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The Prince of Tennis II Anime Gets U-17 World Cup TV Series in 2022

posted on by Egan Loo
1st TV series in 10 years reunites cast, Hyotei vs Rikkai Game of Future staff

The 20th anniversary event for The Prince of Tennis anime announced on Sunday that a new anime series, Shin Tennis no Ōji-sama U-17 World Cup (The Prince of Tennis II: U-17 World Cup), will premiere next year. It will be the first television series in the franchise in about a decade. The event presented a teaser visual featuring the main lead Ryōma Echizen alongside Kunimitsu Tezuka and Hōō Byōdōin with the tagline, "To a world as yet unseen…." (The promotional video below is blocked outside Japan.)


The new series features the returning cast members:

Keiichiro Kawaguchi (ISLAND) is returning from the last 2D anime, The Prince of Tennis II Hyotei vs Rikkai Game of Future, to direct the new series at Studio KAI and M.S.C, and Mitsutaka Hirota (Anime-Gataris, Nanbaka) is again superivising the scripts. Akiharu Ishii (Blood+, Ultramarine Magmell) is back to design the characters and serve as chief animation director.

The other returning staff members include:

Sunday's event presented a promotional video to celebrate the anime franchise's 20th anniversary:

Takeshi Konomi serialized The Prince of Tennis manga's original run in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine from 1999 to 2008. The manga follows middle school tennis player Ryōma Echizen as he battles rivals to reach the national tournament. That original manga inspired a 2001-2005 television anime, two anime feature films and a theatrical short, various video anime projects, a live-action film, a live-action television series in China, and a popular stage musical series.

Konomi then launched The Prince of Tennis II manga series in Shueisha's Jump SQ. magazine in 2009. The story picks up after the national tournament, when Ryōma joins a select group of middle school players at Japan's top training camp for players under 17. This ongoing sequel manga spawned its own 2012 television anime series The Prince of Tennis II. The Prince of Tennis II OVA vs. Genius 10 series then ran for five volumes from October 2014 to June 2015.

The franchise has inspired the Tennis no Ōjisama BEST GAMES!! original video anime (OVA) project. The project retells the story of the franchise's top matches. The first OVA began its limited two-week screening in Japan in August 2018, and shipped in Japan on Blu-ray Disc and DVD in October 2018. The second OVA received a two-week event screening in Japan starting on April 2019, and then shipped on Blu-ray Disc and DVD in June 2019. The third OVA screened in theaters in Japan for two weeks starting in November 2019, and shipped on home video in January 2020.

More recently, The Prince of Tennis II: Hyotei vs Rikkai Game of Future anime project streamed in two parts. The first part streamed on February 13, and the second part streamed on April 17.

The Ryōma! Shinsei Gekijōban Tennis no Ōji-sama (Ryōma! Rebirth Movie The Prince of Tennis) 3DCG film for The Prince of Tennis franchise opened on September 3, after being delayed from spring 2020. The film features a completely original story that takes place in the three-month time period between the events at the end of The Prince of Tennis manga and the start of The Prince of Tennis II manga.

Viz Media published the 42nd and final volume of Konomi's original Prince of Tennis manga run in North America in 2011. Crunchyroll streamed The Prince of Tennis II television anime into several countries as it aired in Japan, and it then streamed the spinoff original video anime projects. Funimation is now streaming or will stream almost all of the previous anime in the franchise to date.

Sources: The Prince of Tennis anime's website, Comic Natalie


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