Review of Ping Pong the Animation
Ping pong - or, rather, table tennis - will forever remind me of the dissatisfying lunch-times I expended in fruitlessly playing it with my school fellows on a rainy day. To me it was the equivalent of table football; a miniaturized version of an actual sport intended less for the pursuit of physical glory and excellence than the sake of sheer enjoyment, accessible even to those who lacked the prowess and stamina required to partake in the full-sized namesakes. In short, a mere game, no more noble or dignified than Monopoly or MMORPGs. It wasn’t until my first excursion to East Asia than I became awareof the magnitude it possessed in the lives of some people. Teaching English at a university in China, the topic of ‘sports’ predictably reared its head for one day of the two-week crash course I was flailing my way through. And invariably, ‘table tennis’ was mentioned - and not once, fleetingly tacked onto a list of nouns. Indeed, in games of pictionary I hosted to pass the time as innocuously as possible, the word ‘table tennis’ would be shrieked before even the slightest smudge of chalk had attempted to delineate the designated word. The frequency with which a student mistakenly presumed table tennis to be the selected piece of vocabulary reached such absurd proportions that it turned into somewhat of a running-joke, where even on days when the curriculum stipulated topics unrelated to sport, table tennis was self-satirically invoked.
“Why”, I asked the class one day, “is there such an unusual interest in table tennis?”
“Because,” one plucky student in the front-row answered, “it is our national sport.”
“And so,” I followed-up, “are you the best in the world at it?”
“Yes,” he sniggeringly replied, “much better than the Japanese.”
Imagine my delight, then, when I discovered an anime about table tennis that included a Chinese character and, furthermore, was directed by Masaaki Yuasa, the mastermind behind the animated adaption of The Tatami Galaxy.
The shared aesthetic of the two shows is the first registered thought upon one's initial viewing - before character or story or soundtrack can make themselves known, one is smacked by the ambivalence of watching an anime that doesn't look at all like an anime. This has been known to deter some - including a rather poetically-adverse housemate of mine - before the first episode is even over, but it enchanted me, and entranced me into a universe that only the works of Yuasa could inhabit. The artwork is scruffy, cartoonish, and two-dimensional. A cursory evaluation would make one think that it was drawn in haste, without finesse. And yet
it also struck me as sinister, bleak, and withering: the markings of a comfortless world.
And this is perfect - because this is the crux of the show. There is no comfort to be found anywhere. A grand purpose is usually where we think we will find a simulacrum of meaning in this world of ours - to be a writer, a musician, a baker, a politician, a husband, a wife, a parent, a capitalist, a saviour - and a lot of anime side-steps answering any big existential questions by ascribing their characters these sorts of teleologies that more often than not define the experience of what you're watching. But in Ping Pong The Animation the chosen purpose of the characters, table tennis, proves to be too elusive for most of them to grab ahold of (they're either too bad, too old, too injured, or don't care enough), and even the ones who (however temporarily) succeed in the sport (for, yes, that is what table tennis qualifies as outside of this parochial island I am stranded on) never quite manage to find a true sense of completion or fulfillment.
The first two character we are introduced to are Makoto "Smile" Tsukimoto, and his childhood friend, Yukata "Peco" Hoshino. They have interlinking backstories that are revealed in mystifying patches that have us trying to scramble together some sort of picture of their respective motives for playing the sport. We're then treated to a fairly appreciable range of other characters, all of whom have their backstories sufficiently fleshed-out despite the eleven-episode limit placed on the series. This means that no times is wasted, which on the one hand is good, but on the other isn't as the lack of space produces a rather scrambled effect (perhaps, I venture now, the purpose) and by leaving no time to reflect or breath unintentionally nullifies the rather profound message that lies at the heart of the narrative.
The anime contained many devices parallel to your run-of-the-mill pre-teen shounen, for behind the surrealistic imagery stands a story about a selection of young men all competing to become the best (besides, at first, "Smile", who is largely apathetic about winning and losing, and will forfeit matches in order to save the pride of his opponent), and who have to finish in the final four of their regional tournament in order to progress onto the next level of play. Our heroes battle it out for a shot at the title - cue training montages, and esoteric talk of special moves or abilities that are being honed - but first they must come face-to-face with the indomitable, menacing, seemingly invincible cadre that comprises the main rival school, and they have a grand master helping them out, and etc., etc., etc,. It would not be too inconceivable for one to believe that Ping Pong The Animation was written by the team who produced Beyblade after they'd spent six months holed up in a shed sniffing glue.
Living in the post-postmodern era, one can never be too sure that irony isn't afoot, and I half-suspect Ping Pong of parodying the hackneyed tropes of table-top shounen. But what is of real virtue about this anime is that it makes so many serious, thought-provoking points about the concept of sport itself and, by extension, of life itself. It questions more than any other media I've ever experienced: what is the point of playing sport? It was as if by the end of the final episode it envisioned the sort of world where Goku and all the other Z-fighters had been spontaneously sapped of their fighting abilities, and it was declared that there would never be a threat to Earth ever again, and they were now all struggling to find new identities whilst looking rather foolish in the process of doing so.
Parody or not, however, I can't stomach the tropes that usually accompany shounen, and for that I found myself faintly bored during some of the matches - the outcomes of which were all too predictable (though perhaps that was, again, the point). There's a heartening dollop of comedy that finds its greatest expression through the Japan-China rivalry that, as I have experienced first-hand, is all too fierce. But I'm afraid, in spite of the grandeur of the animation and the pleasingly didactic nature of the show, I'm going to award it a 7, for it at times failed at the ultimate goal: entertainment.