The episodes covering the third and fourth seasons of The Prince of Tennis anime series are directed by Takayuki Hamana, animated by Trans Arts, and co-produced by Nihon Ad Systems, J.C.Staff, and Production I.G. The two seasons originally aired on the terrestrial Japanese network TV Tokyo from October 2002 to August 2003. The anime is an adaption of Konomi's Prince of Tennis manga series created in 2000. The series revolves around a 12-year-old tennis prodigy named Ryoma Echizen, who moves back to his native Japan in order to attend his father's alma mater, a private middle school famous for its strong tennis team.
Viz Media handles the distribution of the series in North America, where the anime debuted as streaming media on Viz's and Cartoon Network's joint online broadband service called Toonami Jetstream on July 14, 2006. It first aired on North American television as part of Toonami's Saturday programming block on December 23, 2006.
Four pieces of theme music are used for the episodes in seasons three and four: two opening themes and two ending themes. The first opening theme, "Make You Free" by Kimeru and Hisoca, and the first ending theme, "White Line" by Aozu - the voice actors of Ryoma Echizen, Tezuka Kunimitsu, Shusuke Fuji, and Shuichiro Oishi - are used from episode fifty-four to seventy-five. The second opening theme, "Long Way" by Ikuo, and the second ending theme, "Kaze no Tabibito" (風の旅人?, lit. Wind Traveler) by Fureai (ふれあい), are used for the remaining episodes of the two seasons.
Famous quotes containing the words list, prince, tennis and/or episodes:
“I made a list of things I have
to remember and a list
of things I want to forget,
but I see they are the same list.”
—Linda Pastan (b. 1932)
“The prince in disguise makes the most charming beggar in the world, no doubt; but that is because—as all fairy-tales from the beginning of time have taught us—the prince wears his rags as if they were purple. And, to do that, he not only must once have worn purple, but must never forget the purple that he has worn. And to the argument that all cannot wear purple, I can ... only reply that that seems to me to be no reason why all should wear rags.”
—Katharine Fullerton Gerould (1879–1944)
“Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Twenty or thirty years ago, in the army, we had a lot of obscure adventures, and years later we tell them at parties, and suddenly we realize that those two very difficult years of our lives have become lumped together into a few episodes that have lodged in our memory in a standardized form, and are always told in a standardized way, in the same words. But in fact that lump of memories has nothing whatsoever to do with our experience of those two years in the army and what it has made of us.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)