Prince Tennis Box Set Vol

Studio: Viz Media Llc Release Date: 04/24/2007

When 12-year-old tennis prodigy Ryoma Echizen, the hero of the shonen (boys’) sports series The Prince of Tennis (2001), enters Seinan Academy Middle School, the tennis coach, the members of the team, and the kids in his class are all intrigued. Many of the early sequences follow a formula: an arrogant bully challenges “the kid” to a match and Ryoma beats the shorts off him. Ryoma’s response to these challenges is an intense glare; he seldom talks to his rivals–or any individual else. He hurts the well-intentioned Sakuno because he repeats fails to do not forget her. While a self-contained stoicism characterizes some anime heroes, Ryoma is a difficult reputation to recognise or like. Things become more interesting when his icy façade cracks, enabling him to forge an confederacy with teammate Takeshi Momoshiro in a doubles match. Ryoma likewise has a difficult kinship with his father Nanjiro, a former tennis pro once known as “the Samurai.” A goofy monk who spends his time reading girlie magazines and playing with his cat, Nanjiro refers to Ryoma as “that cocky, rotten boy of mine.” Director Takayuki Hamana uses split-screen, multiple images, negative color, and manga-style drawings to enliven the inevitably repetitious scenes of tennis games. Based on the long-running manga by Takeshi Konomi, The Prince of Tennis scored a big hit in Japan: the broadcast series ran for 178 sequences and spun off two OAVs and two features, so this 13-episode set is only the beginning. (Unrated, suitable for ages 10 and older: minor violence, minor risqué humor) –Charles Solomon

Most helpful customer reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful.
One of Japan’s most popular anime series finally comes here!
By Cory LaFerriere
I’ve been waiting for this one a long time. TENNIS no Oujisama (aka The Prince of Tennis) is an insanely popular series that started as a Manga and then became a 179 episode anime series, as well as an ongoing series of live musicals and even a recent live action movie. Not to mention an unending series of music CD releases. 13 episodes is a great bargain for the price. These 13 episodes barely scratch the surface in this 179 episode series. They won’t play their first rival team until the next set comes out. Still, this has its own nice story arc as the main character must earn himself a position on the SEIGAKU tennis team.

The DVDs are both in English and in Japanese with subtitles, which is great because the English dub as seen on Cartoon Network recently is one of the worst I’ve ever heard. You’d think they could get somebody familiar with the show to at least tell voice actors how the characters names are pronounced. Still, the dub is good for a laugh. The inferior openings and endings that were created for the US airings is used, but that’s ok because the original Japanese opening and ending are included as bonus features. I hope they continue to do so, because the Japanese version went through half a dozen or so different openings and endings.

I highly reccomend this DVD. It’s hard to go wrong with one of the most popular anime series ever.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
I was disappointed
By T. Coffman
The Prince of Tennis is an amazing series. I love it having seen it raw. This box set leaves much to be desired, including unedited episodes. Viz has recut and deleted scenes that were in the original Japanese series. They have also taken out complete episodes, some of which were among my favorite. I was very disappointed. I was also horrified and the horrible dubbing that VIZ did. Luckily they do include subtitling and the original Japanese dialog, which if you’re going to watch them I would recommend.

As this is one of my favorite series (along with Naruto), I was very excited to find it and add it to my collection. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that I’ll buy the rest of the series since there is such a horrible set of remastering and the Uncut on the title is misleading. These are not uncut complete episodes. I cannot stress this enough, there are MISSING episodes and episodes that have been recut and had scenes deleted. What they have kept is good, but it misses some of its original charm.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Worst English Dub of ALL TIME
By Kathleen Garcia
Prince of Tennis is one of my all time favorite animes, therefore I was disgusted when this English dub was released. I have never seen a company (Viz) do such a rotten, lackluster job in the voice over department. I wonder if they even watched the raw before attempting the dub. To not even be able to accurately pronounce even the main characters names… someone at Viz needs to be fired. The only thing saving this review from a one star is that you have the option to watch the original subtilted raw Japanese episodes, which I cannot encourage highly enough. If you watch the dub, you will not enjoy the series. It loses all it’s humor, excitment and fire. How Viz can take one of the funniest, wonderful and most beloved animes of all time and ruin it is beyond my comprehension. However, if you watch it in raw, I promise you that you will love Prince of Tennis/Tennis no Oujisama.