Tennis no oujisama

Based on a comic by Takashi Konomi, Prince of Tennis is a story about Ryoma Echizen who's a child prodigy tennis player returning home to Japan from USA.

The story is comic all the way. It's not comical, but it's filled with impossible "shots" fired by the tennis players. The ball moves as if they had a life of their own, supposedly "controlled" by the players. Japanese comic has tradition of super athletes like this beginning with Tetsuya Chiba's base ball saga "Chikai No Makyu" in the '60s. This is yet another version of super athlete that can transform the ball into a magic "bullet".

The movie is a good translation from the comic, and each of the players are presented in a believable fashion. It seems that they were expecting to make a sequel from the way the movie ended, but maybe the movie didn't perform well at the box office, and the idea was canned.

Sayuri Iwata and Yu Shirota puts in a good performance. Sayuri Iwata's role is one invented for this movie, and does not appear in the original comic.

The story is bit weak, but the action between the players are entertaining to watch. It's a good intro movie for the Prince of Tennis saga.