Kuroko's Basketball (Kuroko no Basket) is a relatively popular sports anime and manga series. It's about the unlikely pairing of brash and headstrong Taiga Kagami and unassuming Tetsuya Kuroko. As it turns out, Kuroko was a member of the Generation of Miracles, a legendary team of basketball players that dominated Japan. Kagami and Kuroko set out to defeat all of the members of the Generation of Miracles, who are now all in separate high school teams.
Kuroko's Basketball: The Last Game takes place after the events of the main series. It's based on a manga story, Kuroko no Basket Extra Game, that serves as a sidestory/epilogue to the entire series. After the events of the main series, a genius streetball team called Jabberwock comes to Japan and humiliates an all-star college team made up of former allies of Kuroko and the others. For revenge (and national pride), a rematch is set between Jabberwock and the combined forces of Kagami and the entire Generation of Miracles team (collectively called Vorpal Swords) to settle who is the best in basketball.
It should be pretty evident that maximum appreciation of this film depends hugely on being familiar with the series it is based on. Otherwise, most of the movie will not make any sense. Non-fans of Kuroko's Basketball may ask themselves: who's the young lady with the baseball cap? (she's the coach/manager of Kuroko and Kagami's HS team.) Who's the girl with the pink hair? (She's the coach/manager of Aomine's HS team, and coach of the original Generation of Miracles.) Who's the blonde chick who speaks English? (she's Kagami's friend and mentor from the US.) Who're the random people cheering Vorpal Swords during the matchup? (they're former enemies, teammates and friends of the Vorpal Swords members.) Who is that other person Akashi is talking to? (It's kinda like a split personality. Long story.)
Jabberwocky is pretty one-dimensional as far as villainous teams go. The manga has a couple of backstories for these characters, but for the purposes of watching the film, the enemy team is more or less composed of a bunch of cartoonishly evil, kinda racist caricatures. The only thing the audience should know is that they may be stronger than our protagonists, and they have to be defeated. They aren't really interesting or compelling villains.
That said, that probably isn't why many Kuroko fans will watch the film. As a fan myself, the real reason I wanted to watch the film was to see the Generation of Miracles + Kagami as a team, in action. Non-fans would not understand, but to a fan this is pretty big. To a fan, the film is ninety-ish minutes of fanservicey joy. Every time one of the Vorpal Swords members did their signature moves, there were claps of excitement in the theater. It's all lovingly animated by Production I.G. who have worked on many gorgeous anime in the past (Ghost in the Shell, Evangelion among others).
The film ends the series with a sense of finality (be sure to catch an after-credits scene at the end.) To the uninitiated viewer, Kuroko's Basketball: Last Game is an incoherent mess. But to the intended audience of the movie, it's a fond farewell to a fun and entertaining anime/manga franchise.
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