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Dont get me wrong. This manga is by no means bad, it is in fact very well-made. But I need to admit that I was greatly disappointed by, in my opinion, how much the author fucked up what could be a much better story.

Alert: This is may be a bit spoiler-y, but I needed to vent my opinion on this manga.
The first part was my favourite. It rounded up well and the characters were developing. I specially loved her who was supposed to be one of the four protagonists, if not the main one: Tama. I thought she, a cunning fox demon in the body ... of a little girl, was the most interesting out of the four protags. Apparently the author was interested in developing her and Jinka as the main characters, judging by how the first part ended. But I think somewhere in the middle of the story, after the part one, the author started worrying about what would his readers think of his work. As this manga is Shounen, in Japan its majority of readers are supposed to be guys. In my vision, the author began searching for a boy character to turn into a (relatable?) main character; he maybe thought Tama wasn't a good enough protagonist for a story facing the male audience, as there wasn't even fanservice from her part (for fuck's sake, she looked like a freaking child).

The story could have turned up very similarly if the author chose any other random male character to turn into the protagonist. Seriously, in the first part, Senya was an extremely minor character. I liked to see him grow in the second part; but I thought his arc would last until like, the part where he and Tsukiko showed all grown up in front of Tama. From there on, the author could have focused again in her, and seriously, could have given her some fighting abilities at last. She didn't have a single real battle scene. Tama and Shinsuke turned into minor characters and I hadn't even noticed, as I was anxiously waiting for the author to focus on them again. Jinka and Shaku had vanished (though I understand the author needed to do that *for the plot*).

The ending was so incredibly frustrating that, though I cried at Shaku's return and the reunion of Tama and Jinka, I skipped through all the tiring and unnecessarily long battle scenes that only served, in my opinion obviously, to emphazise overpowered, minor characters before and now main characters. I was specially frustrated since I had been postponing this reading for a long time, and really looked foward to Tama and Jinka's development.

The artwork was extremely good and clearly evolved through the series, and the battle scenes, though a bit tiring for me to read, were well-drawn. The character designs were unique and recognizable, and the world was quite well-developed. For these reasons, it was extremely frustrating to see what could have been one of my favorite manga, be turned into a simply "good shounen" like many other good shounen out there.

TL;DR, without spoilers: If you're reading for Tama, Jinka, Shinsuke, Shaku, don't expect much. If you're just looking for a good shounen manga, maybe to pass the time, try this one out, I guess.

Truly an underrated masterpiece, Princess Nine has elements of classic anime while displaying a decent animation for its year (come on, we're talking about 1998 here), great soundtrack (sometimes in more emotional episodes, the music made me tear up, and I never once skipped the opening theme) and above all, great plotline (ot has a bit of romance, but that's not the main point) and really likeable characters.
If you like sports anime, don't hold back on watching this one because it's oldschool anime, I promise you it's excellent! There are too few sports anime with girl protagonists out there (which is a pity), and this ... one is the good stuff.