I Have Held Back No Water In Its Season

Not the musicals, but the music–the characters songs.  It’s a totally separate continuity, in tenipuri, it really is. Characters who are presented as (mostly, allegedly) straight sing love duets with each other. Characters known for their reserve and stoicism sing really silly songs. Some of the character songs fit in with either the anime or the manga continuity, especially the Best Riva/Best Player songs, but a lot of them, especially the ones produced for the more popular characters, form a continuity of their own with a whole different set of characterizations that are, by and large, pure fanservice.

This is, to be sure, complicated by the occasional descent of both anime and manga canon into similar fanservice, anime moreso than manga. The continuities have even crossed, as for example the ‘talent night’ thing in the Senbatsu arc. And then there are the music video things, which appear to have some crossover with other parts of the music continuity, especially in the formation and naming of discrete groups.

In short, the whole notion of “continuity” in tenipuri is vastly complicated and a huge mishmash, but I’d still say it’s possible to count the music itself as at least one and quite possibly two or three totally separate continuities.

In case anyone wondered, these reflections are the direct result of Kirihara’s latest single.  That seems more a seiyuu character song than a character character song, really.

So I’m rewatching the Fudoumine matches again, and listening, as opposed to reading the initial translations, a few things catch my attention.

One is that Nanjirou is referred to as “flawless” or “perfect”, that is ten’i muhou, repeatedly.

The other is that, at this point, both Nanjirou and Tezuka state that Ryouma will have to move beyond merely copying his father if he wants to progress in his spiritual journey tennis.

So… how, again, is it moving beyond merely copying his father if Ryouma’s Final Ultimate Supercalafragalistic move is Ten’i Muhou no Kiwami?

I do not expect this to be answered, having long since concluded that if Konomi ever had a clear idea of how he wanted to conclude this story he lost it round about the time he started the National arc.  But, as a fic writer who wishes to make some little sense out of canon for my own nefarious purposes, I fret.

I also note that, right from the first, there’s this pattern of players being willing to injure themselves to secure a team win.  Kawamura doesn’t notice what he did to himself immediately, but Ishida is knowingly courting injury after being told it could permanently impair him to use Hadoukyuu too often. I could see this being a commentary on the way it twists the game to play it for nothing but victory, if I believed that was Konomi’s moral from the start, except… Ryouma does it too, when his eyelid is cut.  And we’ve just been told, repeatedly, that he’s exactly like Nanjirou, our exemplar of Pure and Innocent Tennis, so that determination being negative doesn’t fit in nicely.  This is especially so seeing as Ryouma’s stubbornness is the occasion for a heart warming round of team bonding and mutual support, as per standard shounen sports practice.

So I suppose I will just continue to consider canon Nationals some kind of strange AU and accept the pre-Nationals story trends.  There’s more of them anyway.

So I finally got around to watching the last few eps of the Prince of Tennis semifinals OVA, and, seeing it all in one shot, suddenly something makes more sense.

(Not about Akaya, because nothing could make that make sense, Konomi, you bum.)

I’ve felt from the first reading of the last issue that the series’ “moral” was bizarrely out of place.  The whole notion that Fun Tennis Rules Them All seemed utterly unsupported in any part of the foregoing series.

And it is utterly unsupported… except for Kintarou.  Kintarou is the epitome of playing tennis for the sheer, crazy fun of it and, because of that innocence and purity, being the strongest thing on earth.

If we recall that Kin-chan was originally supposed to be the hero, all this starts to make a bit more sense.

Konomi let Ryouma have a draw because, well, Ryouma is the hero.  And then Kin-chan gets trounced by Yukimura, which completely undercuts the notion that Fun Tennis is the strongest. But Kintarou’s moral is still the one that wins, having been transplanted to Ryouma.  Ryouma even gets a dose of Kintarou’s innocence, via the go-round with amnesia.

This does not make the ending actually make sense inside the story-world.  This is an explanation we can only reach from outside.  But it does give me slightly more hope that Konomi was not actually hallucinating while he drew the whole Nationals arc.

Memory loss or sheer, howling, culpable carelessness in ignoring his own story to date, that he’s still tarred with.  But I no longer feel the serious urge to inquire about the contents of his medicine cabinet.

Hang on. Wait just one minute.

So, the bit about Sanada telling Yukimura about the Kantou results.

One, hasn’t Yukimura just finished having surgery? Where is he getting all that liveliness from?

( And two… )

Konomi, can’t you write a consistent storyline to save your soul? *disgusted* It’s true, you know. The whole Nationals arc is a freaking AU.