Blue Giant

Dai picks up a tenor saxophone in high school and announces he is going to be the best jazz musician in the world. He goes to Tokyo, finds a pianist, recruits a boy who has never touched a drum kit, and sets his sights on the hardest stage in the city. The real event of the film is the music. Hiromi Uehara composed it and plays the piano; Tomoaki Baba plays Dai's saxophone and Shun Ishiwaka the drums. Baba was chosen through an audition open to players from Japan and abroad. The notable thing on the animation side is the method. For the performance sequences, the musicians playing were recorded with motion capture and drawn from that, so the movement of the hands and bodies rests on actual playing. Its flaw is that the drawing outside the concerts is uneven, and the abstract visual effects used at some peaks are less effective than the music underneath them. The story follows a familiar coming of age shape. Who it is for: jazz listeners and viewers who like music driven animation. Who it is not for: anyone wanting an original story.