土曜日, 5月 06, 2006

OVA Vol 3 Information

The 3rd volume of the OVA series (catalog number BCBA-2463) will be released on 28 July and it consists of 2 episodes i.e. Ep 4 and 5. Ep 4 is about Kikumaru's debut in an official singles match against Kai from Higa while Ep 5 is about the Doubles 1 match featuring Inui and Kaidou.

Actually, this came as a surprise to me because the manga did not go into detail on the Doubles 1 match but the OVA series will devote 1 episode to it. From the synopsis, it seems like Ep 5 will incorporate parts from a side story before the Nationals involving Kaidou and Yagyuu from Rikkai. In that story, Kaidou and Yagyuu happened to meet each other while they were watching a tennis match. They overheard some guys from another school also taking part in the Nationals (I forgot the name of the school) mocking Rikkai and Seigaku who later challenged the two to a match. What happened was that Kaidou and Yagyuu did the identity-switching act which Yagyuu and Niou do frequently and they managed to defeat these guys easily even while imitating each other's specialty techniques. This was to prevent these guys from knowing their strengths ahead of the actual tournament. However, at the end of it, Yagyuu asked Kaidou what he would do if he could not use the Snake during a match. This led Kaidou to think of using other techniques so as not to be too reliant on the Snake and he raises this to Inui. As such, I think the bulk of Ep 5 will be on Yagyuu and Kaidou's interaction rather than the Doubles 1 match itself since there isn't much content to be explored from the manga.

If my initial guess was correct, the Higa arc would have been completed by Vol 3. Given that there's still the Tezuka vs Kite Singles 1 match, I can only hope for Vol 4 to get started with the Hyotei arc since there's too much content to be covered and 3 volumes won't be sufficient at all. Just the Atobe and Echizen Singles 1 match is enough to take up at least 2 episodes.

Last but not least, the audio commentary for Vol 3 will be done by Shishido and Ootori from Hyotei. Another famous combination which can be said to be the Hyotei version of the Golden Pair.

When the cover of Vol 3 is out, I will update it here accordingly.

2 件のコメント:

匿名 さんのコメント...

Thanks for the news. And the Pair Yagyû-Kaidô played was from Murigaoka.

Chiaki さんのコメント...

Yup, went to check the manga and confirmed that the school name is Murigaoka from the Tokai area. Anyway, they are already out of the Nationals since Rikkai and Seigaku are heading for the semi-finals while Shitenbouji and Fudoumine are currently fighting it out for one of the semi-finals slot. It won't be surprising that Shitenbouji meets Seigaku before the latter faces off with Rikkai in the finals since Fudoumine is losing badly to Shitenbouji currently.