While an official, complete home video release of the series never happened in North America, Crunchyroll has the entire TV series available to stream on their website.
Sources: Crunchyroll News, Anime News Network
