Short comment on the animation and music quality before I dive into my main issues with this anime: animation is as you would expect, it's an anime series from more than a decade ago, but even Slam Dunk from the 90s tops this hands down. And the music, gosh, how the studio skimped on the budget for this I don't know. I watched all the way from season 1 to this OVA to see if they would drop the god awful background music but no they stuck to it like gum on your shoes.
Alright, now to the real problem: the ridiculous power system in this anime. Yeah, we know, sports anime often try to incorporate fanstastical powers to make the entire thing more action-packed and enjoyable, but seriously towards the end of the anime, this studio barely even tries to stick to reality anymore. The moves with the ridiculous names, the myriad of new characters just popping up randomly as stronger than the last EVEN THOUGH the last character had already been firmly established by the anime that they were THE strongest in Japan. And don't even get me started on how this ainme has multiple tennis players who can just copy their opponents' special moves perfectly after just looking at them play once. ((I watched Kuroko no Basket back in 2015 and rewatched it, I know Kise has the same ability, and I can still accept it to that point. It's just that in Tennis no Ouji-sama it's so overdone that I wasn't even surprised any more).
And here's my special rant on their coach: what is she even there for? Forget character development, she has zero use. Yeah, she sits there as the coach bench and she organized that one training camp, but that's it. Her players ignore her advice. They train and get better on their own. She doesn't offer any insight on how they play. Her only purpose is to constantly remind us how Ryouma is the son of o so mightly Samurai Nanjirou (who is actually an awful character and an awful father, but let's not start on that). This coach continuously lets her players send themselves to the hospital in near deaeth condition simply because of their own stubbornness. The lack of responsibility is astonishing. Side note and slight spoiler alert: I have no idea how tennis is a sport that lets a player blow away his opponent to the point where they're flying into the audiences' seats after every, single, ball. Kudos to Kawamura for being able to endure that, but seriously this anime is too much.
SPOILER ALERT
Another rant: just because they couldn't cook up enough drama for the hype of the finals, they just had to let Tezuka lose to an opponent whom Ryouma had previously beaten, even though it is already established that Tezuka is stronger than Ryouma.
AND it is just really bad writing when you can't rely on the tennis matches alone to tell a compelling, hot-blooded sports anime story and need to throw in something so stupid like {SPOILER ALERT} making Ryouma have freaking MEMORY LOSS before the all-important finals match.
You can argue with me all you want on the quality of this anime, judging by the score it has people apprently like it?????? omg
I don't care though, I don't even know why I watched it to this point, I was expecting it to improve, silly me. It's awful. Don't do this to yourself.
