Review of Ping Pong the Animation

Oh yeah, Ping Pong: The Animation. I know I'll get reports and dislikes for this one, but please bear with me, since this is my oppinion. Story: 4/10 The story of Ping Pong is probably one of the poorest executed versions of 'Cliche-Sports-Story Mk I'. There isn't even much I could spoil. What do you expect of the most cliched sportsstory? Take a while and imagine. I'll give you a hint its the same principle used in next to every shounen, as well as probably every sports anime. I don't have much of a problem with such a storyline in itself, but if the story is like that, you'd need someother points to make up for it. And I simply couldn't find anything to make up for it. There is no comedy, no fanservice, no action scenes or anything else which made up for the classical storyline.

Art: 1/10
The original manga is actually from 1995 while the anime aired 2014. Still, at that time anime like Detective Conan or Dragonball also aired. Why would I be ever pleased with that art? In a way this style is really unique. Yes, I definitely haven't seen something like this before.

The background arts -> boring
The character designs -> ugly
The animations -> simply pathetic

If you want an idea of what I mean by ugly character desings, just click one of the pictures above in the characters section. Most of the characters look like they didn't want to spend more time then necessary on the characters. The characters are merely some rough outlines, with some strokes as facial expressions. This can't obviously be enough.
As for why the animation is simply pathetic: I noticed it rather early in one of the table tennis games. The ball nearly went to the ground, but they got it back on the table. In a straight line. From UNDER the table. One of the greatest physic fails of all time.
Sure, this might be intentionally by the drawers. Or it might just as well be a crude mistake.
I personally prefer realistic and fluent movements.
For reference also a reason why the background arts are boring: In the first episodes, the main characters gym is presented. Fair enough. In the later episodes, the rivaling school has the exact same gym. Well with everything which was green in the main heroes gym being purple...
Summed up, the rather low quality of the anime completely distracted me from everything else.
It took several hours for me to get used to it, and by that time the anime was already half over.

Sound: 4/10
The voice acting was basically mediocre. The only voice I even remember is Wengs. I'm personally a fan of using original languages with foreigner characters. And well, Weng, or his seiyu, pulled that one off pretty good. Next, the BGM: unmemorable.
And I mean unmemorable. I watched one of the episodes again, just caring for BGM. And theres next to none to begin with. This one might be for style reasons, making the actually existing ones more important, but those that actually exist are just mediocre tracks sadly.
As for how they are mediocre. They sound generic and could be used in every anime. They don't connect to what the anime wanted to present, or at least thats what it feels like for me.
Last, we have the opening and ending, which both were, to be honest, absolute forgettable as well. Just as the BGM, if there wasn't the video, I would never even imagine that this would be Ping Pongs Opening/Ending, which is really sad.

Character: 4/10
And once again Kong Weng is the guy who saves up some points.
Both his background, as well as his character was well fleshed out and, to top it off, realistic.
I really disliked both main characters, because both only have one or two memorable traits.
Their backgrounds get described every once in a while in some talkes other characters have, and to be honest, those backgrounds are, just as the story, used a hundred times, again.
This is one of the mainreasons I didn't enjoy Ping Pong at all. Everything seems just like we've all seen it before, with nothing which elevates it out of the masses.
The character development, especially Smiles, came off rather forced.
Pecos on the other hand, was the classic shounen development. Its a reasonable one, but once again an abused one.
At least the side characters are, compared to other anime, acceptable.
They have some traits that make them enjoyable, backstories that might make them interesting or developments, which make them more vived. But, here as well, these are the classical ideas, used just another time.

Enjoyment: 1/10
I only laughed once in the whole anime. And thats because of a scene where the arts nearly killed me. I personally hated this stuff, but since its a Top 100 I wanted to give it a shot and also have it completed.

Overall: 3/10
In my opinion one of the poorest anime I've seen so far, and I'm at 100 days of watching anime.
Maybe you're better off trying it for yourself, because I absolutely disliked it and can't possibly recommend it. Maybe you'll come to like something, I absolutely didn't.
If you're interested in sports anime however, just go with Kuroko no Basket. If you're interested in good character development, go with one of KEYs works, either Clannad, Little Busters!, or Angel Beats.