Prince of Tennis movie ('The Match in the British Tennis Castle'): summary/impressions
It's a bit late, but I ended up going to see the new Prince of Tennis movie on the 25th ('The Match in the British Tennis Castle', which is appropriately set in England). I originally thought I'd write up what happened to share with a friend, but figured I'd post it here too in case anyone wanted to get a vague idea of what happens in the movie.
I might have gotten some of the events out of order, and it isn't all that coherent or detailed overall (and pretty text-heavy), but maybe it'll still be useful to someone.
That said, here's the summary:
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- The film opens with a guy running from some tennis mafia group in London at night, in the rain. All of them are wearing silver rings on their hands. After getting hit by one of their balls (tennis naturally being the go-to form of violence here), he’s cornered next to a river (which may or may not be the Thames). There’s some altercation, and then the guy throws himself into the river to escape. Sure hope that wasn’t the Thames, for his sake.
- It then moves on to Seigaku arriving in London/going to the Wimbledon stadium the next day. The Thames looks oddly clean in the shot they show of it. Don’t believe it.
- Momoshiro fanboys a bit, and then they start talking about the tournament they were here to do. They’re interrupted by Hyotei, who are interrupted by Shitenhouji, who are interrupted by Rikkai. There’s a montage of them playing matches and training and stuff (Oishi and Kikumaru VS Gakuto and Hiyoshi, Yanagi and Yagyuu VS Chitose and Kenya, Niou VS Kintarou with Ryoma’s appearance, and Ryoma VS Atobe), and everything’s all happy for the time being.
- In the evening, Shiraishi’s on a walk, Tezuka’s practicing his swings, Kirihara’s hitting balls against a wall, Momoshiro and Ryoma are playing a match, and Chotarou and Shishido are in a gym. Shiraishi notices that a load of the players they saw earlier have been knocked out on the courts. Suddenly, the tennis mafia ninjas all appear and start attacking everyone, because that’s what the tennis mafia do.
- Although they don’t do too badly against them at first, things soon get worse, as they do. Shishido valiantly sacrifices himself for Chotarou, Kirihara gets a tennis ball to the face, and they start to chase Shiraishi. He and Tezuka join forces to take them down, as do Momoshiro and Ryoma.
- Despite this, Momoshiro also gets knocked out by a ball hit by the leader of the tennis mafia. He’s about to hit Ryoma too, but the guy who leapt in the Thames earlier turns up, miraculously still alive after that, and hits the ball back. There’s some more stuff between them (apparently he’s a traitor to the tennis mafia), and the altercation eventually results in a blue glowing light for reasons I can’t really remember. Some stuff about ‘real tennis’ is mentioned, and the tennis mafia eventually leaves after everyone else turns up.
- The next day, we see that Shishido seems to be fine, Momoshiro is fine but asleep, and that Kirihara’s apparently more afraid of what Sanada and Yukimura will think than his injuries (he’s kowtowing and apologizing to them instead). Everyone else is discussing who the tennis mafia is and why they would do something like this. Tezuka still has a ball they hit at him from before, and it’s noted that it’s the sort of ball used back in the game that served as the roots of modern tennis (i.e. made of cork, different size, etc.).
- Suddenly, the guy who jumped in the Thames appears. Kaidou, who notices that he’s wearing the same ring, gets angry due to what happened to Momoshiro, but Ryoma stops him by saying that he helped him last night. Kaidou wants to go after the tennis mafia, but Thames guy insists that they won’t be able to do anything. Kaidou doesn’t drop it, though, and he eventually agrees to play a match with him.
- Unfortunately, Kaidou can’t seem to hit the ball in-bounds. Inui figures that it’s because Thames guy’s throwing off the timing of his return by means of a phantom ball hitting the racket first, which Thames guy calls Gemini. (Apparently he’s using ‘ki’ or something). Ryoma then wants to play, and ends up being able to return it. Thames guy eventually stops when he sees the leader of the tennis mafia in Ryoma’s place when he serves.
- Before he leaves, though, he introduces himself as Siu (that’s the romanisation in the pamphlet, but I don’t know), and provides some exposition on the tennis mafia. Apparently they’re called Clack (according to the pamphlet, again, although ‘Crack’ is also appropriately possible), and are a street tennis group who go around attacking players. It looks like they’re made up of people who’ve been thrown out of tennis places or the like. The leader is called Keith, and apparently they’re based in a castle called ‘King of Kingdom’. They must be rich. Atobe also apparently stayed in the castle at one point, or it belongs to him, which explains the name.
- In any case, Siu insists that he’s the one to take them down, rejecting the surprisingly sensible option that Oishi brings up of calling the police and letting them handle it (he says that they can do that if he doesn’t come back the next day). Ryoma says that it’s not their problem, and Siu goes off.
- In the evening, Siu goes on a speedboat and makes to head for the castle, but Ryoma hijacks things at the last second and jumps on with him. People notice that he’s missing, and despite Tezuka seeming to go with inaction, he goes off to look for Ryoma himself. He’s stopped by Atobe, who apparently has some sort of jetski thing ready to go. Fuji and Oishi interrupt them, as do Sanada, Kirihara, and Shiraishi. Naturally, though, they all can’t fit on the one jetski, which is only for two people.
- Cue Higa, suddenly, in a speedboat. Apparently they’ve been going on epic adventures everywhere, which involved a lot of training and going to rescue a princess from a dragon (or that was the general drift of it, anyway; Kite got a bit carried away with the description). They’re now working for a boat rental company to save up for getting back to Okinawa. This solves the number problem, though, and Atobe apparently has the credit card to pay for the speedboat, so Fuji, Sanada, Kirihara, and Shiraishi end up in the speedboat with Kite, leaving the rest of Higa and Oishi at the docks as they go off with Atobe. Are 14 year olds allowed to drive speedboats, Kite?
- In the meantime, Ryoma and Siu are still going on in their speedboat ahead. Ryoma brings up that Siu was injured from the night before, when he was being chased by Clack. As it turns out, the Clack guys are all inside, including Keith (training separated from the others by bars) and a short giggling maniac with purple hair called Peter, who’s appeared earlier but who I’ve neglected to mention until now. Peter takes a phone call, and tells Keith that Siu’s coming.
- Back with Siu and Ryoma, Siu has a happy sunny flashback to him and Keith playing doubles together somewhere. They arrive at the very large castle (I guess they afford the upkeep of that castle by virtue of being tennis mafia, or the like), Keith tells the others to let Ryoma and Siu in, and the drawbridge goes down. Ryoma notices a white horse randomly chilling in the castle which will be of use later. Meanwhile, Atobe sneezes when Ryoma mentions that the place has bad taste. Okay.
- After they go in, the other guys all get there too. The drawbridge starts to go up, so everyone leaps across- except Kite, who’s apparently done all that the fare covered. This turns out not to be the case after they go, though, as one of the Clack guys pops up from wherever he was hiding and challenges him to a match on a sand court. It seems that there’s some sort of gimmick to every court they challenge them on, but that’ll appear later. It seems like he stayed behind to cover their retreat. Back with the others, Fuji somehow senses that something’s wrong, and runs back.
- In any case, the Clack guy tries to do a drop shot on him, but Kite Shukuchihou’s over to the net and hits it back at him. He has a brief moment of triumph in Okinawan (he’s fine with a sand court due to coming from Okinawa), but then some other guy appears behind him (apparently it’s doubles time now), and the two start aiming balls at him, some of which end up hitting him. Suddenly, Fuji shows up on the white horse from earlier to form the required doubles team with him, and the two have a Back To Back Badasses moment.
- Ryoma and Siu eventually come across the place Keith and Peter are, with Keith on some sort of throne-seat thing. Siu wants to challenge Keith, but Peter the giggling maniac ends up being his opponent instead. Joy. Although Siu uses his Gemini move, apparently Peter can create the impression of there being three balls to throw off the opponent even more, and some of those end up hitting him.
- My memory of the order things happen in here is kind of foggy, but the gang eventually comes across another pair of Clack guys looking for a match, and Sanada and Kirihara stay behind to deal with them. The gimmick this time is some sort of fancy latticed gate being between them and their opponents, and having to hit the ball through it to play. How they came up with that, I have no idea. Following that, Atobe stays behind to fight some ninja guy who ricochets balls off the walls in a ‘real tennis’ court, and Tezuka and Shiraishi go on and come across the final two opponents.
- Even though he’s beaten up and all, Siu eventually hits back at Peter by using the same technique with five balls instead of three, causing him to freak out. Keith gets fed up with watching and decides to take him on himself. Siu seems to be too injured, though, so Ryoma steps up in his place, using Siu’s racket.
- After some initial start-of-match stuff, Keith starts going all-out on Ryoma, using some sort of giant glowing blue Hadouken move which throws him back. Although he eventually manages to return it somehow, he then moves on to hitting it into the roof and reflecting it back down onto him, which somehow makes it stronger. I missed what the move was called, but for some reason everyone in the theatre found it really funny.
EDIT: It’s called Banyuuinryoku, or Gravitation (as in, the law of universal gravitation, not the manga). Figures.
- Somewhere in all this the reason Keith turned into a jerk comes up: apparently they used to play doubles together, and it was all happy and stuff until one of their opponents started hitting Siu repeatedly with a tennis ball when they were winning against him. This ticked Keith off, so he pulled a Krauser in a moment of anger and Hadouken’d the guy into the fence.
- For some reason, he was brought before the officials for this whilst the other guy wasn’t (lots of normal tennis balls are fine, but a single Hadouken isn’t, apparently), and wasn’t allowed into any tennis establishments from that point on. This eventually really got to him, until eventually it just felt like he was sinking (which explains the random shots that have appeared so far of him floating shirtless surrounded by water), and at some point he ended up letting himself fall into the Thames, with Siu jumping after him. That seems to be a recurring theme here. (I still don’t advise submerging yourself in that river if you value your life). In any case, he ended up forming the tennis mafia, and that’s how he got where he is.
- There are some cuts back to show how everyone else is doing. Fuji and Kite are fighting on (with Dragonfly Illusion and Big Bang respectively), Sanada’s ignoring the whole ‘hit the ball through the gate’ thing and is instead repeatedly smashing it into the gate (and not letting Kirihara intervene), Atobe’s just… standing there surrounded by ricocheting balls (the trajectory’s apparently hard to figure out), and Shiraishi’s predictions are being thrown off for some reason, much to his chagrin.
‘It’s in. … It’ll be in this time. It’ll definitely be in this time! … D=’
Yeah.
- Stuff starts to get better for them, though. Fuji and Kite do their doubles thing (are you hitting on Kite, Fuji…), Sanada’s actually been doing what he wanted to all along and has managed to Rai down the gate in their way (leaving a Devil Mode Kirihara to take care of them), Atobe does… something to make the ricocheting balls stop ricocheting (he hits one and they all fall down), and manages to use World of Ice against the guy, and Shiraishi’s figured out that the reason his predictions were off was due to the court being a moving hologram (cheap trick there). Tezuka then uses Tezuka Zone, and they’re beaten.
- Back to the final battle, after more super ceiling Hadouken stuff, the ceiling’s finally had enough and starts to fall apart. (Somewhere in all this, Ryoma switches his racket from his right hand to his left, but I can’t remember exactly where that was). The chandelier (a disaster waiting to happen, as ever) is about to fall on Ryoma, but everyone else shows up and hits enough tennis balls at it so that it misses him. They then all stay around to watch as things go on.
- At some point, which I can’t really remember, Siu mentions why he left Clack. He also used to go along with randomly hitting people with balls in matches, as the tennis mafia does, until he caught sight of one of the people he had beaten up unable to play tennis anymore due to his injuries. He then felt regret for what he had done, and ultimately ended up leaving, especially when Keith started becoming the way he is currently.
- With all that explained, anyway, the final battle goes on. Keith also switches the hand he’s using his racket with, proving that more people are ambidextrous than you expect. They go on with their Hadouken exchange (Ryoma having copied it off him), and Keith eventually ends up seeing Siu in Ryoma’s place, down to getting a split imagine spot of Siu and Ryoma coming for him in that watery symbolic place to fish him out. Eventually, Ryoma somehow upgrades from a Hadouken to a shooting star Genkidama, and Siu runs in front of Keith before it hits and stuff blows up.
- When all the debris and stuff has cleared, there’s a giant hole in the wall. Keith and Siu have ended up in the hole, with Siu having blocked the Genkidama tennis ball from hitting him. There are some nice words, Keith seems to be back to his old self, having remembered the tennis he used to play, and the sun has risen in the meantime. Peter’s also ended up over there with them too, randomly wrapped around Keith (I don’t know, either. I think he tried to shield him, too), and they’re all happy. Peter isn’t a giggling maniac anymore, anyway.
- The other guys are also happy that their bond seems to have been restored. Fuji (I think) says that they also have a bond between them, and they have their own warm fuzzy moment. Momoshiro, Yukimura, and Oshitari then turn up in a helicopter to get them out of there.
- Cue the credits and the theme song for the movie. They finally get down to the tournament/training stuff they were meant to be doing there, and we get some still shots (some of them individual) of them playing matches and all. Some people were there who didn’t really appear in the movie, like Taki, but the rest had mostly appeared at some point. Chitose and Zaizen, Jackal and Marui, Yanagi, and Hiyoshi all appeared, I think. More nice combinations were Inui and Kaidou, Niou and Yagyuu, and Gakuto and Oshitari. Higa are also shown rowing off, presumably off on some epic adventure or other again (that, or they’re finally going back to Okinawa).
- The Stinger for the movie after the credits was just Keith and Siu standing on a bridge together, and they share an around-the-shoulders bro hug. Cue a lot of people on pixiv shipping them. It’s a Good End for all.
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Impressions? Overall, I thought it was a fun movie. It wasn’t all that serious, but it’s a Tenipuri movie, so it would probably have been wrong to expect it to be serious anyway. There were both crack and nice moments, regardless (but mostly crack, although no-one was flying around and killing dinosaurs this time), and the original characters were fun enough. Given all their background together, it felt a bit ‘eh’ for Ryoma to be the one to fight Keith in the end, but again, it’s Tenipuri, so I shouldn’t have expected anything else.
I was glad Higa all showed up, even though only Kite and Rin spoke (and only Kite played any significant role). I think they were mostly there for the crack, ha. Seeing Sanada and Kirihara form a combi together was nice, too, even though they didn’t really play doubles.
Some people had more focus than others, and the tennis makes about as much sense as usual, but the latter at least shouldn't detract from anything if you don't try to take it seriously. (I think they did try to include at least shots of others, even if they didn't speak). In short, if you like the general sort of crack Tenipuri tends to put forward, then it should be a fun watch.
And, that's... more or less it. Now there's just debating whether to get it when it comes out on DVD or not. |D;
I might have gotten some of the events out of order, and it isn't all that coherent or detailed overall (and pretty text-heavy), but maybe it'll still be useful to someone.
That said, here's the summary:
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- The film opens with a guy running from some tennis mafia group in London at night, in the rain. All of them are wearing silver rings on their hands. After getting hit by one of their balls (tennis naturally being the go-to form of violence here), he’s cornered next to a river (which may or may not be the Thames). There’s some altercation, and then the guy throws himself into the river to escape. Sure hope that wasn’t the Thames, for his sake.
- It then moves on to Seigaku arriving in London/going to the Wimbledon stadium the next day. The Thames looks oddly clean in the shot they show of it. Don’t believe it.
- Momoshiro fanboys a bit, and then they start talking about the tournament they were here to do. They’re interrupted by Hyotei, who are interrupted by Shitenhouji, who are interrupted by Rikkai. There’s a montage of them playing matches and training and stuff (Oishi and Kikumaru VS Gakuto and Hiyoshi, Yanagi and Yagyuu VS Chitose and Kenya, Niou VS Kintarou with Ryoma’s appearance, and Ryoma VS Atobe), and everything’s all happy for the time being.
- In the evening, Shiraishi’s on a walk, Tezuka’s practicing his swings, Kirihara’s hitting balls against a wall, Momoshiro and Ryoma are playing a match, and Chotarou and Shishido are in a gym. Shiraishi notices that a load of the players they saw earlier have been knocked out on the courts. Suddenly, the tennis mafia ninjas all appear and start attacking everyone, because that’s what the tennis mafia do.
- Although they don’t do too badly against them at first, things soon get worse, as they do. Shishido valiantly sacrifices himself for Chotarou, Kirihara gets a tennis ball to the face, and they start to chase Shiraishi. He and Tezuka join forces to take them down, as do Momoshiro and Ryoma.
- Despite this, Momoshiro also gets knocked out by a ball hit by the leader of the tennis mafia. He’s about to hit Ryoma too, but the guy who leapt in the Thames earlier turns up, miraculously still alive after that, and hits the ball back. There’s some more stuff between them (apparently he’s a traitor to the tennis mafia), and the altercation eventually results in a blue glowing light for reasons I can’t really remember. Some stuff about ‘real tennis’ is mentioned, and the tennis mafia eventually leaves after everyone else turns up.
- The next day, we see that Shishido seems to be fine, Momoshiro is fine but asleep, and that Kirihara’s apparently more afraid of what Sanada and Yukimura will think than his injuries (he’s kowtowing and apologizing to them instead). Everyone else is discussing who the tennis mafia is and why they would do something like this. Tezuka still has a ball they hit at him from before, and it’s noted that it’s the sort of ball used back in the game that served as the roots of modern tennis (i.e. made of cork, different size, etc.).
- Suddenly, the guy who jumped in the Thames appears. Kaidou, who notices that he’s wearing the same ring, gets angry due to what happened to Momoshiro, but Ryoma stops him by saying that he helped him last night. Kaidou wants to go after the tennis mafia, but Thames guy insists that they won’t be able to do anything. Kaidou doesn’t drop it, though, and he eventually agrees to play a match with him.
- Unfortunately, Kaidou can’t seem to hit the ball in-bounds. Inui figures that it’s because Thames guy’s throwing off the timing of his return by means of a phantom ball hitting the racket first, which Thames guy calls Gemini. (Apparently he’s using ‘ki’ or something). Ryoma then wants to play, and ends up being able to return it. Thames guy eventually stops when he sees the leader of the tennis mafia in Ryoma’s place when he serves.
- Before he leaves, though, he introduces himself as Siu (that’s the romanisation in the pamphlet, but I don’t know), and provides some exposition on the tennis mafia. Apparently they’re called Clack (according to the pamphlet, again, although ‘Crack’ is also appropriately possible), and are a street tennis group who go around attacking players. It looks like they’re made up of people who’ve been thrown out of tennis places or the like. The leader is called Keith, and apparently they’re based in a castle called ‘King of Kingdom’. They must be rich. Atobe also apparently stayed in the castle at one point, or it belongs to him, which explains the name.
- In any case, Siu insists that he’s the one to take them down, rejecting the surprisingly sensible option that Oishi brings up of calling the police and letting them handle it (he says that they can do that if he doesn’t come back the next day). Ryoma says that it’s not their problem, and Siu goes off.
- In the evening, Siu goes on a speedboat and makes to head for the castle, but Ryoma hijacks things at the last second and jumps on with him. People notice that he’s missing, and despite Tezuka seeming to go with inaction, he goes off to look for Ryoma himself. He’s stopped by Atobe, who apparently has some sort of jetski thing ready to go. Fuji and Oishi interrupt them, as do Sanada, Kirihara, and Shiraishi. Naturally, though, they all can’t fit on the one jetski, which is only for two people.
- Cue Higa, suddenly, in a speedboat. Apparently they’ve been going on epic adventures everywhere, which involved a lot of training and going to rescue a princess from a dragon (or that was the general drift of it, anyway; Kite got a bit carried away with the description). They’re now working for a boat rental company to save up for getting back to Okinawa. This solves the number problem, though, and Atobe apparently has the credit card to pay for the speedboat, so Fuji, Sanada, Kirihara, and Shiraishi end up in the speedboat with Kite, leaving the rest of Higa and Oishi at the docks as they go off with Atobe. Are 14 year olds allowed to drive speedboats, Kite?
- In the meantime, Ryoma and Siu are still going on in their speedboat ahead. Ryoma brings up that Siu was injured from the night before, when he was being chased by Clack. As it turns out, the Clack guys are all inside, including Keith (training separated from the others by bars) and a short giggling maniac with purple hair called Peter, who’s appeared earlier but who I’ve neglected to mention until now. Peter takes a phone call, and tells Keith that Siu’s coming.
- Back with Siu and Ryoma, Siu has a happy sunny flashback to him and Keith playing doubles together somewhere. They arrive at the very large castle (I guess they afford the upkeep of that castle by virtue of being tennis mafia, or the like), Keith tells the others to let Ryoma and Siu in, and the drawbridge goes down. Ryoma notices a white horse randomly chilling in the castle which will be of use later. Meanwhile, Atobe sneezes when Ryoma mentions that the place has bad taste. Okay.
- After they go in, the other guys all get there too. The drawbridge starts to go up, so everyone leaps across- except Kite, who’s apparently done all that the fare covered. This turns out not to be the case after they go, though, as one of the Clack guys pops up from wherever he was hiding and challenges him to a match on a sand court. It seems that there’s some sort of gimmick to every court they challenge them on, but that’ll appear later. It seems like he stayed behind to cover their retreat. Back with the others, Fuji somehow senses that something’s wrong, and runs back.
- In any case, the Clack guy tries to do a drop shot on him, but Kite Shukuchihou’s over to the net and hits it back at him. He has a brief moment of triumph in Okinawan (he’s fine with a sand court due to coming from Okinawa), but then some other guy appears behind him (apparently it’s doubles time now), and the two start aiming balls at him, some of which end up hitting him. Suddenly, Fuji shows up on the white horse from earlier to form the required doubles team with him, and the two have a Back To Back Badasses moment.
- Ryoma and Siu eventually come across the place Keith and Peter are, with Keith on some sort of throne-seat thing. Siu wants to challenge Keith, but Peter the giggling maniac ends up being his opponent instead. Joy. Although Siu uses his Gemini move, apparently Peter can create the impression of there being three balls to throw off the opponent even more, and some of those end up hitting him.
- My memory of the order things happen in here is kind of foggy, but the gang eventually comes across another pair of Clack guys looking for a match, and Sanada and Kirihara stay behind to deal with them. The gimmick this time is some sort of fancy latticed gate being between them and their opponents, and having to hit the ball through it to play. How they came up with that, I have no idea. Following that, Atobe stays behind to fight some ninja guy who ricochets balls off the walls in a ‘real tennis’ court, and Tezuka and Shiraishi go on and come across the final two opponents.
- Even though he’s beaten up and all, Siu eventually hits back at Peter by using the same technique with five balls instead of three, causing him to freak out. Keith gets fed up with watching and decides to take him on himself. Siu seems to be too injured, though, so Ryoma steps up in his place, using Siu’s racket.
- After some initial start-of-match stuff, Keith starts going all-out on Ryoma, using some sort of giant glowing blue Hadouken move which throws him back. Although he eventually manages to return it somehow, he then moves on to hitting it into the roof and reflecting it back down onto him, which somehow makes it stronger. I missed what the move was called, but for some reason everyone in the theatre found it really funny.
EDIT: It’s called Banyuuinryoku, or Gravitation (as in, the law of universal gravitation, not the manga). Figures.
- Somewhere in all this the reason Keith turned into a jerk comes up: apparently they used to play doubles together, and it was all happy and stuff until one of their opponents started hitting Siu repeatedly with a tennis ball when they were winning against him. This ticked Keith off, so he pulled a Krauser in a moment of anger and Hadouken’d the guy into the fence.
- For some reason, he was brought before the officials for this whilst the other guy wasn’t (lots of normal tennis balls are fine, but a single Hadouken isn’t, apparently), and wasn’t allowed into any tennis establishments from that point on. This eventually really got to him, until eventually it just felt like he was sinking (which explains the random shots that have appeared so far of him floating shirtless surrounded by water), and at some point he ended up letting himself fall into the Thames, with Siu jumping after him. That seems to be a recurring theme here. (I still don’t advise submerging yourself in that river if you value your life). In any case, he ended up forming the tennis mafia, and that’s how he got where he is.
- There are some cuts back to show how everyone else is doing. Fuji and Kite are fighting on (with Dragonfly Illusion and Big Bang respectively), Sanada’s ignoring the whole ‘hit the ball through the gate’ thing and is instead repeatedly smashing it into the gate (and not letting Kirihara intervene), Atobe’s just… standing there surrounded by ricocheting balls (the trajectory’s apparently hard to figure out), and Shiraishi’s predictions are being thrown off for some reason, much to his chagrin.
‘It’s in. … It’ll be in this time. It’ll definitely be in this time! … D=’
Yeah.
- Stuff starts to get better for them, though. Fuji and Kite do their doubles thing (are you hitting on Kite, Fuji…), Sanada’s actually been doing what he wanted to all along and has managed to Rai down the gate in their way (leaving a Devil Mode Kirihara to take care of them), Atobe does… something to make the ricocheting balls stop ricocheting (he hits one and they all fall down), and manages to use World of Ice against the guy, and Shiraishi’s figured out that the reason his predictions were off was due to the court being a moving hologram (cheap trick there). Tezuka then uses Tezuka Zone, and they’re beaten.
- Back to the final battle, after more super ceiling Hadouken stuff, the ceiling’s finally had enough and starts to fall apart. (Somewhere in all this, Ryoma switches his racket from his right hand to his left, but I can’t remember exactly where that was). The chandelier (a disaster waiting to happen, as ever) is about to fall on Ryoma, but everyone else shows up and hits enough tennis balls at it so that it misses him. They then all stay around to watch as things go on.
- At some point, which I can’t really remember, Siu mentions why he left Clack. He also used to go along with randomly hitting people with balls in matches, as the tennis mafia does, until he caught sight of one of the people he had beaten up unable to play tennis anymore due to his injuries. He then felt regret for what he had done, and ultimately ended up leaving, especially when Keith started becoming the way he is currently.
- With all that explained, anyway, the final battle goes on. Keith also switches the hand he’s using his racket with, proving that more people are ambidextrous than you expect. They go on with their Hadouken exchange (Ryoma having copied it off him), and Keith eventually ends up seeing Siu in Ryoma’s place, down to getting a split imagine spot of Siu and Ryoma coming for him in that watery symbolic place to fish him out. Eventually, Ryoma somehow upgrades from a Hadouken to a shooting star Genkidama, and Siu runs in front of Keith before it hits and stuff blows up.
- When all the debris and stuff has cleared, there’s a giant hole in the wall. Keith and Siu have ended up in the hole, with Siu having blocked the Genkidama tennis ball from hitting him. There are some nice words, Keith seems to be back to his old self, having remembered the tennis he used to play, and the sun has risen in the meantime. Peter’s also ended up over there with them too, randomly wrapped around Keith (I don’t know, either. I think he tried to shield him, too), and they’re all happy. Peter isn’t a giggling maniac anymore, anyway.
- The other guys are also happy that their bond seems to have been restored. Fuji (I think) says that they also have a bond between them, and they have their own warm fuzzy moment. Momoshiro, Yukimura, and Oshitari then turn up in a helicopter to get them out of there.
- Cue the credits and the theme song for the movie. They finally get down to the tournament/training stuff they were meant to be doing there, and we get some still shots (some of them individual) of them playing matches and all. Some people were there who didn’t really appear in the movie, like Taki, but the rest had mostly appeared at some point. Chitose and Zaizen, Jackal and Marui, Yanagi, and Hiyoshi all appeared, I think. More nice combinations were Inui and Kaidou, Niou and Yagyuu, and Gakuto and Oshitari. Higa are also shown rowing off, presumably off on some epic adventure or other again (that, or they’re finally going back to Okinawa).
- The Stinger for the movie after the credits was just Keith and Siu standing on a bridge together, and they share an around-the-shoulders bro hug. Cue a lot of people on pixiv shipping them. It’s a Good End for all.
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Impressions? Overall, I thought it was a fun movie. It wasn’t all that serious, but it’s a Tenipuri movie, so it would probably have been wrong to expect it to be serious anyway. There were both crack and nice moments, regardless (but mostly crack, although no-one was flying around and killing dinosaurs this time), and the original characters were fun enough. Given all their background together, it felt a bit ‘eh’ for Ryoma to be the one to fight Keith in the end, but again, it’s Tenipuri, so I shouldn’t have expected anything else.
I was glad Higa all showed up, even though only Kite and Rin spoke (and only Kite played any significant role). I think they were mostly there for the crack, ha. Seeing Sanada and Kirihara form a combi together was nice, too, even though they didn’t really play doubles.
Some people had more focus than others, and the tennis makes about as much sense as usual, but the latter at least shouldn't detract from anything if you don't try to take it seriously. (I think they did try to include at least shots of others, even if they didn't speak). In short, if you like the general sort of crack Tenipuri tends to put forward, then it should be a fun watch.
And, that's... more or less it. Now there's just debating whether to get it when it comes out on DVD or not. |D;