Tokyo DOGS was the last drama that I watched and blogged about. Since then I have not watched any other J-dramas. I watched a few (less than 5 titles) web series in Youtube but I was procrastinating and ended up never wrote about them. Now that life has been kinder to me, I finally have the time to watch and write. Never I imagine I would be watching and writing about Chinese drama as usually I avoid them. However since I love the Prince of Tennis (hint: it is the third anime icons I put in the sidebar of this blog page), I cannot overlook this. I know there is a Chinese live action version previously in 2008-2009 but until now I give up on finding a good quality to watch. The 2019 version is airing in Netflix so I can find a streamed version with crisp image and perfect subtitle. Thanks Netflix!
I am not exactly sure of the actual title of the series. For me, 'The Prince of Tennis Chinese Drama 2019' seems to be the clearest. Netflix calls it 'The Prince of Tennis ~Match! Tennis Juniors~' which is not an exact translation of the Chinese title. The Chinese title seems to be '奋斗吧,少年' (Fen Dou Ba Shao Nian) but I also find promotional pictures with '网球少年' (Wang Qiu Shao Nian) as the title.
It has been more than a decade since I watched the anime and read the manga so I cannot really remember the details of the story in the manga or anime, especially since this drama is based on the early part of the series. What makes PoT special are the characters and their special moves. These are not easily forgettable. This Chinese drama is superb with the visual. I did not check what Chinese names correspond to which Japanese names but from the uniforms and the actors, I am able to roughly remember who they correspond too. I am still amazed that they can find real people whose look resemble the anime characters, which are imaginary. Of course not 100% of the actors can really look like the anime character designs but I would say there are quite a lot whose physical appearance resemble their corresponding cartoon characters.
The drama is quite faithful to the original manga. I would say it is 70-80% according to the manga. They did a good job by not changing anything about the characters and their skills. Most of the changes are mostly about changing orders and still taking the elements from the original manga. For example, in the drama Yu Qing (Seigaku) battles No 6 High School (Rokakku) before Xing Yao (Hyotei). In the original, the order is Hyotei first. The Ichinen trio is replaced with one classmate of Lu Xia (Ryoma) and 2 sophomores but eventually it is still 3 'commentators' of each match. One of these sophomores, Huang Jing, is actually based on Arai in the original.
Unfortunately, things which deviate from the original story are the weak links. This is where I think it is obvious that the writers suck. Halfway through the series, a few episodes suddenly become very draggy and boring. Golden Pair's argument is dragged until so many episodes that it makes both Da Yong (Oishi) and Jia Le (Eiji) very petty which are not their anime/manga personalities. Si Yang (Tezuka) leaves the team twice for his arm injury and the team simply fall apart. It is understandable to happen once. But for that to happen twice consecutively is just lame. The biggest fail is how things feel so forced for Lu Xia (Ryoma) to find a better reason to play tennis. It feels so naggy and draggy. So please la, just follow the original materials instead of trying to make changes and end up making things bad.
As a sports drama, the matches are so bad as they do not invoke any adrenaline rush. It is okay for the special moves to be animated because after all we know they are not realistic. However, it is quite disappointing that most of the matches are fake. It is obvious that the actors were just hitting air and the balls were added digitally. I mean it is okay to do that but at least for a bit of realism, there should be some with actual balls. It is so obvious from their muscle tension when they are hitting air and it is so fake when they are supposedly struggling to hit a powerful ball but the facial expression and the arms do not show the struggle. Another thing that bothers me the most is the sweat. During few dramatic moments, when they show the characters are tired or struggling, the sweat is so exaggerated. During the non-dramatic moments, even after a long rally or after the game is running for quite some time until the middle of the match, the characters do not sweat at all despite the sun.
The opening song is sung by the cast which is a nice homage to the anime which has many of the theme songs sung by the seiyuus. Somehow I find the ending song quite familiar and after searching a bit more about it, it is sung by Hu Xia who also sings Na Xie Nian, the theme song of the Taiwanese drama You are the Apple of My Eye. No wonder the voice is so familiar as that song is one the few Mandarin songs in my Youtube lists.
One interesting fact to mention is that Li Na (perhaps the most successful Chinese tennis athlete in real life) also appears as cameo here. It is revealed in the last episode that she plays as herself when Lu Xia (Ryoma) was introduced to her.
Anyway it is good to see this drama has pretty good reviews. I personally think it is so so and that partly because I am a PoT fan. If I am not a fan, I think this is less than so so. The ending hints about National Tournament and I hope they will make season 2. Even so, I don't think I will re-watch this series as it is actually pretty boring as a drama. Lol. Having said that, I actually completed 40 episodes x 45 minutes each in 8 days so it is not really super boring la.
Watching this drama is bittersweet for me as I am brought back to my younger days more than a decade ago when PoT is really a big thing. I remember that I hate to read manga online but PoT was an exception because I could not wait to read the closure of the National Tournament. I also had GBA emulators and bought joystick for my laptop to play PoT games but I never really got into the non-GBA games. Sigh.. sad facts of working life. I also collect the CD singles and albums and now I need to dig which portable hard disk they are at as they are not transferred to my current laptop. Perhaps it is also time to check out if I can find the various OVAs and movies that I have not watched. After almost a decade since their releases, they should be more available online.
I am not exactly sure of the actual title of the series. For me, 'The Prince of Tennis Chinese Drama 2019' seems to be the clearest. Netflix calls it 'The Prince of Tennis ~Match! Tennis Juniors~' which is not an exact translation of the Chinese title. The Chinese title seems to be '奋斗吧,少年' (Fen Dou Ba Shao Nian) but I also find promotional pictures with '网球少年' (Wang Qiu Shao Nian) as the title.
The drama is quite faithful to the original manga. I would say it is 70-80% according to the manga. They did a good job by not changing anything about the characters and their skills. Most of the changes are mostly about changing orders and still taking the elements from the original manga. For example, in the drama Yu Qing (Seigaku) battles No 6 High School (Rokakku) before Xing Yao (Hyotei). In the original, the order is Hyotei first. The Ichinen trio is replaced with one classmate of Lu Xia (Ryoma) and 2 sophomores but eventually it is still 3 'commentators' of each match. One of these sophomores, Huang Jing, is actually based on Arai in the original.
Unfortunately, things which deviate from the original story are the weak links. This is where I think it is obvious that the writers suck. Halfway through the series, a few episodes suddenly become very draggy and boring. Golden Pair's argument is dragged until so many episodes that it makes both Da Yong (Oishi) and Jia Le (Eiji) very petty which are not their anime/manga personalities. Si Yang (Tezuka) leaves the team twice for his arm injury and the team simply fall apart. It is understandable to happen once. But for that to happen twice consecutively is just lame. The biggest fail is how things feel so forced for Lu Xia (Ryoma) to find a better reason to play tennis. It feels so naggy and draggy. So please la, just follow the original materials instead of trying to make changes and end up making things bad.
As a sports drama, the matches are so bad as they do not invoke any adrenaline rush. It is okay for the special moves to be animated because after all we know they are not realistic. However, it is quite disappointing that most of the matches are fake. It is obvious that the actors were just hitting air and the balls were added digitally. I mean it is okay to do that but at least for a bit of realism, there should be some with actual balls. It is so obvious from their muscle tension when they are hitting air and it is so fake when they are supposedly struggling to hit a powerful ball but the facial expression and the arms do not show the struggle. Another thing that bothers me the most is the sweat. During few dramatic moments, when they show the characters are tired or struggling, the sweat is so exaggerated. During the non-dramatic moments, even after a long rally or after the game is running for quite some time until the middle of the match, the characters do not sweat at all despite the sun.
The opening song is sung by the cast which is a nice homage to the anime which has many of the theme songs sung by the seiyuus. Somehow I find the ending song quite familiar and after searching a bit more about it, it is sung by Hu Xia who also sings Na Xie Nian, the theme song of the Taiwanese drama You are the Apple of My Eye. No wonder the voice is so familiar as that song is one the few Mandarin songs in my Youtube lists.
The opening song. I cannot read the title (正少年) except for the last two words are Shao Nian.
One interesting fact to mention is that Li Na (perhaps the most successful Chinese tennis athlete in real life) also appears as cameo here. It is revealed in the last episode that she plays as herself when Lu Xia (Ryoma) was introduced to her.
Anyway it is good to see this drama has pretty good reviews. I personally think it is so so and that partly because I am a PoT fan. If I am not a fan, I think this is less than so so. The ending hints about National Tournament and I hope they will make season 2. Even so, I don't think I will re-watch this series as it is actually pretty boring as a drama. Lol. Having said that, I actually completed 40 episodes x 45 minutes each in 8 days so it is not really super boring la.
Watching this drama is bittersweet for me as I am brought back to my younger days more than a decade ago when PoT is really a big thing. I remember that I hate to read manga online but PoT was an exception because I could not wait to read the closure of the National Tournament. I also had GBA emulators and bought joystick for my laptop to play PoT games but I never really got into the non-GBA games. Sigh.. sad facts of working life. I also collect the CD singles and albums and now I need to dig which portable hard disk they are at as they are not transferred to my current laptop. Perhaps it is also time to check out if I can find the various OVAs and movies that I have not watched. After almost a decade since their releases, they should be more available online.
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