Review of Ping Pong the Animation

"If you watch only one sports anime this year, it should be Ping Pong." -AnimeNewsNetwork (2014) Ping Pong The Animation is an anime for the veterans. It may not be suitable for the new viewers. No, not because it's story is tricky to catch, but because of it's art style. You thought this year's anime 'Mob Psycho 100' had the worst art style? One is the worst artist amongst all the mangakas? Think again. Also check out the trailer to get a good idea. Ok, so art is not so good, so why am I suggesting this? Because this is one of the best anime Ihave ever seen that concludes the story in 13 or less episodes. Most importantly, have you ever seen a sports anime from the psychological genre except "One Outs"? Yes, that's right. This is one of the only two psycho-sports anime that exists! Talk about rare!
This is a masterpice example of psychological sports anime.

Ping Pong is a charecter driven anime so I will talk about the charecters mostly.
The anime introduces us with two ping pong geniuses called Tsukimoto, Makoto (Smile) and Hoshino, Yutaka (Peco). Including them there are four key charecters in the show.

"Chant these words three times in your mind!"
"A Hero appears!" "A Hero appears!" "A Hero apears!"
"Do that, and I'll come to you!"
This is the motivation that drives Smiles. He believes in real life and in ping pong court there is a hero who will save him. Smiles is a charecter who never smiles. So, why was he nicknamed as smiles? Because when he used to play ping pong, he smiled like crazy. But eventually he stopped smiling because he stopped enjoying ping pong, he still played like a pro.
Then there is Peco who don't care anything in the world but a natural ping pong player. Peco won a lots of tournaments at a very early age and used to think that no one can beat him.
Then their rival school brings in a transfer student from the land of ping pong itself, named Kong, Wenge (China). Kong is actually a tragic hero who is unofficially exiled by his country as he lost an important match in his country. And to him pingpong was life, and in china there are so many talents in the sports that it's very hard to keep up. So, it is his last chance in japan to prove himself by beating the best player of the country.
And the last key charecter of the show is Kazama, Ryuuichi (Dragon). He is the most hard working player to whom losing is not an option. His charecter has similarities with Akashi from Kuroko no Basket.

With so many well made charecters the anime pretty much shows all the sides of the sport. The struggle of a hard-worker, the monotony of a genius and those who want to reach their level have been shown so perfectly, in only 11 episodes! After finishing I thought I have seen something that has over 25 episodes!
The conversations are almost poetic. Every charecter had their own charm. The soundtrack was perfectly synced with the anime.