Kids on the Slope

Kaoru Nishimi (西見薫, Nishimi Kaoru)

Portrayed by: Ryōhei Kimura (Japanese),[3] Takashi Matsunaga (music performance and motion capture),[4] Chris Patton (English),[1] Yuri Chinen (live-action film)[5]

A high school student from a wealthy family who moves to his uncle's home in Kyushu in the summer of 1966. Due to his introversion and the frequency with which he moves because of his father's career, he has never developed lasting friendships. Kaoru is a skilled pianist familiar with classical music, though his friendship with Sentarō Kawabuchi inspires him to begin performing jazz. He possesses romantic feelings for his classmate Ritsuko Mukae, which are initially unrequited due to her feelings for Sentarō.

Sentarō Kawabuchi (川渕 千太郎, Kawabuchi Sentarō)

Portrayed by: Yoshimasa Hosoya (Japanese),[3] Shun Ishiwaka (music performance and motion capture),[4] Andrew Love (English),[1] Taishi Nakagawa (live-action film)[5]

The child of an American serviceman and a Japanese mother, Sentarō was orphaned at a young age and faced discrimination. He is outwardly an aggressive delinquent, but is a kind and caring person to his friends, and a loving brother to his multiple adopted siblings. He is a skilled jazz drummer, and grows close to Kaoru by sharing his love of jazz with him. He is Catholic, indicated by the rosary he wears around his neck at all times, and ends the series as a priest-in-training.

Ritsuko Mukae (迎 律子, Mukae Ritsuko)

Portrayed by: Yūka Nanri (Japanese),[3] Rebekah Stevens (English),[1] Nana Komatsu (live-action film)[5]

A classmate of Kaoru and Sentarō, and longtime friend of the latter. Her family owns a record store that serves as a practice space for Kaoru and Sentarō. Like Sentarō, she is Catholic, and begins the series with romantic feelings for him. As the series progresses, her feelings shift from Sentarō to Kaoru.

Yurika Fukahori (深堀百合香, Fukahori Yurika)

Portrayed by: Aya Endō (Japanese),[3] Maggie Flecknoe (English),[1] Erina Mano (live-action film)[5]

A strong-willed high school student and member of the art club. She becomes acquainted with Sentarō by chance after he intervenes when she is harassed by a group of men; he falls in love with her, though she ultimately develops feelings for Junichi. She and Junichi eventually wed and start a family together.

Junichi Katsuragi (桂木淳一, Katsuragi Junichi)

Portrayed by: Junichi Suwabe (Japanese),[3] David Matranga (English),[1] Dean Fujioka (live-action film)[5]

A longtime friend of the Kawabuchi and Mukae families who plays trumpet. Junichi is idolized by Sentarō, whom he sees as akin to an older brother. While attending university in Tokyo he becomes involved in the Zenkyoto student protest movement, and later drops out of school and is disowned by his family. He marries Yurika, and they raise a family together.

Tsutomu Mukae (迎 勉, Mukae Tsutomu)

Portrayed by: Zenki Kitajima (Japanese),[6] David Wald (English),[1] Nakamura Baijaku II (live-action film)[5]

Ritsuko's father, and the owner of the record shop where Sentarō and Kaoru play jazz. He plays double bass.

Seiji Matsuoka (松岡星児, Matsuoka Seiji)

Portrayed by: Nobuhiko Okamoto (Japanese),[6] Blake Shepard (English),[1] Hokuto Matsumura (live-action film)[5]

A member of the art club who dreams of becoming a famous singer to support his family. He asks Sentarō to play drums at the school festival with his band, to Kaoru's chagrin.

Shigetora Maruo (丸尾 重虎, Maruo Shigetora)

Portrayed by: Ayumu Murase (Japanese),[7] Greg Ayres (English)[1]

A member of the radio club. A train enthusiast who plays guitar.

Mariko (まり子)

Portrayed by: Amina Satō (Japanese),[7] Cynthia Martinez (English)[1]

Kaoru's cousin. Has a somewhat spoiled and bratty personality.

Kids on the Slope, written and illustrated by Yuki Kodama, was serialized by Shogakukan in the monthly josei (aimed at teenaged girls and adult women) manga magazine Monthly Flowers from 28 September 2007 to 28 January 2012.[8][9][10] Kids on the Slope: Bonus Track, a spin-off series that was released immediately following the conclusion of the manga series, was published in the same magazine from 28 March to 28 July 2012.[11][12] In Japan, the series was collected into ten tankōbon volumes published by Shogakukan from 25 April 2008 to 9 November 2012.[13][14] The series' run consists of the original 90 chapter series, collected as the first to ninth tankōbon volumes; Bonus Track was published as its own unnumbered tankōbon.[15][16] Internationally, the series has been licensed in French,[17] Spanish,[18] Italian,[19] and Taiwanese Mandarin.[20]

Masao Maruyama produced the anime adaptation of Kids on the Slope.

An anime adaptation of Kids on the Slope produced by MAPPA in association with Tezuka Productions was released in 2012. It was the first anime series produced by MAPPA, which was founded by Masao Maruyama in 2011 after his departure from the studio Madhouse.[30] Maruyama co-founded Madhouse in 1972, and approached Shinichirō Watanabe to direct Kids on the Slope on the basis of their previous work at Madhouse together.[31] Watanabe spent the three years prior to the release of Kids 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 series Samurai 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 after Kids on the Slope network Fuji TV agreed to greenlight his subsequent anime series Terror in Resonance.[33][34] After reading the original Kids 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, composer Yoko 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 on Macross Plus and Cowboy Bebop.[30]

The anime adaptation of Kids on the Slope is the third collaboration between director Shinichirō Watanabe (left) and composer Yoko Kanno (right), following Macross Plus and Cowboy Bebop.

The primary production staff for Kids 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 single cour series; on adapting the series with a compressed number of episodes, Watanabe noted that a manga series of Kids 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 on Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad and Forest of Piano at Madhouse, he found that "jazz performance turned out to be a huge challenge."[31] Despite pressure to render the performance scenes as computer-generated imagery to reduce time and costs, Watanabe rendered these scenes using hand-drawn animation by utilizing motion 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 as photo reference.[4][32]

Watanabe and Kanno found jazz artists to perform the series' soundtrack and motion capture by searching videos on YouTube. 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] Pianist Takashi Matsunaga and drummer Shun 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 a jazz 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 of diegetic jazz performance, its score is minimal, with Kanno noting that Kids 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 jockeys DJ Mitsu The Beats and Mabanua 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 of theme music: its opening theme "Sakamichi no Melody" is written and performed by Yuki,[35] while its closing theme "Altair" is written and performed by Motohiro 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 of Monthly Flowers.[13] Kōji Yamamoto, the producer of Fuji TV's Noitamina 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 by Sentai Filmworks and aired on the streaming service Crunchyroll, which simulcast the series during its original broadcast run.[40][41] An English language dubbed version of the series was also produced by Sentai Filmworks; episodes aired on Anime Network and Hulu one month after streaming on Crunchyroll.[41] Sentai Filmworks additionally produced the North American home video release of Kids on the Slope, which was released on Blu-ray and DVD on 7 May 2013.[1][41] In 2014, the series aired on Viz Media's now-defunct streaming service Neon Alley.[42] The Blu-ray was re-released on 13 April 2021.[43] The series was released in the UK by MVM Films and in Australia by Hanabee.[44][45]

A live-action film adaptation of Kids on the Slope was announced in the June 2017 issue of Monthly Flowers published on 27 April 2017.[46] 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.[47] The film is directed by Takahiro Miki with a screenplay by Izumi Takahashi, and stars Yuri Chinen as Kaoru, Taishi Nakagawa as Sentarō, and Nana Komatsu as Ritsuko.[48] 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 a Sasebo dialect;[49] Dean Fujioka, who portrays Junichi, was trained to play the trumpet.[50] The trailer for the film was released on 15 October 2017, with the film itself released on 10 March 2018.[51]

Several soundtrack albums collecting music from the series have been published. In 2009, EMI Music Japan published Kids on the Slope Original Soundtrack, a compilation album collecting songs referenced in the manga series. The album is composed of both licensed original recordings and cover versions by the Japanese jazz quartet Quasimode.[52] In 2012, Epic Records Japan published the identically-titled Kids 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.[53] In 2018, Ariola Japan published Kids on the Slope Soundtrack & Jazz Music Collection, which collects the soundtrack of the live-action film adaptation of the series.[54]

A Kids on the Slope weekly internet radio series aired on Hibiki Radio 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.[55]