New 'Prince of Tennis' Live-Action Project Unveils Poster

The Prince of Tennis is a strange sports series as it got a lot of support in the United states [...]

By Nick Valdez

The Prince of Tennis is a strange sports series as it got a lot of support in the United states when it was airing on Toonami several years ago, but nostalgic talk about the series has admittedly dwindled.

Support for the series is still strong in Japan, however, as the series is about to release its third new musical. Which has just revealed the first key visual for the project.

The official website for The Prince of Tennis' live-action musical series recently uploaded a promo image for their third "season" titled Seigaku vs. Hyotei running in Japan starting May 2.

The musical will have performances in Japan starting from July 12 to 22, and will move on to Osaka from August 1 to 12, Fukuoka from August 18 and 19, Gifu on September 1 and 2, Miyagi September 8 and 9, and finally ending back in Tokyo from September 20 to 24.

This is the third season of these live-action musical projects, with the first season of the musical running from 2003 to 2009 and the second season, titled Seigaku vs. Higa, from 2011 to 2014. The series is also coming back with a new OVA later this year, and just released a new key visual to go along with that project as well.

For those unfamiliar with The Prince of Tennis, the series was originally created by Takeshi Konomi. The series follows Ryoma Echizen, a tennis prodigy attending a private school famous for its strong tennis players. After making his way onto the school's team by defeating a number of strong upperclassmen, his team decides to enter the National Middle School Tennis Championship as Ryoma slowly learns his own unique style of tennis and really cements what the sport means to him. A sequel series, New Prince of Tennis takes place after the events of the original series where Ryoma returns to Japan and takes part in the Japanese Under 17 High School Representatives Selection Camp against 50 other players.

The series was first published in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump and ran from 1999 to 2008. The series was 379 chapters long, and collected into 42 volumes. Viz Media has licensed the series for an English language release and has sold over 40 million copies in Japan. It was adapted into an anime series by Trans Arts, and ran for 178 episodes. The series was licensed by Viz Media and aired as part of Cartoon Network's Toonami block in 2006, but was later moved to Toonami's streaming platform, Toonami Jetstream, for the remainder of its broadcast.

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