Review of Ping Pong the Animation

Here I am, in 2019, on a plane, bored, listening to Weezer’s blue album, and in the mood to write a pointless MAL review that no one will read because the show is old now. But hey, I paid eight bucks for bad Southwest wifi, so I might as well get my money's worth, am I right? And the lack of grandeur has never stopped me before, so yeah. Ping Pong the Animation. This show is venerated as “the sports show,” and I am a huge Yuasa Masaaki tard (I follow him and twitter andwatched him on The Tong and Pencil), so when I found myself bored at my parents house, I watched this jawn to see what’s up. And out of all of his works, this one was the last one I checked out. Mainly because my dad plays ping pong, and the law of disappointing anime fan son says I have to dislike all sports my dad likes, so I don’t like ping pong, tenis, and anything else that would make him proud of me. On top of that, I am not a big Taiyo Matsumoto fan, because I watched this show before I saw Tekkon Kinkreet and updated my opinon on him. Regardless, I did watched this show and actually got stuff out of it--Imagine that.

This show has a lot of selling points, from its surreal presentation to its narrative’s many mixups. But for me, the shows biggest selling point was the themes. The idea of talent vs hard work is depicted harder than it is in most shows. With the main character being a probably autistic boy who is gifted at ping pong and jaded towards it whilst people who love ping pong and train every day never win anything. This unfairness is soul crushing to see unfold. Being a low level Melee player that has yet to make it out of pools in a tournament, hearing the MC say that another person “just isn’t good at ping pong” was so painful because I fear the thought of a jaded top melee player (leffen) say that to me. The show also tackles the notion of untapped talent. But since I don’t have any talents, this theme was un empathizable. Though that is a relative criticism, I really value Peco’s development and would even go so far as to call him “best boy.” if that even means anything.

The story of this show is nothing to special in the grand scheme of things. Relative to sports anime, it is the greatest piece of literature of all time. But in juxtaposition to actual good writing, the story is just good. At times, I found that having such a concept heavy narrative lead to many dry scenes. The ideas the show brings forward is more than enough entertainment to justify finishing the show though. It is just hard to care about a story when the MC doesn’t even care--scenes of him training almost mean nothing due to this fact. The final tournament arc of the show was a conclusion that made it all worth it in the end. The show pulled out a great mixup at the end, containing enough catharsis to last until the next good sports show comes out. Other than me Johning about some scenes being dry, the story was pretty nice.

The artwork was what I’d expect from a Taiyo Matsumoto work directed by Yuasa. It was inane, fluid, and creative. Something I do want to bring up is that Yuasa’s other works tend to have artistic style that serves a narrative point. For example, Kaibe looks weird to show that even imagines as alien as Kaiba’s can still be humans with morals, feelings, and identities, which works perfectly with the themes of a psyberpunk. So this begs the question, other than style, what is the point of Ping Pong’s art? Honestly, I don’t know. This is a criticism I have of Kenji Nakamura’s work since his art is just inane for the sake of being different without actually trying to be an artist and having meaning to what he is doing. Though Ping Pong is not as gratuitous and pretentious as Kenji’s work since the show is trying to replicate Taiyo Matsumoto’s style, which I find must more appealing then Kenji’s.

With all that being said, this anime is truly an “odyssey of conception” (Infinite_fiend 2019). It has, by far, the best presentation of the common sports anime themes. I might even argue that this show’s themes are better than Rock Lee Versus Gaara. But I digress, the story might leave some bored, the art might leave some bewildered or turned off, but I can safely say that the show won't leave you disappointed.