Review of Ping Pong the Animation

About 6 years ago I was blown away by Misaki Yuasawa’s film “The Night is Short Walk on Girl”. The movie used the medium of animation perfectly to create an extremely fun and vibrant story that overwhelmed me on my first viewing. It made me want to get into animation and art more than ever and was instantly catapulted into one of my favorite movies of all time. Since then I have seen a lot of other of Yuasawa’s work and while enjoyable, none of them made me as giddy as watching that movie for the first time. That is until I watched this anime. Iknew before going in that this was a very highly-rated show and it coming from one of my favorite anime directors I had high hopes. Those hopes continuously soared as I went through the series. The amount of creativity in the presentation of this show is mind-boggling. You would be hard-pressed to find shots that weren’t from a dynamic angle or doing a creative depiction of character interactions. Simply watching the visuals left me endlessly entertained. It’s crazy how a show about playing Ping Pong has some of the best shot compositions I have ever seen in an anime.

The story itself at the start seems like it would follow the lead of so many other sports stories. The story subverts itself by instead finding happiness in the things you enjoy. Pushing yourself to be the very best is not worth it if in the process you lose the love you once had for your hobby. These themes are depicted in bombastic animations where the characters are shown pushing themselves to the brink with raw emotions on their face.

This anime is another reminder of my immense love for the medium of animation and a lesson on how to enjoy the things you love. I want to push harder in the hobbies I love but I also need to know not to push myself into hating it. This is definitely one of my favorite anime and one I will think about regularly for a long time.