Hikaru Zaizen

• School: Shitenhoji Middle School
• Year/Class: Year 2, Class 7, Seat 14
• Club: Tennis Club
• Committee: Library Committee
• Height: 167cm → 168cm
• Weight: 57kg
• Blood Type: A
• Birthday: July 20 (Cancer)
• Dominant Hand: Left
• Shoe Size: 25.5cm
• Vision: 1.5 (both eyes)
• Playstyle: All-Rounder
• Special Moves: Zaizen Wandaho, Temari Zaizen, Zaizen Mokuba
• Family: Father, Mother, older Brother, Sister-in-law, Nephew, Dog
• Father's Occupation: Company employee (trading company)
• Hobbies: Listening to music (Western music)
• Favorite Subject: English
• Least Favorite Subject: Classics
• Favorite Food: Shiratama Zenzai (sweet red bean soup with rice-flour dumplings)
• Favorite Color: Carmine
• Favorite Movie: *Amélie*
• Favorite Book: Music magazines
• Favorite Music: British indie
• Motto: "A wise hawk hides its talons" → "Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
• Elementary School: Dotonbori First Elementary School
• Favorite Spot at School: Audio-visual room
• How He Spends His Allowance: On CDs and internet fees
• Ideal Type: A girl who is good at homemaking
• Ideal Date Spot: A stylish cafe → A new cafe in Horie
• Wants Most Now: An audio set → A MacBook
• Daily Routine: Writing his blog
• Dislikes: The bitter parts of fish, strong air conditioning, moving vehicles
• Special Skills (besides tennis): Composing music on his computer, and he jokingly adds, "Hacking, lol."
• Average Body Temperature: 35.0℃

Hikaru Zaizen has a distinctive look, highlighted by a total of five piercings in his ears.

The piercings are in the five Olympic colors (red, blue, black, yellow, and green), though he apparently changes the colors daily. In the anime, they are all depicted as silver.

He also wears two wristbands on his left arm.

His eyebrows have a unique shape, somewhat thick yet sparse, similar to those of Kiyosumi Sengoku and Yujiro Kai.

Zaizen is known for his cool, dry, and sometimes even cold personality.

He has a very sharp tongue, never hesitating to call his seniors Koharu Konjiki and Yuji Hitouji "creepy" to their faces or dismissively label Takashi Kawamura as "Seigaku's burden."

Although he's a junior, he speaks a mix of polite Japanese and Kansai dialect, often ending his sentences with the suffix "~ssu wa."

He doesn't quite get the typical Osaka sense of humor and often responds to his seniors' gags with a cold, deadpan attitude, which has earned him the nicknames "new breed" and "mutant."

Hailing from Osaka, Zaizen attended Dotonbori First Elementary School.

He is hailed as a "genius" by his coach, Osamu Watanabe, a title he earned during his first year.

After the third-year students graduate, Hikaru Zaizen is appointed as the new captain of the Shitenhoji tennis club, succeeding Kuranosuke Shiraishi.

The new vice-captain, however, remains unknown.

Zaizen is an All-Rounder whose talent is acknowledged by his coach as genius-level.

His stats are well-balanced, with a particularly high Mental score.

Stats:

• Speed: 3
• Power: 2
• Stamina: 3
• Mental: 4
• Technique: 3

The Prince of Tennis (National Tournament Arc)

During the National Tournament semifinals against Seigaku, Zaizen was initially slated for the D1 match with Kenya Oshitari.

However, a last-minute change paired him with Senri Chitose.

The match quickly devolved into an irregular singles showdown between Chitose and Kunimitsu Tezuka, a battle of their "Pinnacle of Perfect Sense."

Zaizen attempted to jump into the fray to score a point early on but found himself completely unable to keep up with their pace.

For the remainder of the match, he stood outside the court and did not participate further.

The New Prince of Tennis (U-17 Camp)

Zaizen was chosen for the U-17 selection camp but initially turned down the invitation, claiming it was "too much trouble."

He later ended up joining the dropouts' group by chance after accompanying his senior, Yuji Hitouji, to the camp.

OVA Story

An OVA flashback reveals the origin of his "genius" reputation.

As a first-year, despite having played tennis only once or twice, he was paired with Kenjiro Koishikawa for a match against the formidable Kuranosuke Shiraishi and Kenya Oshitari pair.

He almost single-handedly dominated his two upperclassmen, cementing his status as a prodigy.

Zaizen is a huge music aficionado, with a preference for Western and British indie music.

He is tech-savvy, well-versed in the latest smartphones and tablets, and even composes music on his computer as a hobby.

His daily routine includes updating his blog, which, according to supplementary materials, is mostly filled with complaints about his seniors.

Being fluent in English, he has been known to comment on overseas band websites.

In a bonus flash anime, he is shown to upload videos to a YouTube-like site under the handle "ZENZAI," where his content gets numerous views.

This, combined with his interests, has led to fan interpretations of him as an otaku character, though this is not explicitly stated in the series.

However, official art once depicted him holding what appeared to be a COMIC CITY catalog, playfully fueling these fan theories.

It should be noted that the popular fan-created persona "Zenzai-P" is purely a secondary creation and not canon.

• Voice Actor: Hirofumi Araki (who also played Sadaharu Inui in the second generation of the musical).
• Musical Casts:
• 1st Season: Eisuke Sato (A), Kousuke Kujirai (B)
• 2nd Season: Ryuji Sato
• 3rd Season: Ryota Hirono