Ranked #1014

Prince of Tennis: The Two Samurai, The First Game

This movie is not, technically, a very good movie. The art's pretty decent -- one can tell they had a higher budget for this movie than for the TV series -- the soundtrack's fine but not outstanding, the characterization is about what you'd expect for a Prince of Tennis movie (i.e. minimal), and the plot is frankly ridiculous.

In fact, this movie is ridiculous and over-the-top in a number of ways, and that's exactly what's so great about it. It takes the "junior high school tennis is serious and manly!" theme of the TV series and turns it up to eleven in ways that deny logic, physics, and the very nature of reality. Underwater tennis on the deck of a sinking ship! Energy-beam tennis that blows people's clothes off! Tennis killing the dinosaurs! Heck, the "play this fixed tennis match... OR DIE!!!" premise alone is pretty amusing.

So if you're looking for a serious and realistic sports anime... well, I don't know why you'd be looking at anything Prince of Tennis-related in the first place, but you certainly won't find it here. But if you have a sense of humor and a fondness for shounen absurdity, this movie is a lot of fun. read more

I'm a big fan of the series, but a bit disappointed with this movie...
I think the people who made this movie is a bit too hurried to decide on the characters.
They made this filler character, Ryoga Echizen, Ryoma's older adopted brother. In the movie he entered ryoma's house when he was a kid. Then Ryoga went missing through the entire series... come back for a brief moment on the movie, then went missing again...

It's just too weird...