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:
“Feminism is an entire world view or gestalt, not just a laundry list of women’s issues.”
—Charlotte Bunch (b. 1944)
“When the Prince of Wales [later King George IV] and the Duke of York went to visit their brother Prince William [later William IV] at Plymouth, and all three being very loose in their manners, and coarse in their language, Prince William said to his ship’s crew, “now I hope you see that I am not the greatest blackguard of my family.””
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“[My one tennis book] was very, very old. It had a picture of Bill Tilden. I looked at the picture and that was how I learned to hold the racket.”
—Maria Bueno (b. 1939)
“What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men’s existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history?”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)