Ping Pong the Animation

Despite being polar opposites, Makoto "Smile" Tsukimoto and Yutaka "Peco" Hoshino have been best friends since childhood. Although the overly confident Peco strives to be the best ping-pong player in the world, he often skips practice, earning the ire of his fellow teammates on the Katase High School ping-pong team. Meanwhile, Smile—in spite of his innate talent for the sport—cannot help but hold back his full strength when playing against others. Through their mutual love for ping-pong, the two have developed a bond that is seemingly unbreakable.

When Peco hears that an ex-national team player from China is coming to Japan, he drags Smile over to rival Tsujido High School to observe them. The subsequent trip leads to a clash between Peco and Kong Wenge, who overwhelmingly defeats the former in one game. Stunned by such a comprehensive loss, Peco finds himself questioning why he plays to begin with. Seeing his potential as a player, Katase's coach begins to train Smile to overcome his hesitation, but he is reluctant to play if it is not for enjoyment.

As the two struggle to find meaning in the sport, a plethora of stronger players—each with their own internal strifes—await them at the inter-high tournament, where only the very best can persevere. But when these young athletes let their unbridled ambition go unchecked, the hardships they face paint a somber reality as they pursue glory.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Hoshino, Yutaka Main

Katayama, Fukujuurou Japanese

Tsukimoto, Makoto Main

Uchiyama, Kouki Japanese

Kong, Wenge Supporting

Bun, Yousei Japanese

Kazama, Ryuuichi Supporting

Sakuya, Shunsuke Japanese

Sakuma, Manabu Supporting

Kimura, Subaru Japanese

Egami Supporting

Tsuda, Kenjirou Japanese

Koizumi, Jou Supporting

Yara, Yuusaku Japanese

Tamura, Obaba Supporting

Nozawa, Masako Japanese

Yurie Supporting

Kawasumi, Ayako Japanese

Kong's Coach Supporting

Ha, Tei Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Fujio, Tsutomu Producer

Shintaku, Youhei Producer

Yuasa, Masaaki Director, Episode Director, Script, Storyboard, Series Composition, Key Animation

Reviews

Jan 25, 2026

Anon_8584

Recommended

A great show with very stylised animation.

While the style may deter most people, the majority would find that the overall storyline and execution trumps any issue, and the horrendously hilarious rotoscoping matches the overall style of the show quite well.

A character-centered storyline exploring the limits of talent, hard work and motivations for being the best at a sport, the plot may not be unique, but it was executed very well in the span of 11 episodes.

Whilst predictable - I honestly predicted every plot point from early on - this wasn’t much of an issue either. With the small backstory to each of the main cast, ... short, yet deep enough such that you can understand the motivations behind their actions, it’s hard to root for only one character. Each character is heavily flawed, and face the consequences of reality. However, you will find yourself rooting for the each of them as they come to terms with reality in their own way, and fight for what they stand for.

The voice cast isn’t particularly remarkable, but as someone who understands both basic Japanese and Mandarin, the casting for the Chinese/Bilingual characters were on-point.The way that they took the kanji of player’s names and used the Chinese words for them was genius. Kazama Ryuuji = Feng jian long yi, Tsukimoto = Yue ben Cheng
Music was alright. It supported the narrative, didn’t stand out in a good or bad way.

Overall, a very enjoyable and uniquely-executed 11 Episodes! I may be a bit of a sucker for good bromance though, admittedly.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Apr 12, 2020

ST63LTH

Mixed Feelings

Ping Pong - The Animation, an underdog sports anime of sorts. Ping Pong is promising from the get-go with its fast paced action and resourceful split-frames leaving no idle moments. The animation style is unique and makes use of realistic movement rather than the typical characters only moving their mouth. The surface level plot behind it is also fairly intriguing with quiet and loud ping pong prodigies MC, Hoshino and Tsukimoto.

Story:
PP:TA leaves nearly no narrative detail unexplained, the story line follows 2 high school boys of opposing personalities and outlooks on life who are tightly connected through the mutual interest of Ping Pong. Their ... high school team participates in the annual inter-high ping pong competition involving schools locally and internationally, their journey and past is shared as they progress closer to the end of the competition fitting as much details about each other as visually and verbally possible. Doing all that in 11 episodes seems like an interesting idea however, it does mean it'll be slower to process detail on a surface level viewing; most likely requiring one to obsess in order to fully grasp what is occurring (unless you're a literature fanatic with fetishes for dense, unique approaches to the medium) As such, naturally Ping Pong isn't my type of sporting entertainment so it didn't interest me as much. 5/10...

Art & Sound:
I've been searching through forums to find why this series is well praised despite its vulnerability to age and change in generations. The art style, mimics a hand-drawn rotorscoped version of real life, there are no fancy ecchi characters or powerful aura that emitts from powerful opponents visually which means this series stays true to life and rather considers the use of different types of film techniques (wide angle, close up etc.) to portray action. That being said, there are a few things that this series may lack in terms of art: shading is very minimal even toward the climax of the series there weren't many hints toward shading which made the characters feel unrealistic and also the smoothness of the animation was questionable for some scenes. Overall art could be considered a 6/10; Sound didn't excel as much either since it is expected to be naturally well constructed 6/10.

Character:
The one aspect this series excelled phenomenally at was the character development. I always wondered why Tsukimoto's nickname was Smile since his classmates explained that he never smiles and I took that as the textbook reason but the person who began nicknaming him was Hoshino and the main reason was because he actually smiled while learning to play Ping Pong after he had taught Tsukimoto how to play. That level of detail was maintained at the end of the series and could have easily been missed if it was skipped over for a few seconds. The attention to character development in Ping Pong the animation is out of this world, even toward the end character development was maintained with close precision. It's amazing that level of detail would be maintained across all 11 episodes without a drop in quality. 10/10 in character development

Enjoyment:
Despite being an underdog of sports anime, Ping Pong establishes more of the characters (they even paid attention to using chinese VA as international ping pong opponents instead of using English which was surprising.) However, I personally couldn't find the sports premise as entertaining as a racing anime such as initial D or Kuroko no Basket because they give the viewer comic relief and are tailored to the user-satisfaction. As such, I'd rate 4/10 in terms of enjoyment (I still watched it though, just to give it a chance haha)

Thanks for reading :)

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Dec 25, 2025

pickyviewer

Not Recommended

Funny

Looking past the hideous art style, I wanted to like this show more than I actually do. I would have dropped it after episode 5 if it weren’t for Kong, my favorite character. He reappeared in episode 8, so I hung on until the end. Episode 10 was the first time I felt "fun" watching the show, and then the final episode actually wrapped everything up nicely.

The show was 40% sports 60% character arcs, but the pacing was slow. I essentially disliked half of the cast for the first 2/3 of the show. Kong and Akuma had the tightest narratives and clear internal struggles. I ... understood what the show was trying to say with the other characters, but I found logical inconsistencies in their storytelling. The payoff at the end took too long to arrive; I didn't need 2-3 episodes worth of B-roll and subplots, including one character’s weird incest romance. I also didn't need to hear a side character remark for the umpteenth time that Smile was a ping pong monster murder machine - I wished they showed that rather than telling us over and over again.

Each character grapples with what ping pong means to them. Why do they want to win? Why do they work so hard? Do they like to play? Who are they playing for? The answer is rooted in their individual life experiences. Kong faces high stakes pressure fueling his desire to win. The way he deals with his trials and tribulations is so compelling, and he changes so much as a person by the end of the show.

Relationships are supposed to be a core theme, but the friends in this show supported each other less than their rivals did. It was hard to understand the utter dearth of empathy between the main character and his childhood friend. I thought their falling out was not properly explained. Smile and his coach’s relationship was also strange, since they weren't on the same wavelength in terms of competitive drive and intrinsic motivation.

One gripe that I have about the show is the casual racism. Kong is frequently referred to as “China”, not “Chinese guy” or “Chinese player”, just the entire country. His identity is part of his character development, but I don't care for this offensive delivery. There was also a stereotype about black people being good at dancing, in order to combat stereotypes (the irony). Who greenlit this?

At least the soundtrack was good, especially the electronic music. The rough animation matches the unhinged art style. I liked the stylistic choices such as animating arrows as the ball travels between players.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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