<Basic>

Inui is considered the brains behind the Seigaku tennis team. His tennis style involves collecting a ton of data on opponents, and therefore he is helpful to Seigaku both as a player and as an advisor. He is considered likely the third best player on Seigaku, second only to Tezuka and Fuji (mainly because both continually defy his data). When Ryoma appears on the scene, however, Inui is knocked from the regulars and spends the first part of the series as Seigaku's manager.

<At First Glance>

I originally thought Inui would be your typical nerdy character. I mean, he looks like it, right? You just expect someone with thick glasses like that to play using opponents' "data" to find their weaknesses. Well, it is true Inui is something of the nerd he first seems to be. But it also becomes painfully obvious fairly quickly that Inui is more than a little weird. I mean... those juices he forces his teammates to drink are the scariest color I've ever seen. And so it wasn't long before I wondered if there was a lot more to Inui than just the nerdy aspect. What else did I notice about Inui? Oh, yeah. He's tall. REAL tall. Like, over six feet at fourteen. Yikes.

<Personality>

Inui's personality is both analytical and... well, twisted. On the one hand, he's definitely the "data-man" of Seigaku's tennis team. He analyzes EVERYTHING in terms of percentages and statistics. He can often be heard determining the probability of a given event by mumbling things like, "Chance of a cross-court shot... 75%." He's also usually seen walking around with his green notebook, scribbling goodness-knows-what on its pages and talking about how whatever he's observing is "great data." This does not just include watching his teammates play tennis. He'll even start recording data about other players' personal lives, and there is plenty of evidence indicating that he follows his teammates around to get this information. (Including when they're on dates. Nope, I'm not kidding.) Given this obsesssive behavior, it's obvious Inui's data-driven personality also has a weird side. Not only does he exhibit all the tendencies of a stalker in collecting his data, but he also appears to have a sadistic side something akin to Fuji's. His favorite hobby involves creating new versions of the beverage he calls "Inui Juice," a drink with all the culinary appeal of pesticides. His first version had all the Seigaku regulars (minus Fuji, who likes it, and Tezuka, who is so perfect he didn't have to drink it) lying on the court looking like they were ready to pass out... after they'd all made a run for either the water fountain or the restroom, according to your preferred interpretation. And the first version was the least terrifying of all the juices. O_o Even though Inui never directly says that he enjoys making his teammates quiver with fear, it's implied by the diabolically happy way in which he presents each new Inui Juice that he enjoys the suffering the drink causes. Still, despite his often twisted personality, Inui is nevertheless a likable character. His wry sense of humor is evident in the way he enjoys making people freak out in various ways. But Inui is also a very honest person with a strict sense of morals when it comes to winning fair and square, along with a tenacity that constantly has him making every effort to improve himself in whatever way possible. He's extremely dedicated to tennis, especially considering all the time he puts into gathering that infamous data. And when he's not doing that, as the series has revealed, he's training himself physically to improve his game. He even created Inui Juice in the first place just to improve his physical health. So whatever else you say about Inui, he is definitely just as ambitious as he is analytical. In fact, his ultimate goal is nothing less than beating the captain of Seigaku, Tezuka himself.

<Tennis Ability>

Inui's tennis ability is formidable, and it's surprisingly easy to lose sight of this fact. The main reason for that is because he is removed from the Seigaku regulars so early in the series by an ever-cocky Ryoma. This puts Inui in the background, tennis-wise, for about fifty episodes. So, really, we don't know at first what the other Seigaku regulars mean when they introduce Inui in the first few episodes by calling him "Seigaku's number three player." Since Ryoma beat Inui by defying his data, it's hard to say how good Inui really is using only the first episodes. We do, however, learn right away what the regulars mean when they say he plays "data tennis." From the very beginning of the series, including in the game he plays against Ryoma, Inui uses his statistics and percentages to full advantage to psyche out his opponents. He often starts mumbling to himself all the different components of his data during the middle of points, which is usually when observers recognize that he is using his "data tennis" style. And this style is certainly unnerving, since it usually means that Inui appears to have an ESP-like ability that enables him to predict exactly where every shot his opponent hits will go. I can't even imagine how much data you would have to gather on someone to have this kind of info.

But there's more to Inui's outstanding tennis abilities than just his data. And he's had to prove this many times, since players like Ryoma have the ability to surpass any amount of data if the data user isn't skilled enough to keep up with them. For one thing, Inui has a killer serve (especially when he removes the weights he hides in his wristband) that's ultra fast, fast enough to be called a "Sonic Speed Serve." It is, in fact, fairly comparable to Ohtori's infamous Scud Serve, the fastest serve in the entire Kantou Regional Tournament. Inui also has an extremely good reach, given his unusual height, so it's not uncommon for him to be able to go to net and simply smash any attempted lobs back into the opponent's side of the court.

Inui is usually at his best when combining his extremely good physical abilities with his data-related knowledge. There are times, however, when Inui is forced into a situation where he has to "throw away" his statistics and simply play tennis with ability alone. It is usually then that his teammates realize how formidable an opponent Inui really is. He has enough skill to keep up with the best players out there, and many times his data gives him just enough of an edge to unexpectedly beat a flashier opponent.

<Plot Points>

Slowly but surely, the plot manages to make Inui's often elusive character a bit clearer. The first time we see Inui, he looks... well, scarier than Kaidoh. But after Inui is beaten by Ryoma, he proves himself to have a better attitude than Seigaku's resident reptile by conceding complete defeat (and not killing himself with his racquet). He also shows that he's not full of himself or overly bitter about losing his regular spot by taking on a job as team manager for the first fifty or so episodes of the show. However, he does prove himself to be rather... sadistic... in his unorthodox training methods, which often leave his teammates either passed out or heaving. Obviously, the infamous Inui Juice is the chief example of these unusual and occasionally lethal training methods. But, as cruel as these exercises often appear, Inui does seem to have his team's best interests in mind (although I'm sure his team wishes that he didn't, if this meant he'd ditch the juice thing). This is obvious in the way he looks out for his teammates behind the scenes, most notably in the situation with Mizuki during the St. Rudolph arc. When Mizuki started making deals with other teams in an attempt to reveal Seigaku's weaknesses, Inui confronted him about it, probably in an effort to discourage him in his plotting. And during the following matches, Inui's thought pattern even seemed to indicate some regret that he couldn't coach his teammates like Mizuki could. However, as Inui himself ironically notes, he knows his teammates well enough to understand that there's no way they'd listen to him. He knows his teammates like to beat opponents with their own strength. I think this reveals why Inui does not share his data with his teammates like Mizuki does. Inui knows better than to think his teammates want it.

Inui himself, however, keeps on with his data strategy through the whole series, despite the setback he had against Ryoma. This becomes obvious in the second set of matches between the best players at Seigaku, where Inui regains his regular spot by beating Momoshiro and making an equally remarkable effort to beat Tezuka. Even though Inui fails in beating the captain, a lot is revealed about Inui's personality during this time. For one thing, he's just as tenacious as anybody else on the team, since it is revealed that he does exactly 225% times the amount of physical training as the other Seigaku regulars (who, remember, train using a VERY exhausting menu courtesy of Inui in the first place). He's also still just as dedicated to collecting data as he was at the series' start, since it's during this time that he actually uses data against Tezuka in their match. This data, in fact, is so effective that forces the captain into using his infamous "Tezuka Zone" move. Apparently, Inui has played against Tezuka several times in the past, and lost every single time. It seems that Inui's ultimate goal is actually to beat Tezuka by perfecting his data on the captain and then using this information to beat him. It's even said that Inui's "data tennis" may have been developed just to beat Tezuka. The last thing these matches reveal about Inui is that he is not above using his data to beat his own teammates, since he uses all the data he gathered watching them play during the first part of the series to beat them at this point.

When Inui returns to the Seigaku regulars, he is a much more formidable player than he was before. However, he usually gets put in the doubles matches, since other than the Golden Pair, Seigaku doesn't have a set doubles team. And during the Hyoutei arc, Inui actually plays doubles with Kaidoh. As random as this doubles pair might seem, Inui actually has been developing what I suppose one would call a friendship with Seigaku's snake-like 2nd year. Since Kaidoh is so obsessive about training, he actually has something in common with Inui, since Inui is equally dedicated to physically improving himself. And they've apparently had more than one conversation while training, since it appears Inui helped Kaidoh with perfecting his Boomerang Snake move by showing him a special training technique involving a wet towel. (No, I'm not talking about a risque shower scene... PLEASE spare me those visuals... O_o) Actually, the most we see of these scenes is in flashback mode, so it's implied that this happens frequently. So I would say that Inui and Kaidoh probably train together almost all the time. Also, in the Hyoutei match, it is revealed that Inui has a very strict set of morals. Even though the referee called the ball that Inui hit "in" on a key point, Inui knew that it had gone out and made the referee change the call. Now, I've never even heard of a player doing this, but I guess it proves Inui is that honest and that dedicated to winning fair and square.

Inui does get one very memorable chance to play singles, however. And it's during the Rikkai arc, where his opponent is none other than Renji. Renji was his doubles partner throughout elementary school, and at this point, we see a very clear indication that Inui (as a child, anyway) had a sentimental side. He wanted Renji at that time to promise that they'd stay doubles partners forever. Obviously, it didn't work out that way, but Inui planned every day for the time he would face Renji in the court again. In what I would call a perfect combination of data tennis and sentimentality, Inui winds up beating Renji by replicating a match they played against each other the last day they were together and then finishing out the match with pure will power. Now, if that doesn't show that Inui has a memory with all the power of a steel trap, I don't know what does. But it also proves that Inui's capabilities as a tennis player are off the charts, given his evident strength and tenacity.

<Odds and Ends>

Well, obviously Inui is a bit of an eccentric person. But for the most part, he doesn't have too much time for a personal life, given all the training and data-gathering he's usually engaged in. Probably because of his stalker-like tendencies in gathering said data, however, he does seem to have a thing for gossip and will randomly call up all his teammates to share his more interesting findings. (He even distorts the messages on purpose, a la the grade school game "Telephone," to get people worked up.) He also shares a certain level of sadism with the ever-enigmatic Fuji, and in one filler episode they both take part in scaring the pants off of the other regulars during a black out. He also shows during this episode that he's not above using corny puns. So he can have a pretty twisted sense of humor, in many ways. Of course, the most twisted part of Inui is his love for making Inui Juice. Among other things, in at least one instance, some type of very frightening insect was used in a version of this horrifying concoction. I don't know if Inui Juice could really kill people, but Inui doesn't appear to have any second thoughts about using it in training for the other Seigaku regulars, even if it does have the ability to make people pass out. So he's not exactly above using torture as a training method. Ahh, the power of fear... And one other thing about Inui: his data is not invincible. In more than one filler episode, his data has failed him in an attempt to master another sport besides tennis, leaving the Data Man of Seigaku somewhat confounded. So, outside of tennis, it's possible that Inui's data is imperfect.

<My Take>

Inui, let's be honest... you're amazing. I wasn't as into the Human Computer of Seigaku, as I might affectionately call him, when I first started getting into the series. This was mainly because he seemed like such a stereotypical, nerdy kind of character. I mean, of course there just HAD to be a "data tennis" style that would be played out by some guy in thick glasses. Duh. But the thing about Inui is that he's way more bizarre than that, and because of that, I love him.

I ended up loving Inui just because he's so dang weird. I mean, come on, Inui Juice?? That's just unique. And the fact that his "data gathering" is humorously taken to the level of stalking others puts him outside of the stereotypical nerdy character. Inui is creepy. And that's just fun. Sure, he's not one of the more bishounen-y characters in the series (although, mind you, he is hiding some very sexy eyes behind those glasses, apparently), but he's lovable because he's borderline insane. Sure, he's also an admirable character because of how hard he works at improving his game, but it is by far that disturbing chuckle of his that really wins the hearts of the fans. I mean, you've gotta love those mad scientist types, right?

Well, maybe not, but either way, I love you, Inui, and all your bizarre, creepy ways! ... And apparently, according to Inui, there was about a 97% chance I would say that. -_-

<Screencaps>

Coming soon!

<More Thoughts>

Coming soon!