All the Difference - Chapter Four
All the Difference
Sorry for the delay!
Chapter Summary: Makeshift doubles! Well, for Fuji at least. Who will be his opponents...and who will be his partner?
Chapter Four: Doubles
Chapter Four Author's Notes:
~Delay - These boys did not want to play tennis. I was able to work up my outline pretty quickly once I finished my research on doubles play, but when it came to flesh out the chapter my mind kept wandering to anything but the doubles portion of this chapter. Then, when I finally hit a stride, the boys suddenly decided that they wanted to be chatty and I had to rearrange a chunk of my outline. I'd like to say that it was Nioh's fault because he really is a troublesome trickster, but it was more like Yanagi and Yagyu were the problem children.
~Priorities - When I first sat down to do my free write for this chapter, I got stuck thinking about two events that will happen in later chapters. It was so bad that I opened up my notes for those events (each chapter has its own file) and just wrote until I wrung out all the ideas that were plaguing me. The first was the flow, motivation and tone for the final round of the Nationals tournament, which I finally nailed down. There were three matches I wanted to have in the final round, but it was physically impossible for two of them to exist on the same roster. I was really disappointed about cutting the third match, but to have it alongside some of the other matches was unrealistic. It's too soon to think about, but I may consider writing an alternate ending or two just to see how things could have gone. The other chapter I worked on is still a ways off, but it's a lot closer than the ending. I got to play with two characters for the first time, which was fun, but I hope they're a little easier to control when I flesh those events out.
~Yukimura's illness - I don't think I've mentioned it in these notes yet, but I had a lengthy debate with myself during my initial outline about what disease Yukimura was actually suffering from. Strictly following the manga, the answer is Guillain-Barre syndrome. However, Konomi-sensei formally acknowledged in a later chapter of the manga that he had incorrectly named the disease because the combination of symptoms, treatment and recovery time he described didn't match Guillain-Barre syndrome. There's a very interesting discussion about what someone suffering from Guillain-Barre syndrome would go through here. In the comments that follow, a strong argument is made that the autoimmune disease Myasthenia Gravis ties together all of the symptoms and treatment Yukimura receives. It's a really interesting conversation, and I recommend anyone interested in medicine to check it out.
I haven't decided if I'm going to keep the references vague or eventually name drop Myasthenia Gravis, but I'll be basing my research for future chapters on that condition more than any other in case anyone is wondering what's going on with Yukimura.
~Pairings - Back in chapter one, I foreshadowed that Yanagi was going to take part in the doubles match. The paper he handed to Yukimura at the end of the previous chapter described his strategy for the match, including his suggestions for who else should participate. The other participants of the match were pretty much always Nioh and Yagyu, even back at the earliest drafts of the outline. It's not that I don't like Marui and Jackal - I think Jackal's a saint for putting up with teammates (since he seems to be relatively normal by comparison) and I might be able to give Jiroh a run for his money when it comes to spazzing over Marui. Despite the love, I just never felt like they were the right people to put into this match.
Once I had the four players, the question became how to arrange them. I think the very first version was Yanagi/Fuji vs. Yagyu/Nioh, but I nixed that because I thought Yanagi would want to be collecting data on Fuji's play style in a doubles context without trying to work with it at the same time. I also considered Nioh/Fuji vs. Yagyu/Yanagi. Nioh and Fuji will be doubles partners before this story is over, but I decided to save that for an actual match. I even considered having the game set up as Nioh-as-Yagyu/Fuji vs. Yagyu-as-Nioh/Yanagi, but I eventually decided that the switch is too awesome to use this early in the story. It will show up, just not right now. That left me with Yagyu as Fuji's partner, hence the reason they got to chat at the start of last chapter. (From my perspective. In the story, Sanada made Yagyu warm up with Fuji because he didn't want Akaya to try and start the match early.)
~Playing styles - The conversation about the different playing styles everyone uses is pulled from information in the manga/fanbooks. Some of it was pretty insightful about the characters - like Nioh being an all-rounder. That's kind of necessary if you're gong to mimic different playing styles, isn't it? Others were surprising, like Fuji and Yanagi having the same style. I would have expected Inui and Yanagi to share a style, but Inui is described as a serve-and-volleyer instead of a counter-puncher. Maybe there's something about that which explains why Yanagi says he thought Sadaharu was more suited to be a singles player?
Although I did find a contradiction in the "data" for Yagyu - in chapter 204 of the manga, I found a translation of a page in Inui's notebook that describes Yagyu as a "baseline player; aims for the corners with his passing shots" while a later fanbook that I was using describes him as a serve-and-volley player. Since I had already relied on serve-and-volley by the time I found the contradictory data, that's what Yagyu stayed as, even though I think Inui's data is a better fit for what we see of Yagyu's tennis.
~Fuji's right-left dash - According to Inui in manga chapter 18, this was the skill that Fuji needed the most improvement with. That's the reason it's one of the first deficiencies in Fuji's playing style that Yanagi picks up on.
~Nioh's handling of Fuji's serve-and-volley returns - The best defense against a serve-and-volley is either a low return or a lob return. From the match against Jiroh in canon, we know that Fuji is pretty excellent at making low returns. Only a superb volleyer, such as Jiroh and probably Marui, would be able to return those easily. Since Kabaji couldn't copy Jiroh's "magic wrists" in Shin Prince of Tennis, I think Nioh would have an equally difficult time relying on a copy of Marui's style to easily beat it. Fuji has a tough time responding when Yanagi uses the same strategy against him for the same reason.
~Akaya's mid-game whine - This is pretty much me breaking the 4th wall, except it's still kind of in character for Akaya to complain about just watching a doubles match. It took me forever to get that far into the game, and I wasn't even very happy with how it read. I also realized that the characters were being very quiet and not conversing with each other at all. I hope that sudden conversation didn't feel too contrived.
~"Twelve points tiebreak" - This is what the series announces before a tiebreak begins, but according to official rules I think it's supposed to be "seven points tiebreak" because you have to get seven points in order to win. I went with what was in the series in case it's a regional difference.
~The match's outcome - Fuji is the main character of this story, but it is not my intention to write a story where he is magically the best tennis player in Japan. He isn't. I was a little leery about having the Yagyu/Fuji pair walk away as the victors. My out-of-story excuse is that Yanagi wasn't trying to win the match. He was testing Fuji's reactions to different stimuli, which is another reason why having Nioh be his partner worked well. The Trickster's skills would come in handy for provoking different reactions. I don't think I utilized them as well as I could have, but that was because it was a challenge to get any of the players to, well, play tennis.
And, of course, because the game had to go a tiebreak, I couldn't cheat and shorten the game when I ran into trouble with writer's block.
~Anime vs. Manga - The following really has no bearing on the chapter, but it just wrote itself during one of the periods when I couldn't seem to write something that belonged in the chapter. (Have I mentioned that this chapter really didn't want to be written?) I understand why the anime is so radically different than the manga after Seigaku plays Hyotei in the Kanto tournament arc, but that doesn't mean I like it. I don't want to come off as a manga snob, but I pretty much hate what they did to the matches between Seigaku and Rikkai in the anime. Marui and Jackal are supposed to crush Momo and Kaidoh, which not only sets the tone of how strong Rikkai is but gives Momo and Kaidoh the push they need to become the strong doubles team that eventually stands toe-to-toe with Shitenhoji in the national semifinals.
Yagyu's character is twisted so badly in the anime and the Golden Pair fall apart instead of showing just how strong they can work together. They also cut out the switch which, as long as you ignore the realism of such a switch being undetectable, is a pretty darn cool psychological attack. And where's Laser Beam?! (I was going to rewatch those episodes to prep for this chapter at one point, but I didn't want to waste the time it would take to scrub it from my mind again.)
The anime version of Inui and Yanagi's match isn't too offensive...it's the closest to the manga version, but I guess there's not much you can change when data tennis is involved. Yay for the stability of math!
Fuji and Kirihara...if it wasn't for the commentary of Yumiko, Yuuta, and Mizuki, that match would not exist in my mind. Hurting Fuji's knee does not allow Fuji to have the revelations about his potential that he has in the manga when he goes temporarily blind, and Kirihara becomes a timid little kid instead of achieving Muga no Kyouchi and surpassing his limits. It takes perverse skill to retard the character development of two of my favorite characters in one swoop.
I find the Echizen vs. Sanada match even more abhorrent. Echizen wins by playing tennis with his eyes closed (hello? that was supposed to be in Fuji's match, animators) and that Coconut Cyclone (or whatever its name is) instead of the Cool Drive and...actually, I don't remember what else happens in that match because it is dead to me. Bottom line - when in doubt, I rely on the manga and musicals (which follow the manga very closely) and ignore the anime.
~"Weak grip" follow-up - I was rewatching some of the adlib portions of various Tenimyu musicals as I was doing my doubles research and think I found the answer to what move Kirihara was attempting when the racket slipped. For the Higa Myu, Yagyu and Kaidoh perform a bunch of different adlibs when they're critiquing each other about their signature moves. For one of the performances, they each simulate going into Muga - combining the other player's signature move with a whole bunch of others. Yagyu (if I recall correctly) finishes his series by twisting in the air and yelling "Ground Sma..." and dropping his racket, parodying the end of Kirihara's match. I guess this means, according to the musicals, Kirihara was doing Sanada's ground smash when the racket flew away.
I'm not really satisfied with this answer. Kirihara successfully performs a ground smash once (twice even?) - it's the move that breaks the gut on Fuji's racket. Unless the implication is that Akaya was using a regular ground smash and then attempted a special Sanada version of the ground smash, there's no good reason for him not to be able to use it again.
Also, Fuu is described as looking like the player is drawing a sword. Since the racket should have flipped the opposite direction if that was the movement he was using, it probably isn't the right move either. Unless someone can make an argument otherwise, in my head Kirihara was attempting Ka when he dropped his racket - it's an explosive move that arguably requires a strong grip moving downward from an overhead swing.
~Bonus chapter! - See the previous post for the "cut" scene. It...yeah, it's self-explanatory. And no, it's not really part of the story. It might be funny anyway. I hope.
~Timing for next update - I've got a fairly good idea of what's going to happen next chapter, so I should be able to jump straight into writing. How quick I get it out will depend on how cooperative my Sanada muse is.
Next chapter: With the Master's approval in hand, the only obstacle remaining in Fuji's path is the Emperor. What must Fuji do to earn the recognition of the final member of the Rikkai Big Three?