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Written by maehara
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Sunday, 18 May 2008 16:00 |
 More Prince of Tennis, more of the same stuff that I've been compaining is repetitive since the series began. It's a terrible thing when a story seems to have run out of ideas by volume three, but that's where we are at the moment. If you enjoy seeing the cocky taken down by the talented, read on - otherwise, you may not want to bother...
17 - Warm-Ups
Kachiro's a classmate of Ryoma's - his dad's also a coach at a high-class tennis club, so he's able to arrange court time for Ryoma and the others to practice (Ryoma's teaching the others what he can of his techniques). On the day they visit, though, Kachiro's father is being tormented by Sasabe, a club member who's thoroughly obnoxious. When Sasabe gets a little too much into throwing insults, Ryoma decides that it's time he was taught a lesson...
18 - Bad Losers
Coach Ryuzaki (Sakuno's mom, and a maths teacher at the school) makes a rare appearance at training to introduce the team to her latest idea to help Seishun stay ahead of the competition: training with ankle weights, which she hopes will strengthen the players' legs and backs and give them an advantage. Her sidekick Sadaharu is also keeping an eye on the training session, looking for weaknesses that can be corrected by further training. The things you'll go through when you don't want to lose...
19 - Akaya Kirihara!
Seishun's tennis team receives an unexpected visitor, in the form of Akaya Kirihara, the famous ace of Seishun's great rivals, Rikkai-Dai. Hed fallen asleep on the train and been kicked off when it reached its last stop - which just happened to be by Seishun, and since he was there, he figured he'd better take a look around. He's soon spotted, and sets about disrupting the days' practice session...
20 - Street Tennis
The tournament format is out for the inter-school preliminaries - 2 doubles matches, 3 singles, leaving Ryoma and Momo wondering how the slots will be assigned to the team. Ryoma's not exactly going to be the best of team players, but both Ryoma and Momo want the last remaining singles slot, so Ryoma challenges Momo to a friendly game of street tennis to decide who should get it. Never mind that team selection is suppose to be Coach Ryuzaki's job. When they get to the court, though, a group of older kids have already claimed it, and the Seishun pair will have to play to earn their court time. Problem is, playing doubles together really doesn't work well for them...
21 - The District Preliminaries Begin
The prelims are here, and Ryoma's looking forward to getting some real competition under his belt. He'll be playing doubles with Momo, and since their first opponents are the pair that beat them a few days previously, they're looking forward to getting some revenge. But is a few days enough time for the Seishun pair to have learnt the teamwork that's so essential in doubles play..?
22 - Payback!
Fukawa and Izumi are convinced that this match against Ryoma and Momo will go the same way as the first - but their confidence is quickly shaken when the Seishun pair show they've been working on their weaknesses since they last met. Every strategy has a counter-strategy, though, and Ryoma is soon finding that their opponents' teamwork may be good enough to beat them again...
23 - Losers?
Doubles is all about positioning - splitting the court with your partner, and making sure you understand each other well enough to cover whatever your opponents can send your way. With very little doubles practice between them, Ryoma and Momo are finding themselves in trouble - they may be excellent players in their own rights, but they're not working together as well as Fukawa and Izumi are. They know what they should be doing - but since it's not their natural game, their having difficulty actually doing it. But, under intense pressure, the pair come up with a plan...
24 - Doubles
With their lack of teamwork put to one side, Ryoma and Momo have finally swung the match their way - their solution of playing one side of the court each isn't pretty, but both players are fast enough around to court to make it work, and without the distraction of watching each other they're finally getting their shots in. But have they got their act together soon enough to let them win...?
25 - The Preliminaries Continue...
Ryoma and Momo may have won their match, but Coach Ryuzaki's not at all pleased at the way they did it - playing that sort of tennis doesn't make the school look good. Fortunately, the rest of the matches are all won 6-0 by Seishun, so honour is restored and the team make it through to the next round with minimum fuss. In fact, they progress all the way to the finals - where against all expectations, they won't be meeting Kakinoki, who were unexpectedly swept aside by Fudomine Junior High, a school with no real tennis history...
I had a little grumble about this volume as I was reading it, as the repetitiveness of the whole thing was really beginning to get to me. I'm assured that it does get better as it goes on and will eventually give some good time to things off-court, but we're not there yet, and at this point I'm thoroughly bored with the whole thing - for three volumes now, we've had the same basic routine repeated I think 7 times with barely any variation, and I really don't see the point of that. It may work okay when it's going in an anthology one chapter each week (which would break the story up a lot), but in this 'graphic novel' format it really doesn't work well.
You don't even get the benefit of the fringe characters to distract you - Sakuno is absent from this volume, and while other classmates of Ryoma's appear, it's just to stand at the side of the court and make appropriate "Oooo! Ahhh!" noises - they don't make any useful contribution. In short, is dull, repetitive and tedious to read.
At the point, the only thing keeping me going with Prince of Tennis is the promise of better things to come. At this early stage in the series, it's not something I could really recommend unless you have an interest in tennis - and even then, it might be a stretch to get much out of it.
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