And I'll hold onto you while I can

In my rewatch I reached my favourite ever episode of Prince of Tennis -- the one where Kaidoh gets amnesia from a tennis ball to the head, and starts to act like a cat. Cured, of course, by another tennis ball to the end.

It's brilliant, amazing, just as good as I remembered. I laughed just as hard tonight as I did 20 years ago!

TV: My Prince of Tennis anime marathon continues apace. Good news: Tezuka vs Atobe is just as good as I remember! The look on Atobe's face when he realises Tezuka has accepted his challenge! Oishi asking Tezuka if he's sure! Atobe getting what he wants, but no longer wanting it! Atobe wishing the game would go on forever! When the crowd stops cheering and just looks on in shock for that endless tiebreak! The arm raise at the end! Honestly, magnificent. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding when Atobe finally won, even though I knew it was coming, it was that tense.

The Inui/Kaidoh doubles arc is also just as homoerotic as I remembered. Hunting down the place where Kaidoh trains shirtless, asking him to play doubles against a vibrant sunset, the whole 'let's mutually use each other' thing... What a good pairing. I 100% believe they hooked up between tennis practises....

Kawamura's hyper macho tennissona is so funny to me. Also, I just got to Fuji asking to use his bloody tennis racket and, wow, instantly remembered how hard I shipped that pairing back in the day. There should have been more fic about them!!!

I feel like Tezuka/Oishi is also an underrated ship; people don't do enough with that dynamic early on where Oishi is taking Tezuka to his doctor's appointments and acting like his worried wife. On the other hand, people have done much with how shippy the Golden Pair are after they break up in the arc where Inui gets back on the team, and they were right to, this bit of tension is the most shippy Oishi and Eiji have ever been, and from what I remember they get even shippier later.

I have to admit I didn't pay much attention to the (anime only) Josei Shonan arc, which was sooooooooo boring. All the characters on the opposing team have wacky hair to disguise that they don't have interesting personalities. I felt very [I have no memory of this place] so I assume I straight up skipped this arc the first time around. In theory the Inui & Momo doubles match should have been interesting, but it mostly underlined for me that they both have better chemistry with Kaidoh. It's not like I can say the storyline the manga did instead at this point was better, because I also don't remember that 🤣 The Rokkaku arc is fine, but the most striking image is the super long racket. Echizen is adorable in this arc, though.

I'm about to start the Rikkai games. The last bunch of episodes have been very Momo/Kaidoh shippy. Rescuing the kitty together ❤️

I kind of want to write Prince of Tennis fic again... in 2026... but I have genfic ideas. Where Ryoma is aroace but doesn't care because he only identifies as a tennis player. And then I guess I'd have to write a lot of tennis?

Watched two movies yesterday:

The 2006 Prince of Tennis live action movie, which is so much worse than I remembered. It's not good as an adaptation and it's not good as a film in its own right! No narrative focus! A lot of bad acting! Ryuuzaki is young and hot for some reason! They try to jam in too much stuff and too many characters and everything feels thin and underwhelming! The upside is I think Fuji is perfect in it in his approx five seconds of screen time, and the weird side is Ryoma and Tezuka are so much shippier here than I think they've been in any other version of the canon.

Challengers: the sad story of a woman who can't marry tennis, so she has to put up with men.

Could have used more tennis, though I found the tennis ball POV shots kind of funny. I mostly got the impression that Tashi found Art nice and convenient and she was attracted to Patrick but didn't want to be in a relationship with him, but she was really in love with tennis. I didn't find Zendaya convincing as a tennis player, but she is convincing as the hot woman two dudes fight over, so that was fine. The homoerotic tension was there, but by the end I think I found it the least interesting part? At the beginning I didn't like Tashi, but by the end I found her the only likeable character, weirdly enough; I think it might be because she was the best characterised of them all, and had more depth to her longings.

The ending felt great, which I think is because it gave me the impression the men were finally as in love with tennis as Tashi was. I can see why people want a threesome at the end of that film, but I mostly felt like none of those people should bone. Much like with the peach fucker film I feel that Luca Guadagnino's aesthetic sensibility and mine don't mesh very well; the film wasn't pretty enough to my tastes, but obviously worked well for other people.