May 28, 2025
The New Prince of Tennis is a comedy masterpiece, and all of you are wrong.
In the original Prince of Tennis, the manga gets a bad rap for losing control of its identity and puttering out. In my opinion, it changed genres at around the 200 chapter mark, turning from a sports shounen into a tennis comedy. Superpowers begins to appear, and it became almost impossible for me to take the story seriously. The transformation from middling sports shounen to incredible comedy could not have been a better change for the story. The contrast between the increasingly superhuman "tennis" feats and how straight the story
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played it sent my sides into space dozens of times in the short 180 chapter comedy that Prince of Tennis became.
While the original Prince of Tennis slowly became untethered from reality, the New Prince of Tennis comes out of the gate swinging. Superpowers and wacky characters are abound, with tennis less about how you hit the ball, and more about how stupid you can hit it. Within fifty chapters you will see characters running away from giant eagles, multiple men being crucified by tennis balls, and absurd training regimes that make no sense. The mangaka was clearly just having fun with the story at this point, and the manga is all the better for it.
Once the story's tournament properly kicks off, is when any restraints the mangaka had left disappeared. The plot will at points, violently whiplash between incredibly hype shounen moments, and the most ridiculous things ever put to manga. You'll witness a man literally grow into a giant, you'll see a man balancing on top of his racket during a match, another character somehow gains the ability to create black holes as tennis defense, and it just never stops. I don't think I've ever laughed as much or as often as I have reading the New Prince of Tennis. It is genuinely one of the funniest manga ever made, and everyone else who thinks otherwise is wrong.
As for the art, it looks great, as you could expect for a manga as long as Prince of Tennis. As the manga goes on, the detail put into some of the panels and spreads really help to sell the shift in the story from comedic to epic, and vice versa. The contrast between the serious looking art, and the absurd feats in the matches are also a delight to the eyes.
I know its a hard sell, but should you be willing to read all of the original Prince of Tennis, you will be rewarded with a comedic masterpiece unlike any other in manga.
Reviewer’s Rating: 10
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