Tennis no Oujisama Movie 1: Futari no 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.

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...

This movie is totally awesome. With fighting included in tennis, this just excites me more while I was watching the movie. However, there's 2 flaws & disappointments in this movie. 1, the art is bad. Not that bad, but bad. Just by looking at the characters in the anime, example - Inui, you'll know that the author just rushed through some parts of the anime. Second bad thing of the anime (movie): PREDICTIONS. In my opinion, I already know what'll happen, it's so obvious. But every main character nearly always wins. But why is this obvious ....? Judging by Echizen Ryoma and Echizen Ryoga's looks, ... I already know they will continue the fight after hitting the villian (forgot the name) with the tennis ball. And it's so obvious that Ryoma will win. So I hope the next movie of PoT will not have the same flaw and problem.