Review of Scorching Ping Pong Girls
Saki meets Ping Pong!...no seriously. Shakunetsu no Takkyuu Musume at first might look like your average "cute girls doing cute things" just add ping pong to the mix, but for what Shakunetsu no Takkyuu Musume shows in the foreground, Shakunetsu no Takkyuu Musume shows ALOT more in it's background than you realize. Shakunetsu no Takkyuu Musume focuses on Koyori Tsumujikaze voiced by Yumiri Hanamori, a shy transfer student who joins Suzumegahara's ping pong club, naturally we quickly realizes that Koyori is an amazing table tennis player even rivaling the best player of the club Agari Kamiya voiced by Minami Tanaka, later on the Suzumegahara ping pong clubgoes into the tournament and high speed ping pong action ensues, that really is the basis of Shakunetsu no Takkyuu Musume, but where the plot lacks, the characters is where it is at.
In terms of characters, the main cast of the Suzumegahara main core members of Hokuto Itsumo voiced by Yuuki Kuwahara, Agari Kamiya, Mune Oomune voiced by Ayaka Imamura, Hanabi Tenka voiced by Marika Kouno, the newbie transfer student Koyori Tsumujikaze and Kiruka Ushirode voiced by Hisako Tojo. Let's get analyzing!. Hokuto is a defensive player who essentially analyzes her opponent's angle and tries to pull the ball outside of her opponents range, her blue hair and her shy yet knowledgeable personality fits into her "battle style". Munemune has an aggressive yet error-prone style and is therefore an excellent smasher. Hanabi is the speedy fighter and is the second to almost best speedster fighter in the club, her yellow hair and her outright genki personality fits into her "battle style". Koyori, our ace and her red hair brings semblance to "main protagonist" status, she although her personality doesn't match with her battle style, her "battle style" essentially allows her to adapt to ANY of her opponents play style...she however "doesn't ALL WIN", she still has some weaknesses actually focusing on her shy personality. Agari having her purple hair and twintails...well she is a very prideful and tsundere character, her play-style focuses more on a jack of all trades and using her kind of "smashes" for the deal-breaker, because of this Agari and Koyori have good battle style chemistry even if their personalities are diametric opposites. Finally we the captain of the Suzumegahara ping pong club Kiruka, who focuses on a unique kind of "chop" and although her battle style is more calculated, she however doesn't have any "killer shots", she and Mune are also Doubles Partners which makes them a double pair to be reckoned with what with both of them covering each others weaknesses. Really what this analyzes was getting at is that even if the plot is really simple, it is the characters and their character and battle style chemistry whether they are fighting against one of their own or another opponent and heck even finding out the Suzumegahara's opponents they face and THEIR unique battle style which affects their personality and battle style makes the characters unique across the board. Shakunetsu no Takkyuu Musume's definitely lies in it's characters. See why LA said at the beginning of this review, that it's like Saki meets Ping Pong?.
LA talked more the characters game-wise than the characters themselves, let's start with Hokuto and Hanabi, they themselves gets character development through their forming of their friendship. Hanabi is your hyper genki to Hokuto's deadpan, however the one problem with Hokuto is her "Panties" gag, in which she "knows" what kind of panties each of the character wear and it converges into nickname basis, it depends if you like this gag as a weird quirk for her, as for LA...LA found it quite annoying much like how Agari points it out. Hokuto even with this gag, it doesn't destroy her character as her backstory helps her get out of the annoying character and because of this, Hanabi also gets a bonus in development because of Hokuto. On speaking of Agari, she at first is extremely prideful of her skills and becomes quite jealous of Koyori and becomes her defining trait, thankfully once she realizes Koyori's "just have fun and have a great game" belief, she gets MUCH better and realizes that she can get even better and her prideful, jealous trait taken away and turned into a "working ace" and yeah she became LA's favourite character due to her huge development. Koyori gets some but it's more or less goes back to her philosophy of "just have fun" and it does get conflicted in one battle but nonetheless her meek demeanor doesn't really change but her getting some ping pong friends and her drive to have fun makes her an ok dimension character. Finally we have Munemune and Kiruka, they too get their character development similar to Hokuto and Hanabi, but in greater detail but it's in more of a focus to their battle styles and WHY they want to go to Nationals and once again the similarities of Hokuto's running gag, Munemune has one too and it's a bit less annoying than Hokuto's, but nonetheless, Munemune's running gag is her big boobs -sigh- and the multitudes of characters that recognizes it...again less annoying than Hokuto's. Nonetheless, these characters do develop and helps outside of the great ping ping battles.
There are some more or less awkward fanservice mainly from Hokuto's "I know what panties your wearing" (no seriously), but the only other fanservice Shakunetsu no Takkyuu Musume has are well, but it's not as blatant, there is fanservice it's just not the focus, it's more focused on the characters and the ping pong battles. The only contextual fanservice LA rather endorsed was the yuri undertones towards the main cast especially Koyori and Agari "friendly rivalry".
The ping pong battles has it's ups and downs, the strengths comes from the variety of characters "superpowered ping pong abilities" and how they work and conflict with each other a la "Saki mahjong battle" and LA can clearly see that the animation and detail worked into that. The weaknesses comes from the truncatedness of the battles and LA does get it as it has 4 to 5 matches lastly the first to reach 11 points for each match, yeah LA can see why, but nonetheless some of the opponents and battles felt truncated even more on how "fast" the matches go (this is more or less LA saying LA wanted to see more of the match really), but it does well to balance each other out because of each of the strengths and weakness of the ping pong battles. LA most definitely thought that the anime's strengths definitely goes to it's ping pong battles and where the attraction to the anime goes to.
The animation by Kinema Citrus, if anything LA thought that the matches were the best presented animation, sure it's ping pong but once the superpowers comes in, the adrenaline does add in at the same time, the character designs does have the "marshmallow"-esque facial designs but average body designs, but the character accessories does add in some unique character designs. It does come in that the character designs are moe, but they do try to fanservice these characters through sweating and fanservicey-character-jabbing so LA thinks that from this the fanservice is kinda misguided in some respects because of it, but not to the point of being distracting...ok maybe a little, but still, even with the puni-ish character designs with good match animation, it more or less compensated itself into making the animation "ok" at best.
The voice acting has some decent voice acting all round, from the stereotypical archetype character roles, genki, deadpan, rival etc. with some ignorable squeakers Yumiri Hanamori as Koyori and Marika Kouno as Hanabi. Standouts towards Shakunetsu no Takkyuu Musume's vocal cast would go to Minami Tanaka as the wide-vocal ranged Agari and LA's wild card favourite Shiori Izawa as Kururi a rival Koyori faces.
The ending really left on a non-conclusive note with hints littered throughout the final episode, making sense as Suzumegahara hardly entered their tournament stage by the end of the anime and rather went from training their own club and had training sessions with other more powerful school clubs to their own training camp by the end of the anime's run. But nonetheless even as LA says it this way, it's not as the anime left us with "nothing" by the end of it and IT DID go somewhere definitely character-wise. So if Shakunetsu no Takkyuu Musume can get another season, LA wouldn't mind it at all. Yes the ending left on a rather dull note and threw hints in trying to conitue the anime with another season or *cough* read the web manga *cough* ending, LA didn't really think this kind of was a dealbreaker into being "horrible" as LA was kinda expecting this kind of ending and hell Shakunetsu no Takkyuu Musume's character strengths definitely won LA over with this kind of ending.
Shakunetsu no Takkyuu Musume may look like another cute girls doing ping pong with it's usual structure of a sports anime, but in the background shows how in the line of ping pong that even characters with flaws can improve and not be one-trick ponies, also for Koyori is the good old "have fun!" philosophy added to it. Shakunetsu no Takkyuu Musume like all media has it's flaws but for LA, Shakunetsu no Takkyuu Musume saved itself with some solid character development from their strengths and flaws (another words, acknowledge they're not perfect and need to improve is the "flaw" LA is trying to say) they have in many elements of anime as well as the adrenaline packed ping pong matches. LA won't say this is one of LA"s guilty pleasures of Fall 2016, but it's a decent anime nonetheless if fans of the "all girls sports anime with superpowered players" is anything to go by.