While American comic book companies keep trying (and in many cases failing) to bring people back to reading comic books, the "manga revolution" (as Tokyopop calls it) is sweeping the nation. If American comic book companies want to know why manga is doing so much better in terms of sales and popularity, then all they need to do is browse the manga section in their local bookstore to find the reason: Variety. There is a large variety of different genre's you find with manga that you don't usually find in American comics. Romance, drama, fantasy, action, sci-fi, every genre you can imagine is readily available in manga form. Well, almost every genre. The only type of manga that we haven't seen much of is sports manga. With the exception of "Slam Dunk" and a couple of other basketball titles from Tokyopop that aren't worth mentioning (at all) sports manga has yet to fully catch on in the USA. Well Viz would like to change that. With "Shonen Jump" becoming more and more popular every month, Viz realized that they needed some fresh blood for their "Shonen Jump" graphic novel line. They looked at what was popular in Japan, and they discovered that there was this franchise in Japan called "The Prince of Tennis" that was a HUGE success in Japan! There were more then 20 volumes of manga made, over 100 episodes of the anime made (and still counting), and they realized that this could be the franchise to bring sports manga and anime into the houses of manga and anime fans everywhere.

Not only that, but a lot of people probably wouldn't mind checking the series out at least once because of the "Shonen Jump" label and very attractive cover price of $7.95 (which is a real bargain for a series like this). The series begins with a bunch of 16 year old tennis players talking at each other about a 12 year old kid who got into the 16 and under tennis club, saying that something like this has never happened before. We are then shortly introduced to little Sakuno Ryuzaki, who is on a train to live with her grandma and study at the school she teaches at. However Sakuno is not very excited about this. Or at least she's not very excited about this at the moment. Why? Because she is currently on a train that has a bunch of 16 year old tennis players, and apparently they talk scary. Make sense? If it doesn't don't worry about it; this is what they make anime for. At any rate, when Sakuno gets off the train she is stopped by a 12 year old boy carrying a tennis racket, who needs directions to the local tennis club. Well she tells him to go to the south gate, but when Sakuno meets up with her grandma she finds out that the tennis club is actually over at the north gate!

Oops.

Well when Sakuno gets to the tennis club she see's the boy lying on the grass outside, and is sad to hear that he was disqualified from the club because he was 5 minutes late due to the bad directions he got. Ouch. Sakuno tries to apologize to the boy, but before she gets the chance to apologize some older kids come up to the boy and challenge him to a tennis match!? Turns out this "boy" is Ryoma Echizen, the 12 year old kid who is going to be entering the tennis tournament for boys 16 and under, and who is also called the Prince of Tennis! Why is he called the Prince of Tennis you ask? Because his father was once on a path of becoming one of the greatest tennis players of all time. But before he could reach his dream an injury forced him out of the game, and now his son is following in his dad's footsteps, in hopes of becoming the greatest tennis player of all time. Geez, sounds so...predictable doesn't it? Well that's because it is to a point. What makes this series so much fun is the tennis matches, and boy there are a lot of tennis matches. There is match after match, after match, after match. Sometimes there are so many tennis matches in a row that you feel like your head will explode. Can a series that revolves around tennis 85% of the time possibly hold your interest for 20+ books?

The answer is both yes and no. You see, regular tennis is boring in comic books. How can you repeatedly just draw two people hitting a ball back and forth and manage to make it interesting? The answer is you suspend belief as much as you can. These are no ordinary tennis matches, these are matches where people can hit balls that spin, balls that curve in the air, balls that change direction magically, there are even some ball serves that involve back flips, and all of these moves comes with its own stupid name and everything. So if you are a hardcore tennis player you just have to keep this phrase in mind when you see these kids playing tennis with moves that you can not even ATTEMPT to perform in real life: This is only a comic book! In my opinion the tennis, silly as it can be sometimes, is for the most part done very well in this book, and the author couldn't have pulled it off any better. However this also leads to the first problem with the tennis, which is that sometimes the tennis DOES get to be too silly! Near the beginning of the series everyone points out that even though Ryoma is beating tennis player after tennis player, he is not showing off his real strength.

Why do they say this? Because Ryoma plays a good majority of his opponents playing with his right hand. However Ryoma is left handed. This is the sort of trick that makes people like me groan because story elements like this may be true to some extent, but they are just SO incredibly stupid! I mean, you can't tell me that you don't groan when a character says something like "If you think I'm good now, you should play me while I'm using my left hand." Yeah it's true, but it just sounds corny. The second problem with the tennis is that there is just simply too much of it sometimes. Take a look at "Slam Dunk" for a minute; this is a series that is about basketball, but the story balances the basketball perfectly with the story and character development. "The Prince of Tennis" however focus's more on the tennis then the story and the characters, and as a result the characters aren't quite as in-depth as we would like them to be. Not that the characters aren't interesting mind you, there is some character development, and we do come to care for some of these characters, there just isn't quite enough character development sometimes.

So in the end I believe that there will be lots of people who will find a lot to like about "The Prince of Tennis," however how much you get into the tennis itself will be the deciding factor on whether you decide to stick with the whole series or not. Still, Viz did pick one of the better sports manga's that is out there to bring over here, and I predict that the series will become a very huge hit. Just don't expect anything too complicated or deep and you'll have a blast with "The Prince of Tennis."

- -Review By Kevin T. Rodriguez- -