Extremely Brief Notes on Bet Me and Prince of Tennis

[rachelmanija]

Prince of Tennis, by Takeshi Konomi.

A sports manga about a kid tennis prodigy, which I read because I'm trying to get a feel for sports manga. This one started off with moderate promise, but ended up boring me so much that I didn't finish it. It reminded me that I have no inherent interest in tennis, and have only ever followed the sport because I was intrigued by the personalities of the players: Martina Navratilova, Venus and Serena Williams, Steffi Graf, and many more, not to mention the huge crush I had on Michael Chang when I was in high school. Let's just say that the characters here did not interest me to that extent, or at all, really. Does this series improve after the first volume? Is the anime better? If neither of the above, why the huge fandom?

Bet Me, by Jennifer Crusie.

A typically charming and funny romance by an author with great appeal to people who don't usually like romances, as proven by the sight of my Dad happily engrossed in Welcome to Temptation this weekend. Through a series of misunderstandings, Min, a cautious and voluptuous actuary with a nightmare of a mother, believes that Cal, a businessman and ladies' man whose entire immediate family is a nightmare, has bet Min's ex-boyfriend that he can sleep with her within a month. She needs a date for her sister's wedding to a complete loser, so she decides to date him, not sleep with him, and dump him immediately after the wedding.

Needless to say, though neither of them started out with good will toward each other, they end up not only discovering massive sexual chemistry and major compatibility, but also help fix each other's psychological hang-ups. Min is a big woman whose mother is always nagging her to lose weight, while Cal likes her exactly as she is and coaxes her to go ahead and embrace life's gluttonous pleasures, and if she can't squeeze into a size six, to just buy a sexy dress in the proper size. This made me very happy.

Comments

[majinkarp.livejournal.com]

I've never gotten it either. Prince of Tennis is one of the few manga I refuse to pick up. I've never understood the fuss over it, particularly the huge yaoi fandom. It's a tennis manga. About junior high school boys. Nope, not seeing it. I also don't see how someone can write an entire long-running manga on the subject of tennis, and not have it get boring and repetitive.

beckymarie lays it all out in her reviews here. My own understanding of the mystique of Prince of Tennis is that it's all about quirky characters and their relationships with one another, platonic or (imagined) sexual. Hence the huge number of yaoi fangirls, despite little basis in reality (but since when has that ever stopped them?). So if the characters' personalities can't even draw you in, I guess there's little point in reading/watching. I have heard better things about the anime though, especially the chibi episodes.

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

So, out of curiosity, does Bet Me have any non-white non-middle class characters? *grin*

I look forward to sitting down with Getting Rid of Bradley once I get the darn Dunnett out of my life.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid it's still all white, all the time.