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Description
From Viz: Ryoma Echizen just joined the Seishun Academy's tennis team, which is known for being one of the most competitive teams in Japan. Its members are incredibly talented, gifted, and athletic. With rigorous and extremely intense practices, the upperclassmen of the team expect the very best from themselves and they expect even more from the new members of the team. While most of the freshmen are on pins and needles hoping they won't get cut from the team, Ryoma Echizen is confident, cool, and collected. Some might even say he's cocky, but at least he's got the skills to back up his attitude. With his virtually unreturnable "twist serve," Ryoma is sure to make the starting team. Join Ryoma and the other first years, as they train hard, make friends, and try to find a place for themselves on the team. And meet Ryoma's cute but chronically shy classmate Sakuno Ryuzaki. She's got a big crush on Ryoma, but will he ever notice her? Ryoma Echizen is the Prince of Tennis. He may be ready for the Seishun Academy tennis team, but are they ready for him?!
I like the manga and anime a lot. Though the moves aren't realistic, you can see that there is hardship and hardworking require to be able to aim/achieve a goal. It takes a lot of practice, and through the serie you can see each individual player grows not only Echizen. If the serie is all about him, that won't be interesting. But the serie isn't only about him. The other side of his teammates and the determation each one of them have to set an goal on. Plus, there are matches where the team loses so it is fair that the story should revolved around Echizen since he is the prince of Tennis.
Prince of Tennis is a fantasy-styled shounen sports manga. Actually, it started out rather mild and tamed, and the tennis was just simply tennis. But it evolved into Dragonball-like tennis moves that are impossible to achieve in real life (at one point, one of the characters hones in a stray tennis ball just by using his aura?) and that’s really the downfall of the manga. It can’t decide whether it wants to be modern-day slice-of-life style, or alternate universe in which people can leap twenty feet in the air, make a tennis ball spin around like a tornado, seeing people’s bones with the naked eye, can turn their skin red and power up their tennis, and for some reason, it’s possible for a human to skid forwards on his feet and ... still keep on going.
If Prince of Tennis stuck with realism, we’d have a nice contained manga about an arrogant 12 year old boy followed by a cast of over 50 other pretty boys who play tennis.
To be honest, they should have just ditched the tennis, and made it about 50 pretty boys instead, because that’s why anyone actually likes Prince of Tennis; the boys. The large cast of pretty boys. Oh, there’s like 3 girls in the entire series, and they’re useless and contribute nothing to the story, so not only is it bad at showcasing tennis, but it’s also very misogynist.
But be warned, just because it has so many characters, doesn’t mean they actually get developed. None of them do. Absolutely none. They start out one way, and haven’t changed a bit at the end of the series. Maybe they won or lost a few matches, and got stronger at tennis, but that’s it. There’s no development in their personality, no friendships or relationships are developed either. How you meet them in the beginning, is how they will be at the end.
The best part is that the anime version of Prince of Tennis creates fillers that makes the main cast bond with each other, and it works out! The anime is much more enjoyable because of these filler episodes that focus on the characters only, and not about stupid fantasy tennis. The manga however, is all tennis, tennis, and tennis. And that is really the manga’s downfall, because it sucks at making the tennis look interesting, engaging or even worthwhile.
Oh, the main character also never loses. He’s a 12 year old prodigy who says ‘che’ a lot and acts like he’s the best tennis player in the world. You either really, really hate him, or love him.
I’m not a fan of Prince of Tennis, I don’t like the manga (not a fan of the anime either, but it's definitely more enjoyable), and I really don’t care about the characters. I do however, like two of them, because they’re fun and have an interesting dynamic together – but two characters don’t save an entire series that isn’t even focused on them.
Want to read about tennis? Try Baby Steps instead. Want to read about a cast full of pretty boys? Prince of Tennis is the manga for you.
I mean on the one hand, it's always nice to root for the seemingly-underdog-character-who's-actually-a-bit-of-a-badass. It does raise very good tension in its tennis matches.
But the utter lack of character development on the part of the main character is disappointing. Also some of the apparently witty retorts and comebacks fall flat on me. I can tell from the characters' reactions that A-san has just been verbally owned by B-san, but I can't for the life of me work out why. The unrealism of it all I can deal with, it's a manga. If I wanted realism, I'd watch Wimbledon, but it pushes it sometimes. Like tennis players literally beating each other bloody with the force of their serves. And sometimes I have trouble telling people apart, such is the art. Average marks from me.
I used to follow Prince of Tennis, back when it was still on the regional matches. I actually think (yes, present tense) the beginning was good; it followed the shonen sports formula to a T, but it had good matches and decent characters.
Somewhere along the lines, PoT began to lose me - not because the matches got increasingly ridiculous, but because the manga was making me care about the main team less and less. It simply boiled down to the fact that I really don't care to see Ryoma win because he is an annoying little brat who doesn't really have much characterization and his opponents are much more interesting. The thing about Ryoma is that he "grows" automatically, spontaneously in the middle of a match. There's no rationale or drama behind it, you simply know by previous experience with the manga that he'll reach limit break mode somewhere along the lines and explode during a match. There is no real development there, whereas with other classic sports shonen leads, you see that growth and development in the character as they slowly overcome the obstacles in their way. Eyeshield21's Sena is really the best example of this.
Anyway, this is probably a personal preference kind of thing, but I really wanted to offer an alternate view of why people would dislike this manga as opposed to the usual "lol ridiculous skills" argument. In terms of making a good main character, this manga really failed - there's no real reason to follow a sports shonen when you don't care to see the main character win.
Have a guy that's underestimated, make some upsets, make him meet real opponents, level-up, win in the end. That's the standard shounen storyline, and Prince of Tennis doesn't deviate even one bit. Every character you see goes through roughly the same things: realization, going beyond perceived limits, actualizing hidden potential and taking victory on the strength of comrades. Artwork is good, but below-average by other Shounen's standards.
Prince of Tennis could've been improved, however, if the author had tried harder to elucidate more history - for example, more detail on the Tezuka-Fuji relationship rather than simply "we're great rivals/friends", more events between Oishi and Kikumaru and what made them so close. Of course, we could also see more on the coaches' and schools' rivalries. Naturally, Echizen Nanjirou could've played a bigger role than sometimes-dad, sometimes-playboy and background bogeyman.
I know nothing about tennis nor sports and I couldn't care less, but this manga is really amusing. I reread it three times by now and love it even more than the first time. There's not much development in the character department and the plot is quite simple, though I can't complain; I really love Ryoma's personality and am very glad he didn't change. That and absolute lack of a female lead or any female characters to begin with won me over !!love!! It's a very easy and quick read. There's also quite a few goodies for yaoi fangirls (or fanboys), such cute slashiness <3
I wanted to like this manga. I really did. I normally enjoy sports mangas, even ones whose plots could be recycled with dozens of their bretheren. However this one, for some reason really grates on me. Maybe its because I've played tennis, or because I recently read a far superior tennis manga, but this one is really irritating. With the 'special shots' the dumb and predictable storyline. Yeah, I guess its the special shots that annoy me the most. This is tennis, its not Dragonball. Everytime I read 'Moon shot' 'Snake Shot' 'Twist Serve' I think, wow thats dumb. Then add to this fact, the idea that these kids are playing a single set match, and are getting completely exhausted by this. It makes me wonder, did they train at all? Their stamina is gone after just 1 frickin set? Pathetic! Rather then working on super special miraculous shots, they should go running for a few hours instead. Ah, but that would require some actual intelligence, and we can't have that in a shounen manga.
If you're looking for a great sports manga, keep looking. This definitely does not qualify, however if you're looking for a few hours of mindless drivel, with mediocre artwork and story. And if you're entertained by the endless new special moves that are constantly being pulled out of the authors butt, then go ahead and give this a shot. Its not horrible, just not great.
For being one of the more popular sports-manga, and something I had been looking forward to reading, I was left with a bad aftertaste. Then again, just on MU as an example, people tend to send a lot of 9-10s to everything they thought was readable. The User rating is a joke.
I'm cool with special skills, but PoT's were just ridiculous - in a sports-manga there should be some sense of it actually working on the field/court/ring, like in Ippo or ES21. Even the moves in Captain Tsubasa didn't make me smirk at their stupidity, excluding using other people or the goal as stepping stones for superjumps.
The pacing in the matches were really odd. A couple of games could be decided with one ball, which is probably better than showing every ball (even for a frame), but it was off-putting. You could be in the middle of a game, and all of a sudden, one side had won. NO TENSION!
What makes Ippo and ES21 great is the character development that makes you feel for the characters and their opponents. I couldn't care less about any of the characters in Seigaku, and apart from Kintarou, I'd have a hard time even naming their opponents (nor being able to pick them out in a line-up [artwork], let alone care for their side of the struggle.
Echizen? Seriously, he was the same person at the start as he was at the end personality-wise, the only development was in his "super ultra great delicious"-skills. An atrocious way of handling the main character.
It did have its moments. For one, it was easily readable. 42 volumes came and went in a jiffy. Not really sure if that was because I actually enjoyed it, or because it had a lot art-only pages. And there were some funny scenes, some exciting ones, but they were few and far between.
The start was good. The ending was good. The stuff inbetween was awesome. An amazing manga. It kept me interested and staying up at night right until the end, the plot was well developed, the main characters easily definable by their different appearances (albeit some of the opposing team's members seemed to blur into one slightly). Some people may complain about it being unrealistic, to which I'll only say that it didn't deduct from the manga, and this is a shounen. The only question I have is; how the heck is Tezuka a junior high student
This is one of the best manga i have ever read. It not just about tennis well most of it is. But it is about friendship and how Ryoma develops. The character are so cool! Personally Rikkaidai is my favourite team because it has many different personalities types. The tennis moves are awesome even if they are unrealistic. I am a big fan of Prince of Tennis! There has been many adaption such as the live action, anime, movies, musicals and games. The character songs are great! For me reading Prince of tennis taught me stuff and is unforgettable. I will never get bored of it.
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