Blue Giant

Writer: Number 8 and Shinichi Ishizuka

Director: Yuzuru Tachikawa

An electrifying initiation into the world of contemporary jazz, anime film Blue Giant charts the ambition of a saxophone player, Dai Miyamoto (voiced by Yuki Yamada). Three years into learning the instrument, Dai’s blend of auto-didactic and tutored playing sees him immersed in the “dying” art of jazz. He leaves his small town and travels to the big lights – and jazz clubs – of Tokyo.

Eighteen-year-old Dai explores the club scene, starting small with Take Two. The club’s owner, Akiko (Sayaka Kinoshita), is a die-hard jazz fan. While her venue no longer hosts live music, Dai impresses her with his knowledge, citing the American saxophonist Sonny Stitt (rather than the better-known Rollins). She sends him to a club still playing live music. Dai’s experience there is life-changing. He watches a gifted pianist wow the audience. Yukinori Sawabe (an excellent Shotaro Mamiya) is the same age as Dai, but sees himself as a crusader against the “old guys using the same techniques”. Already writing his own music, Yukinori is building a new sound.

The two musicians team up, but it becomes clear they need a drummer. Yukinori, as the more experienced player, knows that jazz needs discipline as well as energy: “everything outside the frame is noise”. In a surprising move, Dai recruits his friend Tamada (Amane Okayama) who is a complete beginner. With shades of Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, he’s “no Art Blakey” but Tamada starts an incredible, uphill journey.

With the adoption of a proper band name, Jass, they begin a slow ascent through Japan’s music industry. As they strive to become a cohesive unit, Yukinori’s ultimate goal – a stint on Tokyo’s greatest jazz club stage, So Blue – feels almost within reach.

Blue Giant – a term that refers to stars that burn so fierce their heat turns from red to blue – started life as a graphic novel by Shinichi Ishizuka. The decision to adapt the novel into anime is an obvious choice, but the animation depicts a lyricism that would not be so easy to capture in real life.

But it is, appropriately, in the music where the film truly comes alive. An incredible, immersive score by Hiromi Uehara offers a reading of jazz that borders on the sublime. Uehara embeds the roots of jazz into the soundtrack, along with enough melody to convert the jazz-curious. In illustrating the exhilarating onstage performances, the animation becomes looser, more expressive: it explodes into a psychedelic riot of colour and line. As Dai hits his groove, the anime even strips back to black and white. In baring your soul, there is true clarity.

The political insinuations are hard to miss. Blue Giant champions the individual and actively rails against the conformist culture of Japan: the freedom within jazz unlocks something deeper in Dai, Yukinori and Tamada. In the struggle and joy of making music, Blue Giant is at its most poetic. The film is a dazzling celebration of creativity, and more fundamentally, artistic purpose. As to jazz itself, its demise has been greatly exaggerated.

Blue Giant will be released in selected cinemas across the United Kingdom and Ireland from 31 January 2024 in Japanese with English subtitles.