Ping Pong the Animation

Ping Pong the Animation.

It's one of those series that is either going to get over-the-top praise or disdain from it's watchers, for me it was simple disappointment.

Story: 5
-Well like most sports anime the story is not too heavy. However Ping Pong's biggest problem is that the story and how it plays out has been done before, several times in fact. You can see the ending from the start and every "twist" isn't all that surprising once you get to the end. I was not entertained when it came to the story and it's presentation.
NOTE: I do not take away points for it being a ... sports anime and having a sports-themed story. I take away points for unoriginal and poor presentation.

Art: 7
-I'd say the art is mediocre. Not because "it's not HD so it sucks" but because funimation purposefully made the anime this way, but still re-used animation within the first few episodes. I actually like this type of animation if it's done right, but way too many times in this series is it not. Funimation clearly had the budget for this anime, but chose to make several scenes look out of place and terrible because they didn't know what they were doing or didn't care.
NOTE: The art style fits well with the theme.

Sound: 4
-It's there and not much else. Nothing outside of your generic background music and nothing you'll even remember in T-minus 5 minutes.(already forgot).

Characters: 7
-Now the characters in this show are pretty well done. I'd like to say they are "deep" but they really weren't. Only Hoshino and Tsukimoto really stood out, as everyone else became X, Y, or Z stereotype. That being said, Hoshino and Tsukimoto were deep in accordance to the story but not as characters themselves. "One track mind" would describe the entire youth of this cast. However there interactions are at least midly entertaining.

Enjoyment: 6
I can't say I enjoyed my time watching this series more than the general mediocre anime. It's not exactly entertaining per episode, I've seen the entire story/characters done before in other series(ala prince of tennis), and to be honest the ending/starting episodes were the only parts I think were worth the watch.


Overall: 5

Ping Pong the Animation is a series that presents a rather mediocre product to an already saturated genre. The art style differentiates it, but does not make it shine.

I'd recommend it to people who have not watched other sports series.


Note: this is all my opinion, but I stand by that opinion 100%.

Ping Pong The Animation tries its best, I’ll say that much, someone put a lot of effort and deliberation into making this good, and not just another formulaic sports anime with no motive other than money, and so thanks for trying, but the fact of the matter is, despite its best efforts, it’s not especially enjoyable.
For starters, the animation, which I’m going to go on record saying is quite genuinely awful, though I’m sure plenty would disagree with me on the matter, and will instead tell me that it’s instead experimental or unconventional, but to me it’s just plain bad. The characters are genuinely ... ugly, they move like cheaply made puppets, and a lot of times you can really see where they were cutting corners. Take one instance, in which someone was crying, but you would have no idea based upon their face, and their whole body remained complete static, and even within that static image of them, there was no hint of sadness within their face, if not the tears you would not begin to guess this character was feeling anything at all. Or another, in which a full 30 second shot consisted entirely of the same second of animation, while I’m sure many will agree to disagree, and all things considered you’ll just have to look at it yourself and make up your own mind, but to me at least, the animation was downright repulsive, which hampered my experience, to put it mildly.

As for the actual story, as one may infer from the title, it is about a group of blokes playing ping pong for their school team, which is apparently a really big deal, in my high school experience, the only team that anyone gave the slightest fucketh about was the football team, but it seems in Japan being on the ping pong team in your high school is hardly a step down from playing in the Olympics, they fly to international tournaments, they’ve got all sorts of coaches and these people really give it their all, the Chinese fella in particular, he acted like if he lost he’d get sent to the gulag, but, point aside, they play ping pong, and it’s a main part of the show, there is no shortage of pinging of the pongs, and I suppose they do a reasonably good job of keeping it interesting, and showing that there’s a lot more strategy in a game as basic as ping pong is than you’d perhaps expect, but this focus is not exclusive, and the personal lives and emotions of the characters are shown as well. And, somehow, they managed to give the characters actual nuance, rather than making them completely melodramatic, because people still like soap operas, for some alien reason. So, the characters are reasonably interesting, but truth be told, I’d rather they just went with one route or the other, character or sport, we’re shown these somewhat interesting characters, though it would be nice if at least one of them wasn’t a complete asshole, but, we’ve got them, yet not a huge amount is done with them on account of the fact that they have to spend a large proportion of their time playing ping pong, which isn’t bad necessarily, the ping pong matches weren’t boring, but I was more interested in the characters than the game, the game holds metaphorical importance and such, fair enough, but I would’ve given priority to the characters, because they are the more interesting lot, despite the depth of ping pong, there is rather little to continue to keep it fresh when the game is so static, there are less variables than a game like football or mahjong, but it’s still fine, and really, if there’s one word to describe Ping Pong, it’s fine. Taking the animation out of the equation, it doesn’t have anything egregiously bad, but it’s not got anything that good either, it has no major strengths, but no major weaknesses either, them playing ping pong is fine, the characters themselves are fine, but neither of them have anything to majorly interest the viewer, this isn’t to say it’s a bad watch, just a very average one – it is exceptionally unexceptional.

I probaby would've given it a 9/10 if it didn't get so utterly predictable at the end, with the final two episodes covering the second Interhigh prelims tournament. The characters were really good and authentic, for the most part, but the way they decided to make Peco a literal God of table tennis was just so frustrating and cliche and lost any sense of realism, just turned it from an interesting story about competing at the highest level to any old superpower shounen. I rate Ping Pong the Animation a Dissapointing / 10. It seriously could've been one of my favorite shows of all time ... if not for that so stupid ending.

Ping Pong the Animation is a hard anime to sell. Especially if you aren't into the sport of ping pong in the 1st place. That being said, the first 3 to 4 episodes were incredibly boring because the main charachters were dragging the plot around. One, due to his lack of emotion and the other due to too much emotion. The first half is hard to enjoy

The 2nd half of the anime is where it truly shines. In the second half you can see some good, not great charachter development. The story becomes more believable, the charachters true motivations come ... to light, and it makes everything feel justified. The second half of this series is easy to enjoy, makes you want to root for everyone, and pumps you up as a viewer.

I don't really have a comment about the art because it was consistent throughout. That being said, I'll give the animation staff props for giving us as viewers a unique art style that really fits this anime better than any that it normally would. So, props to that.

The music in this series is almost forgettable. The OP and ED aren't memorable to me at all. The one caveate that I have in regards to the music is the tune that keeps being hummed through out the series. I believe it was called "The Heroes Song." The Heroes song is a delightful, and simplistic piece that gives you as a viewer hope for better days, just like a hero would.

All of that being said. If this series was 2 separate seasons I would have been able to give it a better rating. The reason why I say that is because, the pacing threw me off on the entire series. The first 4 or 5 episodes take place in the span of a year, but then next thing you know episodes 6-11 take place over the course of the 2nd year. If the writers could have made the series a pair of 6 episode runs, I believe it would have been to the benefit of all the viewers.

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 :)

1. the animation andd artstyle is terrible/atrocious/barbaric/heinous/godawful/grody/prodigious/beastly (my little brother (9 years old btw) could draw better (with crayolas btw(only primary colors btw(he is color blind btw(like shouko from koe no katachi(better show btw)))))))))))))))))

but the character designs are very cool(i love corsola and the ugly bastards)

2.the voice acting sounds weird(especially that kong guy)

3 i loves the music ( especially the opening)

4. the story was very unique. I really loved the character development :).I really loved the realism. I really love ping pong.

... 5.leffen was wrong https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9a2tWRF_mM

do not watch this show your not going to enjoy it! \<I=I>/



-BALLER42 │isekaifan42

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