2023 Anime of the Year? "Blue Giant," of course.

Sleeper hit anime 'Blue Giant' gets an encore

In 2023, releasing a big-budget anime feature about three Gen Z boys in a post-bop jazz band sounds like commercial suicide. Jazz is boomer music; anime is for kids weaned on Pokemon.

But the sleeper hit of the year was by far director Yuzuru Tachikawa’s “Blue Giant,” an adaptation of Shinichi Ishizuka’s jazz-centric manga series. The film was so popular with audiences in Japan and overseas after its first run this spring that it warranted an even bigger budget for a re-edited second release, which premiered last month at this year's Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) before opening in cinemas across Japan.

Jazz has been featured in popular anime soundtracks since the 1970s, when Yuji Ohno’s funky fusion scores for the “Lupin III” series were broadcast on network TV and incorporated into Hayao Miyazaki’s first feature film, “Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro.” Jazz and sci-fi anime cemented their synergy with Yoko Kanno’s bluesy noir stylings in the ’90s classic, “Cowboy Bebop,” which was influenced by “Lupin III” and is considered a masterpiece of jazz soundtracks in any medium.

But in “Blue Giant,” a familiarity with jazz lore and the cult-like devotion it can inspire is a given. The story is about friendship, yearning and resilience, yes, but it centers on music. However exhilarating, its long wordless concert sequences demand focus and attention, and I couldn’t help but wonder how many in the TIFF premier’s mostly youthful crowd had never before heard so much jazz outside of a supermarket.

That said, the story’s setup is boilerplate anime — so instantly recognizable that it’s hard not to groan when saxophone fanatic Dai Miyamoto, the proverbial kid from the Sendai sticks seeking fame in the Big City, proclaims that he will become “the best jazz player in the world.”

Soon enough, struggling with money, food and his horn, Dai moves into the Tokyo apartment of fellow Sendai transplant Shunji Tamada, who gripes about his roommate’s amateur squawking before trying with cringy stiffness to become a drummer himself. At a sleepy jazz cafe-cum-bar, Dai starts taking lessons from Yukinori Sawabe, a skilled pianist with a supercilious streak, and their unlikely trio, Jass, is born.

As Dai practices under a bridge, Tachikawa plunges you into a dark but gleaming Tokyo, its streetlights and snowflakes alike suffused with blue. The animation here and in dizzying performance sequences is immersive, and the newly cut CG scenes, while not perfect, are largely effective at conveying more tactile imagery, like fingers striking piano keys and sticks rattling snares.

Tachikawa was so determined to visually convey the music’s edgy atmosphere that he took saxophone lessons himself for two years. It was a lot harder than it looked — or sounded.

"Blue Giant" director Yuzuru Tachikawa at TIFF 2023, Tokyo.

"When you hear musicians play the sax, their notes are slick and smooth,” he tells me after the TIFF screening. “But it takes a long time to reach that level, and you have to blow really hard. It’s physically exhausting.”

Tachikawa’s impressionistic montages during instrumental crescendos turn the film’s imagery surreal. But in order to recreate the way musicians’ bodies actually move, he had to attend live concerts and watch jazz performance videos on YouTube. In the recording studio, musicians try their damndest not to move so they don’t make unwanted noise. A good solo is unique; you can’t ask someone to play it again just to draw them.

When Dai, Yukinori and Shunji start rehearsing and performing together with the goal of headlining a Blue Note-esque jazz venue called So Blue, the film finds its emotional groove. Most musicians prefer to express their feelings through their instruments (naturally), making it easier for insult and injury to swell unchecked. And the prying opinions of insensitive booking managers, critics and fans can get under the thickest of skins and fester.

Screenwriter Eito Namba (who goes by the moniker “Number 8”) deftly raises the tension in each character’s arc. But while the drama intensifies with a tragic accident, the film’s real action is propelled by jazz pianist Hiromi Uehara’s alternately bouncy and melancholic score, and the virtuosic drumming of Shun Ishikawa (who also played on “Bebop” creator Shinichiro Watanabe’s jazz-infused series, “Kids on the Slope.”)

Sound can play an even bigger role in animated works than it does in live-action media because there is less visual information for viewers to consume.

“‘Blue Giant’ owes a lot to the brilliant score and playing by Uehara,” says anime critic and Japan University of Economics professor Tadashi Sudo. “Mamoru Oshii (‘Ghost in the Shell’) said that half of an anime film is music. It adds so much depth to the images and story.”

Hollywood animation studios have been using jazz in soundtracks and featured scenarios since the 1930s, from Disney and Warner Bros. to, most recently, Pixar’s 2020 “Soul.” In the 1950s, American animator and director John Hubley (“Rooty Toot Toot”) was especially keen to combine animated images with jazz. The art of animation requires careful advance planning and preparation before innovation can happen, says historian Charles Solomon, making the controlled, improvisational nature of jazz uniquely attractive.

Tachikawa agrees. “When we give the storyboards to the animators, they create images, but they’re never the same as the story we’ve given them. They draw what they want to draw, something original, just like jazz musicians when they add something fresh to a score.”

This year’s surprise success of “Blue Giant” suggests that jazz may now have a cross-generational appeal, forged not only by anime’s global reach but also by digital media. As Dave Jesteadt, president of Gkids, the North American distributor of “Blue Giant,” tells me: “Today’s wide access to all types of music means that young audiences can be adventurous if they are reached the right way. At our U.S. screenings, we had older audience members who I doubt watch much anime sitting beside teenagers and college students. I was very moved by that.”

Japan now makes some of the world’s very best, be it whisky, blue jeans, manga, anime — or jazz. So tell that kid from Sendai to keep at it.