I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – in anime, pedigree almost always wins out. My headline for this post was going to be something along the lines of “Another wonderful NoitaminA anime finishes its run, and immediately joins the ranks of the forgotten”. The list of such […] Read more
Who knew that Peco was Saint George all along? I can’t say this turn of events has been anything but predictable – the true course of Ping Pong has been laid in for much of the series, and it was only a question of how we were going to get […] Read more
What defines us – what we are, or how we’re viewed by others? Ping Pong is certainly an interesting study in contrasts. It’s like no other sports anime in so many ways, but structurally it definitely follows the rules – in fact it’s more of a boxing series than anything […] Read more
In case anyone forgets, Ping Pong steps up to remind us that yes, this is in fact a sports anime. If there’s a drawback to populating a series mostly with interesting and likeable people – especially a sports series – it’s that it can be an avalanche of mixed emotions. […] Read more
An awful lot of puzzle pieces were slotted into place this week. Among the many things I admire about Ping Pong, foremost is that it’s simply a marvel of good writing. This is an extremely busy story – it pinballs (or ping pongs, if you prefer) from character to character […] Read more
There’s just nothing about Ping Pong that’s remotely conventional. Boy, is this show ever ugly. Stylistic choices aside, this is some of the most bare-bones art and animation I’ve seen in any anime – we’re talking about stuff approaching the level of the Togashi doodles here. I’m not sure whether […] Read more
Some series just boil down to that old carnival sign on the wall in The John Laroquette Show: “This is a dark ride”. What a fascinating and subtle series Ping Pong is. There aren’t many series about which I would use the term “deep”, but this one is – there […] Read more
There’s an economy to Ping Pong that I find truly admirable, but that sure isn’t all I like about it. It strikes me that for someone who went into this series with no preconceptions whatsoever – about the sport of table tennis, about anime, about Yuasa Masaaki – Ping Pong […] Read more
The sport of Ping Pong isn’t the only thing one could learn a lot about from watching this series. Absolutely fascinating, this show is – subtle, intense, funny, challenging. It’s ugly as Yuasa anime usually are, but it has a kind of beauty to it too – the kind of […] Read more
Ping Pong and Nanana are both anime in the same way a Great Dane and a Chihuahua are both the same species. It’s almost as if Yamamoto Kouji and the team at Fuji TV looked at the schedule for Spring 2014 and said, “OK, we’re going to have two shows […] Read more