Prince of Tennis

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Fandom
Name: Prince of Tennis (テニスの王子様)
Abbreviation(s): PoT, tenipuri
Creator: Takeshi Konomi
Date(s): 1999-2008 (manga), 2001-present (anime), 2009-present (shin manga)
Medium: manga, anime, musicals, live-action
Country of Origin: Japan
External Links: TV Tokyo's Anime Site/JP, JUMP's shin tenisu no oujisama Site/JP, Wikipedia
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Prince of Tennis, or tenisu no oujisama, started as a Japanese sports manga that was serialized in Weekly Shounen Jump, was adapted as an anime series, and has evolved into a media franchise with popular musicals, computer games, trading cards, etc. Recently a Chinese live-action drama adaptation began airing as well. In 2009 Shin tennisu no oujisama began serialization in JUMP Square.[1] The story is set several months after the end of the first manga series.

Synopsis

Prince of Tennis is a shounen sports manga that follows the progress of a protagonist team, Seigaku, toward the National junior high competitions, and the progress of the nominal hero, Echizen Ryouma, toward the realization of his full tennis-playing potential.

Fandom

The LiveJournal PoT fandom was large and consistently active, though it has a certain amount of turnover among the fans who favor some particular media format and leave when that version concludes.

Given the large number of rival teams that the protagonist team faces over time, and the ultimate sympathy with which those characters are developed, many fans are drawn to one or two teams in particular. Thus the PoT fandom is also prone to divisions along team lines, with separate comms devoted to discussion of and fanworks for those teams.

Pairings

With such a large cast, containing only a token woman or two, the potential for rivalslash is high. Given the intensity with which team bonds are presented, in-team pairings are also very common, especially between characters shown playing as doubles partners.

Despite, or possibly because of, the vast number of possible pairings, pairing wars are relatively rare in this fandom.

While het stories are not very prevalent, there is a small community of fans who do write Ryoma/Sakuno.

A 2006 post in dinosaur_zone tallied shipping preferences among respondents, and compared them to the membership numbers in some of the pairing-specific communities.

Naming

An interesting peculiarity of PoT fandom is to give doubles pairings names on the pattern of "the Adjective Pair". This is based similar titles Konomi gave for some doubles teams, but was expanded considerably by the fans. This naming practice has been criticized for unclearness[2], but the names of the more popular ships are fairly well-known. Many of the accepted names stem from a list of possible names given in the video game Smash Hit! 2, which were translated and catalogued by fans. For example, Tezuka and Ryouma are listed as the Pillar of Seigaku Pair, and Tezuka/Ryouma became known as Pillar Pair.

Other fan-collected lists of pairing names:

Challenges

Communities

Archives

Fanworks

Fanfiction

Fanart

Doujinshi

In the early 2000s Prince of Tennis had a very active doujinshi community, resulting in high popularity at Comiket.[4] Even professional mangaka, such as Kodaka Kazuma, were producing doujinshi for this fandom.[5] Due to the vast number of male characters most fan comics featured yaoi couples.

Vids

Fan Soundtracks (aka Fanmixes)

Zines

  • Jump for the Stars - cinematic-style zine featuring shounen anime series as movie posters (2022)

Meta

Ship Manifesto pairing essays:

Idol Reflection character essays:

References

  1. ^ http://mangahelpers.com/m/new-prince-of-tennis Accessed May 5th 2011.
  2. ^ 2007 post complaining about pairing names; contains terms now considered ableist slurs
  3. ^ Although still well behind behind Naruto (291K), InuYasha (102K), Bleach (61K), Yu-Gi-Oh (58K), Hetalia Axis Powers (47K), and not quite overtaking Card Captor Sakura or Yu Yu Hakusho (9 December 2011).
  4. ^ What is the Comic Market? Accessed May 5th 2011.
  5. ^ http://www.mangaupdates.com/authors.html?id=184 Accessed May 5th 2011.