Ping Pong The Animation

It's not exactly mainstream and it's not for everyone in every mood. The characters are not animated as likable characters, but rather as unlikable stick figures. So what? It's still got something going for it. It's got a twist. There's experimentation with expression, the screen breaks up into individual windows like a manga, but it's all the more intense for it. It's fast-paced, it doesn't get bogged down with details, yet it's not flat. Quite the opposite. We get to know the ping pong players, find out their motivations, discover what's inside them. The dialogue flows; if you're not paying attention, you won't end up "seeing" the characters. This experiment is a success. Anyway, my favorite character is the player who gets beaten by Tsukimoto right at the beginning, and then he tries different things. It starts on the beach. (11.02.2021)

When two eccentric masters of their art - anime director Masaaki Juasa and manga artist Taiyō Matsumoto - join forces, it is probably a safe bet that the result of them working together will be unmissable among the season's other offerings. I am also very glad that this is unmissable not only in terms of the audiovisual experience, as one would expect, but also that the creators have taken great care regarding what they actually wanted to portray. Ping Pong the Animation is not simply just about telling a story about the game of table tennis - everything in the show is all about the game. Juasa works hand in hand with the audiovisual side of the story, exploring to the very limit how much space can be minimized to fully tell the narrative. Dialogue flies by at the speed of a ping-pong ball after being hit, the progress of a match or important changes in character development are told sequentially through split-screen narrative, and the way movement is captured in unison with the soundtrack is a chapter in itself. The strength of Matsumoto’s manga, apart from his distinctive art style, is how much care he takes in keeping the realism of the dialogue to portray the depth of the characters and their gradual development - this aspect is preserved so well here. I completely understand that the audiovisual and narrative eccentricities here may not be easy to take in for everyone - indeed, I was not so impressed with Ping Pong the Animation the first time around, nor did I finish it - but the second time around, it won me over immediately. If I had tried to find any fault with it, I would have certainly succeeded, but why try at all when the positives clearly outweigh the negatives? If you are looking for something fresh and unconventional in the world of anime, I can only recommend it. (23.01.2020)