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Meanderings
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Thursday, 05 January 2012 00:17 |
Seishun Academy Tennis Club has been invited to an exclusive Under 17 training camp along with Japan's national tennis squad, and their rival schools. This is a first, as the camp has never invited a middle school team before. The training staff have devised a plan to narrow the list of potential national players from amongst those invited - but there's one member of the Seishun team missing, as Ryoma is still on his way back from the US. Will Ryoma make it to the training camp in time?
More or less the official ep summary up there. Sports-based shows are always a bit iffy with me - I want them to be as realistic as possible (Taisho Baseball Girls being a good example of that) or, if they can't manage that, at least have characters who are likeable and that I can connect to (hello, Saki). When you get to shows that are based on real-world sports but that dispense with any sense of reality and have a cast apparently composed entirely of arrogant, cocky dickheads, though, I have a problem. Say hello to Prince of Tennis II.
Now, to be clear: I read some of the original Prince of Tennis manga back in the day, so I went into this with some idea of what to expect - btu I really wasn't expecting it to be quite this bad. The show effectively lost me with the first scene (Ryoma using his elite tennis skills to catch a train), and just went down hill from there - collectively small things, perhaps, but each one nagging a little and all building up to create a tidal wave of "Oh, fuck this...":
- the theme songs and background music are dreadful.
- "Probability of Echizen being invited: 120%, just as the data suggested." You can't have a probability of greater than 100%, you morons.
- "Regardless of this is a den of monsters, or even hell, we'll see this through to the end!" - it's a tennis training camp. Cut the over-exaggeration.
- need to whittle down the size of your training camp? Drop the ones who can't catch a ball dropped from an airplane! Or maybe, I dunno, just don't invite 300 people in the first place?
And so it goes on. And on. And on. Finishing the episode was a real challenge - I managed that, but there's no chance in hell of me watching another one.
THE GOOD: Established franchise to work with, high production values - I can't complain about the way it looks, at least, and presentation can go a long way to glossing over flaws if you're feeling forgiving.
THE BAD: The level of stupid and annoying surprised me - and I didn't have high expectations on that front to begin with.
Now, my issues are mostly to do with what I want out of a sports-based show - other people will have other expectations, Prince of Tennis has been around in one form or another for long enough that it's clearly got an audience, and I don't doubt that there are people who will lap this up. But for a myriad of reasons, I'm not one of them, and I take great pleasure in dropping this.
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Backbites 
