Blue Giant
Jazz is the great pleasure at the heart of Yuzuru Tachikawa’s unusual coming-of-age anime drama.
It is surprising to find that we have in Blue Giant an animated film from Japan in which jazz is central. Yet it is odder still that the origin of this piece should be a work in which not a single note of music could be heard for, like many an anime piece, Blue Giant derives from a manga, this one being by Shin’ichi Ishizuka. It tells a story about three dedicated eighteen-year-old males in Tokyo who come together as a jazz trio and whose lives are devoted to making their names in that field. Their big ambition is to play at the So Blue Jazz Club, the most celebrated venue of its kind anywhere in Japan. Consequently, the film does have a tale to tell, yet the fact remains that it is the music itself that most people will regard as its key appeal.
Yuzuru Tachikawa’s film starts in Sendai where Dai Miyamoto (Yuki Yamada) is a student. However, over the last three years he has become devoted to playing the tenor saxophone and he decides to leave for Tokyo. Once there he makes contact with another jazz enthusiast, Sawabe (Shôtarô Mamiya), whose instrument is the piano. On visiting a jazz bar, Take Two, Dai finds that the female proprietor, Akiko, plays records from her vast collection rather than featuring live music but she allows Dai and Sawabe who are now playing together to practice there. Before long they realise that they need a drummer too and Tamada (Amane Okayama) is brought in. The rest of the film follows the trio’s attempts to become established and ultimately reaches a climax when the So Blue Jazz Club finally engages them. We know that success will be achieved not only because the nature of the tale virtually demands it but because the narrative is occasionally interrupted by short interview scenes in which, as though recorded for television at a later date, individuals comment on these earlier days.
Tachikawa has worked on many anime television series and shorts since 2007 but has more recently taken on feature films. The style that he has adopted for Blue Giant involves a mix of hand-drawn footage and computer-generated shots which has not pleased everybody and animating hands moving over a keyboard can indeed be problematic. But, even if the animation is not always of the finest, Blue Giant increasingly beguiles. Early on it relies on the appeal of its relatively standard story of youngsters seeking to fulfil their dream. Constant in his certainty of aim and self-belief, Dai is a rather less filled-out character than either Sawabe, who is more experienced having been devoted to music for longer but perhaps overconfident, or Tamada who, initially criticised especially by Sawabe, knows that he must put special effort into increasing his skills. Their efforts to achieve success provide a plot-line which is unexpectedly embellished by extra drama in the film’s last quarter and which is useful in sustaining the rather generous running length of two hours. Wisely no romantic sub-plots are introduced, but in this male-dominated world the character of the jazz bar owner, Akiko, adds an engaging female figure to the tale.
But what counts above all is the music. With passing references to the likes of Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, the jazz element makes its mark from the start. However, regardless of any passing attempts to find words to express the music’s emotional appeal, the film is above all notable for the panache with which it seeks to express all of that visually (the numbers played are increasingly given more screen time as the film proceeds). In these scenes the literal representation of these performances grow into images that use stylised colour, intercuts and even abstraction to capture the spirit of the music. It is the success of this which ensures that Blue Giant becomes a pleasure. For the record I should add that unexpectedly it offers a short coda after the final credits have drawn to a close.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Voices of Yuki Yamada, Shôtarô Mamiya, Amane Okayama, Sayaka Kinoshita, Hiroki Touchi, Masayuki Katou, Hibenobu Kiuchi, Yutaka Aoyama, Go Shinomiya, Kenji Nomura, Shinya Takahashi, Yusuke Kondo, Mirei Suda.
Dir Yuzuru Tachikawa, Pro Katsuhiro Takei, Eri Isobe and Mikita Bizenjima, Screenplay Number 8 from the manga by Shin'ichi Ishizuka, Ph Kasumi Tôgô, Ed Kiyoshi Hirose, Music Hiromi Uehara, Chief Animation Dir Yuichi Takahashi.
Nut-Anime Ltd.
120 mins. Japan. 2023. US Rel: 8 October 2023. UK Rel: 31 January 2024. Cert. 12A.
