The matches intensify as everything slowly comes together.
What They Say:
Mifune has increased the training for the junior high and high school students. To sweeten the deal, he has offered both groups a valuable prize, and it’s going to be big.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
While the last episode focused on events back at the main camp, here it’s back to the mountains again as Ryoma and the gang work hard through their lessons in order to excel like never before. After all, how can you not become an awesome tennis player after you defeated multiple hawks flying around the sky with only your racket and some tennis balls in hand. The professional camp that Tezuka just got booted out of continues to showcase its range of players and their capabilities, but it’s a different kind of intensity than what we get in the mountains. In fact, with the mountain group they’re getting actual forms and physical workouts. All we see happening at the upscale looking camp is a lot of matches being played and plenty of observation time thrown into the mix for those not actually playing.
The extensive training that Ryoma and the rest have gone through has been a real source of displeasure on my part in watching the series since so much of it comes across as something beyond cruel behavior. With this episode, it’s not focused on those kinds of events that we had seen before but more just the actual tennis itself as their chief overlord runs them through the gauntlet. They’ve gotten wrapped up in it pretty well over the course of the episode and you can see them discovering the skills they’ve acquired as well as greater speed and agility overall, though there are those that don’t achieve quite as much as others. They’re continually put through tests though that make them question themselves and their abilities, and there’s also a little twist to it as well that sadly does feel like it belongs.
In Summary:
With the series ready to end, there’s not exactly anything in the way of surprises here as Ryoma and his group go through their final training without realizing it’s their final training so they can head back and show up everyone at the camp with their awesome skills. While the general idea behind the series does work when it comes to multiple camps with different methods of teaching tennis involved, its execution continues to be the killing point for me in that both sides of it just left it completely uninteresting to say the least. It was borderline offensive in many ways and hit so many sequences where it just left me cold and wondering what sort of fanfic writers were given the control over the series. This episode isn’t bad, but it’s damning it with faint praise compared to what has come before. It’s sheer momentum that’s carrying me through to the end and it’s also weakening my interest in what has come before as well.
Grade: C-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
