Never seen the manga/anime, but I like basketball and Inoue's art style. I also liked the 3D in the trailers.

1. The movie clearly tries hard to be an accessible introduction to Slam Dunk, but suffers as a newbie movie by affording the other teammates far less character moments in the flashhbacks. Which suggests that, well, to feel more invested in the cast you actually should have read the manga. I get how it's easy to blame the newbie for not doing his research. But I'm sure others can still appreciate that appealing to newbies while catering to existing fans is a bit of a thankless balancing act.

2. I really enjoyed Ryota as the protagonist, but could tell he was a weird protag choice. Seems there are mixed feelings about him as the protag. I def got the sense that his story felt a little bare at times, but I really enjoyed what was there and would definitely enjoy a more expanded, fleshed-out version of his story.

3. The 3DCG basketball kicked ass. I think it'd be crazy labour-intensive to recreate the speed, momentum and movement in 2D. They'd very likely have to cut out a lot of the animation and hang on freeze frames to fill for time, which as a viewer would have totally killed the momentum. Very excited to see the progress of 3D in anime, especially for movies.

4. The movie loses a little momentum near the end. It's fairly obvious how the match will go by the final third, and they start running out of material for Ryota. Ryota feels less involved in the team's success as they shift focus to Sakuragi. Which may be faithful to whatever material it's adapting, but does mean that the overarcing story gets tied up kinda weirdly.

OVERALL: Liked the movie! I wish I could call it the 9/10 or say it's worthy of its MAL score, but I can't say that's at all reasonable without already being familiar with the material covered before this movie. But made me hungry to see what this universe could be, and luckily for me there's a whole manga for me to sink into haha. Would love to better understand the movoe from you guys' perspective as fans.