Shin Tennis no Oujisama: U-17 World Cup

What an absolute disappointment, honestly. Just read the manga. This is coming from a long-time TeniPuri fan.

ANIMATION: I'm over a decade deep into tennis hell and this anime is just awful compared to the stuff they used to put out. You can literally tell that the studio had 0 time to invest into this anime because they're so reliant on awful CGIs and stills. All of the "good" episodes only seem good until you realize that there was 0 animation/sakuga. When I saw all the seiyuu announcements for the Foreign players, I was like "wow, they have a huge budget if they were able to ... get [prolific seyuu] for this!"... Turns out the entire budget went exactly to securing the seiyuus and we get a measly $2 for the animation. At this point, I'm only watching this show just to laugh at the awful animation (hate-watchers or garbage anime connoisseurs, put this on your list).

STORY: This adaptation is so unfaithful to the source material. I am aware that the original anime was also not faithful to the source manga, but it was actually interesting with how they deviated in that series. I was emotionally invested in this specific arc of the ShinTeni manga and it was just painful to see them deviate so much from the actual story. To make things even worse, they condense so many storylines into less than 1 episode (yes, I'm calling out the Exhibition vs Germany and GS vs. Greece arcs). With how much content was in the manga, the Exhibition Match vs. Germany could've easily taken all 13 episodes this anime is allegedly contracted to run for. There is 0 suspense or anticipation for what's to come next episode. In the original anime, at least they ended episodes on cliffhanger points or in the middle of an important match, but this anime just ends when the match ends. You literally have no incentive to return next week to watch other than your love for this series. The manga has better pacing and actually gives us a reason to root for Japan.

CHARACTERS: I think I'm also particularly biased towards the execution of the story because I watched the musical adaptation of the vs. Genius 10 arc and that 3 hour musical was so faithful to the source material and didn't lose any of the character development along the way. This anime just cuts out a lot of the character dev that was instrumental in the manga for setting up the situations we find the main characters in. They cut out so much development from the GS vs. Greece match and crammed those 30-ish chapters into 15 minutes of anime. I don't know how anyone is supposed to like Ochi or Toono or Tanegashima's characters because they literally got shafted so hard in the anime.

SOUND: The OP slaps. The big name seiyuus they got for the foreign players (Hanae Natsuki, Midorikawa Hikaru, Kobayashi Yuu, etc.) was literally where all of the budget for this anime went.

OVERALL: I love this series but ShinTeni U-17 WC anime is a slap to the face to any long-time TeniPuri fan. Anyone trying to get into TeniPuri, please just read the manga.

If Haikyuu is the most grounded sports anime, Prince of Tennis is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum, and I think that it carries its own charm. You have people doing backflips while hitting the ball, people creating gravity wells on the court, people using execution techniques and applying it to their tennis shots, there really is no end to it. Every episode I found myself grinning ear to ear at the sheer ridiculousness of the "tennis" on display. Add to that a lovable cast of characters and you have yourself a winning formula. Even as a longtime tennis ... player, I found myself totally enamored with this show. I recommend it to anyone looking for a fun sports anime that casts aside all pretext of realism and takes it to the extreme.

Like a lot of other people watching this, I saw the main series as a kid, and decided to watch this for lulz. This show compared to its predecessors is lacking in every way. The tennis matches all start with one opponent leading 5-0, then a comeback starts etc. Moreover, they really bombard you with too many characters you begin to not really care about anybody. This show stopped having anything to do with tennis a long time ago, but even if you're trying to see that DBZ-styled tennis you're going to be disappointed, the matches were pretty low energy and anti-climactic besides Akutsu's. OST ... is a far cry from what it used to be, character development is non-existent, and all the off-match episodes may as well not even exist. The flashbacks were also boring, even Genius vs Ova 10 had better ones.

This is not an anime if you actually like tennis. This is an anime if you want to watch crazy shit happen and cool effects. Think of this like Dream Sports from Mario & Sonic Olympics. It's not really the about the original sport. It's about having an excuse to fire off 10 tennis balls in one shot or create black holes on the court. For people that like high paced action like that, then Prince of Tennis does that with a side of backstory.

Most of the time in Prince of Tennis you're getting people's faces smashed in with tennis balls or someone is making ... up some insane trick shot. But when push comes to shove, when it comes down to the wire, you get to learn about people's origins, their motivation for winning. And that's when their personalities manifest themselves on the tennis court.

If you're the kind of person whose going to complain because 2 middle schoolers are rallying with 10 tennis balls, then this is not the anime for you. But if you like flashy, high octane battles, you will like the show. Prince of Tennis doesn't try to be the perfect show, but the areas it does well, it does so with meaning.