Reviewed on January 14th, 2007

Visually

The animation is pretty good. The art is very detailed, showing many varieties of expressions on the character's faces, their muscles and body movement, which helps bring the characters to life. The character designs are very similar to the manga. Every character has unique features that set them apart, like different hair colours, caps, band aids, etc., making it easy to tell who's who.

However, there are a lot of scenes that are reused again and again, such as Ryoma`s Twist Serve and Drive B, Momoshiro`s Dunk Smash, and Kaidoh`s Snake, and this can get boring for some people.

Audio

The opening and ending songs are all energetic, as fitting for a sports anime, some going with the theme of aiming for the top and playing your game, such as "Fly High" and "You got game?". They help set the mood for the action that is to come. The songs, openings in particular, are very nice to listen to and are bright and fast-paced.

Prince of Tennis is renowned for its number of albums and singles. Just about every single character has their own character single, and many characters have a couple of singles and albums out, like Ryoma and Fuji. The songs fit their characters very well and are a good listen.

The voice acting is perhaps one of the best things in this anime. They all fit the characters perfectly - particularly noticeable was Minagawa Junko, who played the voice of Echizen Ryoma; I even thought Ryoma`s seiyuu was a boy until I checked!

Storyline

The story is nothing particularly unique, with a fairly simple structure. The thought of watching two people hitting a ball back and forth might seem uninteresting at first glance, but the plot twists and turns, new characters, character development, etc., keeps viewers interested and begging for more.

Each time a character steps out on court, something new happens and you find more about each character, keeping the show from becoming repetitive and predictable. Contrary to popular belief, the matches are not the predictable - "Seigaku regulars go through a hard time but overcome it and win in the end" - the characters do lose, believe it or not. Yes, even the main characters. Granted, they don't lose often, but then good players don't. If they kept losing, they wouldn't be considered good.

DVD

Overall

Prince of Tennis is very impressive for a sports series. Many other sports anime/manga ends up repetitive, predictable, with boring characters. A lot of people think that because they don't like sports or they don't know what tennis is about, they shouldn't watch this series.

However, Prince of Tennis overcomes the stereotypes set by many others of its genre. It's action-packed, fast-paced episodes that aren't drawn out too long. For people who don't know the game of tennis, explanations for the scoring and different moves are woven carefully into the dialogue.

by Aidan