Aim for the Ace!

The story is about Hiromi Oka (岡ひろみ, Oka Hiromi), a high school girl who struggles to become good at tennis. While attending Nishi (西高), Hiromi begins playing tennis after becoming fascinated by Reika Ryūzaki (竜崎麗香, Ryūzaki Reika), an older girl who is the best player on the team and is nicknamed "Madame Butterfly" (お蝶夫人, Ochōfujin) owing to her grace on the tennis court. The team gets a new coach, Jin Munakata (宗方仁, Munakata Jin), who sees potential in Hiromi and trains her to become a great tennis player.

Hiromi struggles to overcome her mental weakness. Later, she falls in love with another tennis player, Takayuki Tōdō (藤堂貴之, Tōdō Takayuki), but coach Munakata tells her not to get too involved and that she should forget him and work on her tennis skills. Hiromi often loses confidence in her playing abilities, but with the support of her coach and her friends she overcomes her anxiety. By training herself to become a better player, Hiromi grows into a mentally stronger person. Her enthusiasm, her love of tennis and the support from people around her helps her to become one of the best players in the world.

The manga was a hit, having sold approximately 15 million copies, which makes it one of the best-selling shōjo manga series of all time. Although the television series initially received low ratings, reruns were more positively received by fans, as well as the second series. The anime is considered a hit on Japanese television and though aimed toward schoolgirls it was popular among people of both sexes, and was also popular in Europe. In 2001, the anime magazine Animage ranked the 1979 anime television as the twenty-second of the Top 100 anime productions of all time.

In 2005, TV Asahi conducted a "Top 100" online web poll and nationwide survey asking viewers for the best anime television series; Aim for the Ace! was placed fourteenth in the online poll and thirty-fourth in the survey. Responsible for a tennis boom among high school students in the 1970s, the series was still popular as of 2015 appearing in several online web polls of most influential sports anime. 000 people voted for their top 100 manga series, Aim for the Ace!