Ratings:
Genre(s): School Life, Sports, Shounen
Year: 2001; 2006 (OVA)
Series Length: 178 + movies, OVA's, specials, musicals...
Prince of tennis is a series that is all about the tennis. Really. Please ignore the cracky chibi issues to the left where there are love potions and the destruction of your dinosaurs to the right as tennis releases the destructive power to go back in time and DESTROY THEM ALL, because prince of tennis is all about the tennis.
Magical Tennis with suspiciously DBZ like qualities!
I kid, I kid, I kid!
Prince of tennis is a hilarious, crazy, fun filled, insane series that revolves around the protagonist, Ryouma and his growth in becoming a member of Seigaku as he clashes against other schools all competing to make it towards the nationals! Seigaku is a strong tennis school, who aims to this year make it towards the nationals. It's filled with eccentric and entertaining characters, with a number of minor characters becoming reoccurring favourites.
It is a shounen jump series, so expect efforts, friendship and success to make their reoccurring presences!
It's the humour that makes prince of tennis stand out; some of the episodes will make your sides split, as boys will be boys; and also there are some very strange and fun elements add in - like the Inui juices. This series features a lot of exaggeration, which makes it seem larger than life and completely unforgettable.
The unique characters, personalities and backgrounds really go to help fill out Prince of Tennis, especially when they clash. The majority of the opponents stand out strongly, and there's always someone memorable from each and every school. Unlike other some other series, Prince of tennis really does let the opponents have motivation, differences and even be sympathetic. It fleshes them out and especially later on in the series tries very hard to bring them back in.
This does mean that Prince of Tennis can turn into a bit of a bishounen series as many of the designs are suspiciously pretty, but the battle to the end is almost always thrilling as it helps to viewer get caught up in the action.
Being such a long series though; prince of tennis does have it's weaknesses. There are a couple of matches that start off quite well, only to become over stretched as it's Yet Another Cliff-hanger Moment, but it will usually pick up again quite soon. There's also the fact that tennis becomes more magical as the series goes on, as the boys have to out do themselves further and further.
You'll also be forgiven for thinking tennis is a billion dollar industry in Japan - Prince of tennis has a huge number of spin offs - with movies, ova's, video games, a trading card game, calendars and all the usual merchandise, a tonne of musical albums and not only do they have musicals - but they have musicals that focus on a rival school - multiple of them! If you enjoy this series, you'll never get bored of supplementary material available to fuel your fanish urges. XD
Think tennis is boring? Pfft, clearly you haven't seen prince of tennis!
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