Review of Ping Pong the Animation
Ping-pong the animation, I don't know where to begin. First of all, I always wanted to watch this anime because of the good rating, and I'm not a big fan of sports anime. MAY CONTAIN VERY MINOR SPOILERS (but won't affect your watch) ^^ Something I have to mention is that I played ping-pong myself a couple of years, and everything they say in the anime about the sport isn't exaggerated and stays true to the sport (although it represented older styled TT), it made me want to to play again. At first, the the pacing is a bit slow, but as the show goes onyou understand why, everything grows so well and connects so well, it's just so satisfying to watch. The story itself was very good (I enjoyed it a lot), I can't think of a way of how (with these settings) the story could have been better.
As you can see (if you have watched the trailer or see the art covers) the art itself is very unique, but I think that's what makes the anime better, I wouldn't change the art one bit, if you don't like it at first, but like good anime, it's worth the sacrifice. As for me, I really liked the art, it was really free-minded and paced, it grew on me as I continued to watch the series.
The sound itself is pretty good, you can hear very well the ping-pong shots, quality of sound and voices are also normal, ost is pretty decent, op and ed are very good, nothing really bad to say about it.
The characters are what made the most of the show for me (besides the fact that it was about ping-pong), you don't really get why they act like they do at first, but each character (for an 11 episode anime) have a lot of interesting end developed backstory that merges very well with the story. Even the side characters were interesting and added humour, I really liked every single character at the end of the series.
Overall I give 10/10 because of all these aspects and my personal attachment to Table tennis, I enjoyed a lot this series and would certainly re-watch! I highly recommend the anime if you like a slow paced but fully grown story (satisfying) and want to watch a good story. Anyone that is hesitating to watch this should definitively give it a try!