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NEWS: The Prince of Tennis Manga Gets Theatrical Anime Film

Huh. I really should check out this anime---I don't see that many about tennis, and I've pretty much grown up with the sport, anyhow~ I've heard that the sports genre isn't the most popular, but I'm glad they're making a movie. Good luck to...erm...the people making it? I dunno. o_O

Will the movie have Tezuka killing the dinosaurs? Because if so, that would be so epic. Epically fail, I should say. Hopefully it will be a movie about actual tennis and not about making galaxies explode with the power of your forehands.

I read the first few chapters of New POT, and the level of insanity has only gotten worse.

At this point it's pretty much an insult to real tennis players and tennis fans.

Making up a sport which is unrealistic is one thing; take Beyblades and Yu-Gi-Oh! for example. Every knows that spinning tops cannot be controlled with the power of the mind and that trading cards are not representations of magical spells and monsters from ancient Egypt. A Manga-ka can make up various attacks and strategies without having to justify them. And fictional games means fictional rules.

But when a Manga or Anime is made about a game that exists in real life - i.e. tennis - the story and action cannot be as fantastical. That is, unless it's a work of parody like Yakitate!! Japan. It just comes with the territory; real world game means largely real-world physics. There is no such thing as the "Tezuka Zone" in real life, because if there was Roger Federer would be using it.

Certain liberties are almost always taken to make a story more interesting. And viewers put up with them because we want to be entertained; it is an implicit contract. But there's a line where people stop willingly suspend their disbelief, and it differs from person to person. Some people can tolerate tennis stadiums being trashed, while others roll their eyes and move on. Do not be so quick to criticise people like myself who don't like it when certain stories (Prince of Tennis, Air Gear et al) become so outlandish and so detached from their roots that we lose interest.

There's no need to insult these titles just because they don't appeal to you.

I was not insulting them. I was pointing out problems that people such as myself have with these titles. When a work uses a real-life sport then it should use the appropriate level of physics. This even applies to sports such as in Air Gear that could well exist in real-life but for a few minor technology improvements.

Imagine tennis being played in space, and players could teleport around the "field", and they used lightsabres to hit a energy ball of some description. At that point, why even bother calling it tennis even more? Why not just invent a new sport? Now yes, that is an extreme example, but it shows how in every story there is a line. Where that line is no-one knows, and it differs from person to person, but once that line is crossed its location is obvious.

I don't have the same tolerance for Sports Anime as you do, and you probably don't have as high a tolerance for Mecha Anime as I do. And hey, that's cool, no-one is more right or wrong than the other. But it is not in any way insulting for me to explain why certain Sports Anime are just not my cup of tea.

And that's not even mentioning that even the best of the best pros can NOT hit the racquet in the dead center every time. Even Roger Federer is going to miss it by probably a few centimeters. So there's no way in hell you should expect me to believe that a Japanese high-schooler can do that, and beat a national-class middle-schooler (technically a 9th grader) while doing so.