As of March 18th, 2023, the new anime film from studio Nut, Blue Giant, is currently playing in Japan. Blue Giant is an adaptation of author/artist Shinichi Ishizuka’s manga of the same name, which tells the story of Dai, a Japanese high schooler who becomes obsessed with Jazz after being taken to a Jazz club by one of his friends. His brother buys him a saxophone, and he swears to become the best Jazz player in the world. While not dramatically unique for Japanese manga (there are many Manga about Japanese teenagers picking up niche hobbies and working hard to achieve their goals), Blue Giant stands out for its creative paneling and chill slice-of-life atmosphere. The first act of the story mostly involves short episodic tales of Dai using “the power of Jazz” to help relate to or emotionally assist one of his loved ones. Each chapter is a simple humanistic coming-of-age tale, with a clear beginning and end. There are no grand Jazz tournaments or rivals he needs to overcome, which is a contrast to contemporaries like Sound! Euphonium or Your Lie in April. Two standout chapters involve Dai sending off his best friend before he moves cities and the backstory of how Dai’s brother bought the sax in the first place. These are both touching, creatively structured, and have very solid paneling/art. All in all, it’s an impressive slice-of-life story with top-shelf characterization.
However, I wondered how this would be translated into a full-on film. On the one hand, an adaptation simply makes sense. One of the biggest difficulties with a music-focused manga is that it exists in a medium completely bereft of audio. There is a tangible aspect of the story that could undoubtedly be fleshed out through adaptation. On the other hand, the individual vignettes don’t really connect, and there is no overarching narrative pull. How do you turn that into a two-hour film, where functioning as a cohesive whole is intrinsic to that medium?
To fix this, the film instead jumps to “act” 2 of the story, where the main character Dai travels to Tokyo and forms a Jazz trio. This is a sensible decision for obvious reasons; it gives the film structure and puts our protagonist in a vulnerable situation. This heightens the drama and creates genuine stakes for our protagonist. It does come with some downsides, though. For one, the small-town slice-of-life atmosphere is gone, replaced with the urban sprawl of Tokyo and a less unique story. While there are still no “rivals,” the conflict is more about our cast improving their craft as opposed to the more personal stories of the first part. It’s not “shonen,” but it’s more “shonen” than it was originally.
It also means the film has to flash back at certain points to give the necessary backstory. Now, this is done pretty cleverly in how it integrates the sections into the early music beats. It mimics how a good performance can lead one to recall their own life. It’s not distracting and it brings the gentler humanistic moments into the scenes that matter. However, I do wonder if some of the time in the film could be better allocated. Especially with how well-animated the later musical segments are, it is a shame that many of the early performances feel like slideshow Sparknotes from stories we’ve never seen before, instead of the grand spectacles of abstract animation they should be.
In fact, for fans of animation, this film’s team is probably the selling point. The director and co-storyboard artist is Yuzuru Tachikawa, notable for works such as Mob Psycho 100 and Deca-Dence. Tachikawa has become known for his high-intensity mixed-media animation as well as truly exceptional pieces of sakuga. These are the types of show-stopping sequences that get anime fans tweeting up a frenzy. This can easily be seen in the spectacular action in Mob Psycho 100, where the scratchy notepad illustrations and surreal color palette create some truly mesmerizing moments of visual wonder.
The last few performances are the real standouts, with a magical mix of impossibly fluid animation and abstract imagery. It’s comparable to the color palette of something like Mob Psycho, with the imagery of something almost like Fantasia. These set pieces are the main calling card of the film and are what drew the talent to the project, I assume. They are particularly effective as the drama starts to heat up, and emotion cascades into something enormous. The final two piano solos from the character Yukinori are the most prominent “wow” moments of the film, with some of the most creative work of anyone involved.
That’s why it’s such a shame that this animation is not consistent throughout the rest of the film. Outside of the concerts, there is not too much else to write home about. Even Tokyo is not portrayed as prettily as it could be. This is a fish-out-of-water story about a small-town kid moving to the big city. I would love for that big city to seem alive and colorful. Instead, it just feels no more bustling than the small town he came from.
Lulls in animation quality are to be expected; Blue Giant is not currently a big phenomenon, and those later sequences must have taken a hefty chunk of the budget. Sadly, that makes those scenes almost not fit with the rest of the film, especially when considering the real problem with the animation: the use of CGI character models.
Whenever the characters need to move precisely in concert sequences, traditionally animated characters are swapped for CG models. Even the backgrounds become computer-generated at points. CGI anime can and has looked very good in the past, most notably in shows like Land of the Lustrous or Netflix’s reboot of Trigun. It can also be mixed well with traditional animation, as seen in shows like Attack on Titan. The problem here is twofold. First, the character models are far less detailed than the traditional animation on display. Everything feels poorly composited, and the characters don’t seem to actually exist in the backgrounds they inhabit. The second is just how distracting it becomes. The switch from traditional animation to CGI and back at the drop of a hat gives the viewer severe visual whiplash.
I can see the vision behind the use of CGI, especially when parts of the background are CG as well. This allows for the “camera” to zoom and spin around the space in kinetic and dynamic ways. There are some shots during the concert sequences that I have never seen pulled off in animation as well as they are here. It’s almost like a drone was put into an actual animated space. This “camera” is able to flow with the music in an almost improvisational way similar to jazz itself. If you can ignore the mismatch between the backgrounds and the character models, there is some real showmanship on display here.
Sadly, it was distracting enough to hurt my enjoyment. Not exponentially, but enough to notice. This is a very good film made by clearly talented people, with incredible animation that just has some really rough moments throughout. I am still glad I watched it, and I’m happy that it got me started on the manga, which is also excellent. Hopefully, in the future, we can get a sequel or a new film by this team that is able to improve from some of these misfires.