The Prince of Tennis
Manga
Prince of Tennis is one of the most popular manga comics in Japan. It is written by Takeshi Konomi, who has also written a manga called Cool.
Plot
This sports manga takes place in Tokyo. Ryoma, who is a genius in tennis, goes to a school called Seigaku青学 (short for Seisyun Gakuen Junior high 青春学園) a school famous for its strong tennis club. Because of his cool and insolent attitude, upperclassmen challenge him to play tennis. However, Ryoma had won the American junior tennis championship tournaments four times in a row, and easily defeated the upperclassmen.
Making new friends and learning new tennis tactics, Ryoma and the Seigaku tennis club strive to win the junior high tennis team championship tournament.
Characters
- Ryoma
TV Show
The television program The Prince of Tennis is slightly different from the Manga version. While most of the story and characters such as Ryoma Echizen, Takeshi Momoshiro, Shusuke Fuji, etc. are the same, there are small story-changes in the animated version because because the author, Mr. Konomi, thought it would be too boring to read what fans have already watched.
For example, table tennis scenes exist in the TV version, but not in the manga.
There are over 150 episodes today.
It is on TV Tokyo every Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.
Impact
Interest in tennis in Japan had been decreasing due to the lack of a strong player, but thanks to the Prince of Tennis, tennis is making a comeback in Japan. It is said that the over thirty thousand people who were influenced by the manga had started tennis. The JTA (Japanese Tennis Association) has accepted Ryoma as a formal image character of the organisation.
External Links
- http://www.tv-tokyo.co.jp/anime/tennipri (in Japanese)
http://jump.shueisha.co.jp/tennis/ http://www.tenipuri.com/main.html