Prince of Tennis

Prince of Tennis Reception

Though The Prince of Tennis has become a successful franchise, spawning several adaptations like an anime, original video animations, musicals, movies, radio shows, and video games, the series has received both positive and negative reviews. When a popular anime and manga news website, Anime News Network, reviewed the first DVD box set released by Viz Media, they commented that "Prince of Tennis is among the dregs of the genre." They go on to say that it is "boring" and "lacks the human drama necessary to get audiences to care who wins or loses."

'Anime on DVD', however, comments that the show "takes the usual themes in sports shows and applies them masterfully." DVD Talk takes more of a nonchalant view, commenting that the "series is okay but not great" and that it has some charm, which will make you not regret watching it. Active Anime also gave praise to the series, saying that it "holds some surprising twists to the regular sports drama formula", and praised the suspenseful matches and innovative techniques.

When Spectrum Nexus, another manga and anime reviews website, made an overall review of the entire anime series, it comments that the show takes "its time to evolve into a very enjoyable series" and that one should "remember the spectacular matches and the characters you found yourself admiring along the way."

Despite the reviews, there is no doubt that the series is vastly popular in Japan. When TV Asahi, a television network in Japan, conducted a nation-wide survey for the one hundred most popular animated television series, The Prince of Tennis anime came in twenty-seventh place. They also conducted an online web poll, in which The Prince of Tennis placed eighteenth. Nearly a year later, TV Asahi once again conducted an online poll for the top one hundred anime, and this time, The Prince of Tennis anime advanced in rank and came in eighth place. They also surveyed Japanese celebrities for their favorite anime, where the series only came in sixty-eighth out of the top one hundred.

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