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.

... Last updated on February 17th, 2011, 2:03pm

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.

A fiver is more than enough.

MADA MADA DANE, KONOMI...

... Last updated on January 16th, 2011, 6:59pm

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

... Last updated on June 29th, 2010, 1:18pm

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.

The best part about Prince of Tennis is NOT the cool moves, but rather the right time to use it. Usually, one or two exceptional players beat Kaido's Buggy Whip (Is it called that?), or Nanjiro's the only guy that can keep Ryoma at his toes. Who says the moves aren't cool? Without the moves, Prince of Tennis wouldn't be so popular! What do you expect? This manga is fiction, thus the moves are fiction.

One thing I didn't like about Prince of Tennis was...all the regular players looked able; all the muscles, hands, and legs are moving at the right speed and pace but...not the first years besides Echizen. Look at Sakuno, she's looks fragile, as if one hard swing could break her into pieces. Look at two of Echizen's male friends, they're so puny, they have scrawny arms, like they're only in 4th grade, but Echizen doesn't look anywhere near it. It's nice to able to differentiate (dunno if that's a word XDDD) the main character from the rest of the not-so-important characters but, c'mon! At least, make Sakuno more mature with boobs or something! And Sakuno's grandma? Man, choose one! Make her a man OR woman, not a woman with man looks!

I don't understand why people are so against the "special moves". Yup, some of them are pretty unrealistic, but they only look so weird, cuase magaka enchanced existing moves and coloured them with with flashy names and effects(See youtube vids if you don't beleive me). Forgetting what's real and not, shouldn't shounen manga be rated by how interesting it is? I don't know about the others, but I couldn't put it down- that's enough for me.

I see people going on and on about how unrealistic the moves are. Sure they are really 'O_O' but if it was just normal tennis (please don't get offended tennis fans), I wouldn't want to read it anymore. It'll get too boring for me ^^ It's because of those fancy moves that got me into Prince of Tennis in the first place (gives me a tiny bit of hope that maybe I could be like Ryoma or Tezuka or Fuji and become Number #1! Haha!)

a sport manga worth reading, with all the bishounen scattered through pages.
but i dont like the unrealistic ( well. how do you manage to cut the ball into two--and still play with that faulty ball?) and it almost turning into somekind of dragon ball kind... with all those aura.
i hate the way Ryoma always win. and the way Tezuka getting lost every single time after he came back.
really good manga otherwise. i am a Yukimura supporter by the way.

This was my first step into sports manga and i loved it.

Cons: The moves they whipped out sometimes were... strange. And there was occasionally the weird, odd sized head on a too-tiny body, along with all of the characters having either monsterous or minute feet. There was no middle ground, at least from my POV. There was also many many many characters to keep track of (Not all were main, but most were commented on in passing after a match. The author most of the time accompanied it with a picture of the person though.)

Pros: easy to understand with a nicely flowing plot line. I also loved all of the little breaks, like prince of bowling or prince of beach volley ball. That was rather specatular. The weird moves that the characters seemed to whip out on every occasion were strange, but the author gave realistic explinations of how they could happen, even if it would be impossible to do so.

All in all: 8/10

Some of those moves were a little too weird for me...

I loved this series. It tells you some about tennis, but you don't have to play Tennis to like this series. The characters are interesting with very defined personalities. I think that this series is probably the best sports manga I have ever read. I would recommend this series to everyone! (Also, the characters are awesome and really kewl!) And this is NOT A YOAI!!!