| Kids on the Slope | |
 Final volume cover, featuring (from top) Sentarō Kawabuchi, Kaoru Nishimi, and Ritsuko Mukae | |
| 坂道のアポロン (Sakamichi no Aporon) | |
|---|---|
| Genre | |
| Manga | |
| Written by | Yuki Kodama |
| Published by | Shogakukan |
| Imprint | Flower Comics Alpha |
| Magazine | Monthly Flowers |
| Original run | 28 September 2007 –28 July 2012 |
| Volumes | 10 |
| Anime television series | |
| Directed by | Shinichirō Watanabe |
| Produced by |
|
| Written by |
|
| Music by | Yoko Kanno |
| Studio | |
| Licensed by |
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| Original network | Fuji TV (Noitamina) |
| English network | |
| Original run | 12 April 2012 – 28 June 2012 |
| Episodes | 12(List of episodes) |
| Live-action film | |
| Directed by | Takahiro Miki |
| Written by | Izumi Takahashi [ja] |
| Music by | Masato Suzuki |
| Studio | |
| Released | 10 March 2018 (2018-03-10) |
| Runtime | 120 minutes |
 Anime and manga portal | |
Kids on the Slope (Japanese:坂道のアポロン,Hepburn:Sakamichi no Aporon;lit. "Apollo on the Slope") is a Japanesemanga series written and illustrated byYuki Kodama. It was originally serialized inShogakukan'sjosei manga magazineMonthly Flowers from 2007 to 2012, with its chapters compiled into 10tankōbon volumes. The series follows Kaoru Nishimi, an introverted high school student who discoversjazz music through his friendship with his delinquent classmate Sentarō Kawabuchi.
The series has been adapted twice: as a televisionanime series in 2012, and as a live-action film directed byTakahiro Miki in 2018. The anime adaptation is directed byShinichirō Watanabe with music byYoko Kanno, making it the third collaboration between Watanabe and Kanno followingMacross Plus (1994–1995) andCowboy Bebop (1998). The series was produced byMAPPA andTezuka Productions, and aired onFuji TV'sNoitamina programming block. In North America, the series was licensed bySentai Filmworks and aired on the streaming serviceCrunchyroll, whichsimulcast the series during its original broadcast run.
The anime adaption ofKids on the Slope was widely acclaimed, with praise given to its direction, narrative, and music. Critics exploredKids on the Slope's depiction ofCatholicism in Japan, its themes of male friendship and subtextualhomoeroticism, and its relation to Watanabe's broader canon of works in their analysis of the series. Multiple outlets listedKids on the Slope as among the best anime of the 2010s.
Kaoru Nishimi is an intelligent, introverted first-year high school student from a wealthy family who moves to different cities frequently as a result of his father's career. Consequently, he has never made lasting friendships. In the summer of 1966, he relocates fromYokosuka,Kanagawa toSasebo,Nagasaki to live with his extended family. On his first day of school he encounters Sentarō Kawabuchi, a delinquent student feared by his classmates. Sentarō's love ofjazz music inspires Kaoru to study the genre, and the two boys begin to develop a close friendship through jazz sessions at a record shop owned by the family of Ritsuko Mukae, a classmate. Theslice of life series follows Kaoru, Sentarō, and Ritsuko over the course of their three years of high school, and the relationships develop among and between them.
Kids on the Slope, written and illustrated byYuki Kodama, was serialized byShogakukan in thejosei manga anthologyMonthly Flowers from 28 September 2007 to 28 January 2012.[8][9][10]Kids on the Slope: Bonus Track, aspin-off series that was released immediately following the conclusion of the manga series, was serialized in the same magazine from 28 March to 28 July 2012.[11][12] In Japan, the series was collected into 10tankōbon volumes published by Shogakukan from 25 April 2008 to 9 November 2012.[13][14] The first ninetankōbon volumes consist of the original 90 chapter series, withBonus Track being published as its own unnumbered volume.[15][16] Internationally, the series has been licensed in French,[17] Spanish,[18] Italian,[19] and Taiwanese Mandarin.[20]
| No. | Release date | ISBN |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 25 April 2008[21] | 9784091316707 |
| 2 | 10 November 2008[22] | 9784091321749 |
| 3 | 10 March 2009[23] | 9784091321749 |
| 4 | 10 August 2009[24] | 9784091326263 |
| 5 | 8 January 2010[25] | 9784091330192 |
| 6 | 10 June 2010[26] | 9784091331984 |
| 7 | 10 February 2011[27] | 9784091336507 |
| 8 | 10 November 2011[28] | 9784091341150 |
| 9 | 26 April 2012[29] | 9784091344656 |
| BT | 9 November 2012[16] | 9784091347930 |
Ananime adaptation ofKids on the Slope produced byMAPPA in association withTezuka Productions was released in 2012. It was the first anime series produced by MAPPA, which was founded byMasao Maruyama in 2011 after his departure from the studioMadhouse.[30] Maruyama co-founded Madhouse in 1972, and approachedShinichirō Watanabe to directKids on the Slope on the basis of their previous work at Madhouse together.[31] Watanabe spent the three years prior to the release ofKids on the Slope developing projects for Madhouse that ultimately stalled in planning phases or were cancelled, leading Maruyama to offer Watanabe the series to direct "as something to do."[30][31] The series was heralded as a "triumphant return to the mainstream"[30] for Watanabe following a seven-year hiatus from directing anime, which spanned from the conclusion of his previous seriesSamurai Champloo in 2005.[30]
Kids on the Slope was Watanabe's first anime series adapted from an existing work, rather than based on an original concept.[32] Maruyama stated that Watanabe initially resisted the prospect of creating an adaptation and expressed concerns over a lack of creative freedom, but agreed after learning that the series was about jazz (music frequently forms a core element of Watanabe's works),[4][30] and afterKids on the Slope networkFuji TV agreed to greenlight his subsequent anime seriesTerror in Resonance.[33][34] After reading the originalKids on the Slope manga, Watanabe noted that while jazz music forms the basis of the story, he was interested in its approach to plot and characterization, particularly "the kind of way that it portrays emotional distance."[33] Upon learning that Watanabe was developing a new anime series, composerYoko Kanno asked to be involved in its production.[30][31] While Kanno has stated that she is not a fan of jazz music,[35] she sought to be involved in Watanabe's next project after their previous collaborations onMacross Plus andCowboy Bebop.[30]
The primary production staff forKids on the Slope is composed of Watanabe as director, Kanno as composer,Nobuteru Yūki as character designer, Yoshimitsu Yamashita as chief animation director, and Ayako Katō and Yūko Kakihara as scriptwriters.[36] The series was Watanabe's first singlecour series; on adapting the series with a compressed number of episodes, Watanabe noted that a manga series ofKids on the Slope's length would typically have been adapted as 15 or 16 episodes, "so trying to fit it into 12 episodes necessitated a bit of rushing."[33]
Maruyama estimates that "about half" of the production time and budget for the series went towards creating its musical performance scenes.[31] Though Maruyama had experience depicting musical performances in animation through his work onBeck: Mongolian Chop Squad andForest of Piano at Madhouse, he found that "jazz performance turned out to be a huge challenge."[31] Despite pressure to render the performance scenes ascomputer-generated imagery to reduce time and costs, Watanabe rendered these scenes using hand-drawn animation by utilizingmotion capture: real-life musicians were filmed performing the scene's music from multiple angles, which was then edited into a single "scene" that animators used asphoto reference.[4][32]
Watanabe and Kanno found jazz artists to perform the series' soundtrack and motion capture by searching videos onYouTube. They sought young artists who were "rough and therefore charming," with Watanabe noting that it "would be terrible if we asked veteran studio musicians to perform it in a "young style'."[4] PianistTakashi Matsunaga and drummerShun Ishiwaka were cast to record the music and motion capture for Kaoru and Sentarō, respectively.[31][37]
The series' soundtrack consists of an original score and cover versions of existing jazz songs. Each episode of the series is named after ajazz standard, with the titles, lyrics, and/or music of each song typically having significance with regards to the events of the episode.[38] As majority of the series' music consists ofdiegetic jazz performance, its score is minimal, with Kanno noting thatKids on the Slope is a "work built on the jazz part alone, and we'd just need music for atmosphere."[37] While Kanno was initially told by Watanabe that she would only have to produce the score for the series, she ultimately produced both its score and jazz performances.[37] In preparation for the series, Kanno visited jazz clubs and researched recording techniques of the 1950s and 1960s; for Kaoru and Sentarō's performance scenes, Kanno elected to record both drums and piano simultaneously (rather than record the instruments separately and later arrange them digitally, as is standard in modern music production) to emulate these recording techniques.[37] Kanno collaborated with disc jockeysDJ Mitsu The Beats [ja] andMabanua on the series' score, stating that she sought their involvement not to bring a contemporary "DJ sound" to the 1960s setting, but to instead capture a sense of "youth" in the music.[35]
The series uses two pieces oftheme music: its opening theme "Sakamichi no Melody [ja]" is written and performed byYuki,[35] while its closing theme "Altair [ja]" is written and performed byMotohiro Hata.[37] Due to production delays, the opening sequence was animated before its music was produced; delays also forced the opening sequence to be produced by a staff that was entirely separate from the main series animation staff, a move Maruyama noted as "not something you see with anime very often."[31]
The adaptation was announced in the December 2011 issue ofMonthly Flowers.[13] Kōji Yamamoto, the producer ofFuji TV'sNoitamina programming block, confirmed that same month that the series would air on the network beginning in April.[39] The first trailer for the series was released in January 2012, alongside an announcement of the series' production staff.[36] The twelve-episode series aired on Noitamina from 12 April to 28 June 2012.
In English-language markets, the series is licensed bySentai Filmworks and aired on the streaming serviceCrunchyroll, whichsimulcast the series during its original broadcast run.[40][41] An English languagedubbed version of the series was also produced by Sentai Filmworks; episodes aired onAnime Network andHulu one month after streaming on Crunchyroll.[41] Sentai Filmworks additionally produced the North Americanhome video release ofKids on the Slope, which was released onBlu-ray andDVD on 7 May 2013.[1][41] In 2014, the series aired onViz Media's now-defunct streaming serviceNeon Alley.[42] The Blu-ray was re-released on 13 April 2021.[43] The series was released in the UK byMVM Films and in Australia by Hanabee.[44][45]Anime Limited will release the series in a "Collector's Blu-ray" edition in the United Kingdom and Ireland.[46]
A live-action film adaptation ofKids on the Slope was announced in the June 2017 issue ofMonthly Flowers published on 27 April 2017.[47]Kids on the Slope publisher Shogakukan confirmed the adaptation the following day, along with an announcement of the film's cast and primary production staff.[48] The film is directed byTakahiro Miki with a screenplay byIzumi Takahashi [ja], and starsYuri Chinen as Kaoru,Taishi Nakagawa as Sentarō, andNana Komatsu as Ritsuko.[49] The actors underwent speech and music training in advance of production, with Chinen and Nakagawa studying piano and drums, respectively, and Nakagawa and Komatsu trained to speak in aSasebo dialect;[50]Dean Fujioka, who portrays Junichi, was trained to play the trumpet.[51] The trailer for the film was released on 15 October 2017, with the film itself released on 10 March 2018.[52]
Severalsoundtrack albums collecting music from the series have been published. In 2009,EMI Music Japan publishedKids on the Slope Original Soundtrack, acompilation album collecting songs referenced in the manga series. The album is composed of both licensed original recordings andcover versions by the Japanese jazz quartetQuasimode.[53] In 2012,Epic Records Japan published the identically-titledKids on the Slope Original Soundtrack, which collects songs used in the anime adaption of the series and Yoko Kanno's original score; an expanded edition of the soundtrack,Kids on the Slope Original Soundtrack: Plus More & Rare, was published that same year.[54] In 2018,Ariola Japan publishedKids on the Slope Soundtrack & Jazz Music Collection, which collects the soundtrack of the live-action film adaptation of the series.[55]
AKids on the Slope weeklyinternet radio series aired onHibiki Radio [ja] from 10 April to 3 July 2012. The series was hosted by Kaoru voice actor Ryōhei Kimura, and featured voice actors from the anime series as guests.[56]
Series creator Yuki Kodama basedKids on the Slope on her own experience of growing up inSasebo, Nagasaki, where the series is set.[14] Jazz figured heavily in Sasebo's music scene beginning in the 1920s and 1930s; the city houses a major naval base for theJapan Maritime Self-Defense Force (then theImperial Japanese Navy), which attracted nightclubs andcabarets to the area. Several real-life locations in and around Sasebo appear inKids on the Slope, notably theMegane-iwa (lit. "Spectacles Rock"), and the Kuroshima Catholic church on theKujūku Islands.[14]
In his bookHoly Anime! Japan's View of Christianity, writerPatrick Drazen remarks on the series' depiction ofCatholicism in Japan, citingKids on the Slope as an example of how "in the Japanese scheme of things, religion can be a factor of geography and even genetics, and [is] not exclusively a profession of faith."[57] In particular, Drazen notes how the stigmatization Sentarō faces because of hishāfu racial identity is compounded by his Catholic religious identity. Drazen further identifiesKids on the Slope as an example of a work that juxtaposes Catholicism and Western popular music, comparing it to media such as "Dominique" byThe Singing Nun and theSister Act series of films.[57]
Multiple critics noted ahomoerotic dimension to Kaoru and Sentarō's canonically platonic friendship.[34][38][58][59] Jacob Parker-Dalton ofOtaquest cites the series' homoerotic subtext as an example of the influence of theboys' love genre (male-male romance) on thejosei demographic, noting how Sentarō and Kaoru conform to character archetypes found in the BL genre.[34] WriterMadeline Ashby argues that though its homoerotic content is rendered as subtext,Kids on the Slope represents Watanabe's first attempt to engage seriously withLGBT subject material in his work, after previously depicting LGBT characters in passing or as the punchlines for jokes.[58] Parker-Dalton notes that Watanabe's works subsequent toKids on the Slope similarly feature serious portrayals of LGBT characters and themes, as seen in thebishōnen-style character designs ofTerror in Resonance and the presence of multiple LGBT characters inCarole & Tuesday.[34]
Kids on the Slope was also discussed by critics in relation to Watanabe's broader canon of works, with Parker-Dalton identifying the series as a "watershed" moment for Watanabe's career representing "the final evolution of the director’s lifelong obsession with music."[34] Ashby notes how the series' theme of male friendship is one that recurs in Watanabe's works, which depict "unlikely pairs of men (or boys) who are either thrown together by circumstance or are drawn together by their mutual histories."[58] She argues thatKids on the Slope representsmetatextual commentary by Watanabe on his previous worksCowboy Bebop andSamurai Champloo, as he uses design elements, setting, and characterization to "evoke [his] other works while keeping each story completely independent."[58]
The manga was the top-ranked manga for women in the 2009 edition ofTakarajimasha's annualKono Manga ga Sugoi! rankings[60] and won the 57thShogakukan Manga Award in 2012 for general manga.[61] Reviewing the first volume of the series forThe Asahi Shimbun, critic Shigeko Matsuo praised Kodama's characterization, but criticized itslove triangle plot conceit.[62]
The anime adaptation ofKids on the Slope was acclaimed by critics, and was listed as among the best anime of 2012 byAnime News Network,[63] among the best anime of the 2010s byIGN,[64]Crunchyroll,[65] andThrillist,[66] and among the best anime of all time byPaste.[67] In 2013,Yoko Kanno won Best Music at theTokyo Anime Awards for her work onKids on the Slope andAquarion Evol.[68] Theron Martin reviewed the series positively forAnime News Network, noting that whileKids on the Slope is "more pedestrian" than Watanabe and Kanno's previous collaborations, he offered praise for its character development, music, and visual style.[59]Otaku USA commended "the driving emotion of the music, the animation thereof, and incredibly well-written tale of growing up," calling Watanabe's direction and Kanno's music production as "a perfect balance for the series."[30] In his review of the series forIndieWire, Charles Solomon noted that the series showcases Watanabe's "versatility as a director and his ability to create characters with depth and believability."[69] Kirk Hamilton ofKotaku wrote that while the series' "dreamy, romantic vibe" may be off-putting to viewers who discovered Watanabe through his work onCowboy Bebop, but argued that "to dismissKids on the Slope would be a huge mistake. LikeCowboy Bebop,Kids is a thing of visual and aural beauty, a celebration of art that lives in its smallest details."[70] Nicole MacLean ofTHEM Anime similarly concurred that while the series "moves slowly and thus may not gain widespread appeal," its "poignancy and its adept choice of viewpoint as a reflective rather than purely nostalgic show ultimately win out over its mistakes."[71]
The live-action film adaption ofKids on the Slope opened in eighth place at the Japanese box office.[72] For his performance in the film, Taishi Nakagawa was nominated for Newcomer of the Year at the 42ndJapan Academy Film Prize awards in 2019.[73][74]
