First off, I'd say it's technically a movie, as it was produced for the big screen.
But it wasn’t shown theatrically. It was produced for a [presumably] big screen, perhaps, but not “
the big screen,” i.e., commercially distributed to theaters for viewing by the general public. If it’s not an OVA because it wasn’t released through the direct-to-video market, then by the same token it can’t be a movie as it also wasn’t released through the “direct-to-theaters” market. Irrespective of that, if this animation were indeed considered a film, it would have been produced as such. However, as
I’ve pointed out, this clearly isn’t the case:
The frame rate is interesting to me because it is not the 24 or 23.976 that I expected, as the rest of the series plays at, which are the film and digital film speeds respectively. I figured that, even if this wasn’t regarded a “movie” per se, it’d at least match the series for consistency’s sake. But instead, it’s 29.97, which is inherently television (and now Web) territory.
24 fps is the
de facto standard for movies, and it has been for so long that it is now regarded an integral part of the “film look,” an effect much-emulated in video due to the perceived superiority of filmic production values, and by association, photographic technique. It is in fact the frame rate sf choice for many filmmakers. But, more than that, it’s also less frames per second than video, and thus easier to animate. So if the intent was to make a movie, there’s already a lot of existing industry preference for that format. The choice to go with 30 fps demonstrates that this was intentionally done in video-like fashion.
Which isn’t to say that this definitely
isn’t a movie. Quite the contrary; JUMP actually refers to it as such on their site:
11/1/2008 All the heroes come together on the SHONEN JUMP Super Anime Tour!! Announcing the opening of the official movie site.
(emphasis added).
But then, they also refer to it as a broadcast, so my feeling is that they mean “movie” in the looser sense of an animated story. Which is why these strict definitions don’t seem all that practical to me. Who’s to say that this, being a limited-run animation that was originally produced to video, shouldn’t carry the title “OVA”? Don’t most OVAs generally follow movie formulas anyway?
It was never officially called a "special", I believe.
The other "specials" you're referring were TV specials, i.e. an entirely different kind of animal.
While that’s true, this was produced in celebration of JUMP’s 40th anniversary. In other words, it’s a
special occasion. That justifies it enough for me, especially when it’s not so easily otherwise-categorized.
