©Taiyou Matsumoto, Shogakukan / PingPong The Animation Committee.
Licensed by FUNimation® Productions, Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Well, I’m a little late posting it this time, but yep, I’m doing another simulcast this season: Ping Pong the Animation.
It’s based on the 1990s manga Ping Pong, which was popular enough to get a live-action film you may have seen (I’ve read the manga in Japanese, but I’m waiting to watch the movie’s English-language release until I’m done with the TV show, to avoid accidentally copying it). Like many sports anime, it’s a coming-of-age story about high school boys, but it’s got some intriguing differences as well.
First and foremost, the art style. It’s an unusual one: stylized rather than realistic, but not in the overly pretty way you so often see, and not in the cartoony way either. It’s simultaneously colorful and washed-out. And above all, it fits the original story more perfectly than I could have dreamed. The manga has a very sketch-like, rough quality that’s hard to maintain the feel of in animation. This really works, and at the same time its unreal components lend themselves well to the “hero” daydreams the main character has. It’s not a style I’ve liked much elsewhere, but I’m enjoying it a lot here.
The part that’s great except for how rough it is on me: it is really hard-core about its sport. Two episodes have aired so far, and both of them required me to learn a lot in a short time… which has been especially challenging in the case of table tennis, because to my surprise, there is evidently no Japanese<>English table tennis glossary in existence. ;_; So, you guessed it, I am having to learn the game in two languages and then try to figure out what corresponds to what, plus what’s unique in each language and doesn’t correspond to anything. After the relaxing Nobunagun, this is a far more difficult project. (If any of you are table tennis experts, let me know!)
Episodes 1 & 2 are up now at the FUNimation site, and Episode 1 is up on Hulu. If you’re a paid member of funimation.com, you can watch each week’s episode subtitled day and date with the Japanese broadcast. If not, you can watch the episodes for free starting one week after that. These one-week delayed episodes are free to watch both on FUNimation and Hulu’s sites.
I am so glad to see someone translating this series who will take it as seriously as you. Matsumoto Taiyou has long been one of my favorite artists, and it’s clear to me after two episodes that this series is going to be faithful to the spirit and style of his work.
Coincidentally, just days ago I finished watching the brilliant 1973 anime adaptation of the classic tennis manga “Ace o Nerae / Aim for the Ace”, which was clearly an influence on Mr. Matsumoto – as it was on so many people.
Not sure if you’re allowed to reveal this, but I’m wondering how many episodes the full Ping Pong series will be?
Oh, and another question… do you know what demographic this series is marketed to in Japan? It seems like it a bit of an outlier compared to, well, just about everything else in the new season.
Hi deleuzean, thank you for the compliment! Yes, it’s quite a faithful adaptation, even taking much of its dialogue directly from the original manga.
It’s been announced by the TV station on their Japanese website as 11 episodes in total. That’s pretty standard for a noitaminA show as well.
Which leads into your other question–yes, it is definitely an outlier! But that’s also thanks to noitaminA. The “noitaminA block” is a Thursday programming block by Fuji TV, and in my opinion it’s responsible for a hefty chunk of the interesting anime coming out in the past several years, because it’s almost 100% outliers. Fuji TV really does different things with this than most everybody else is doing (its shows are in partnership with studios like Aniplex and Production I.G), and it doesn’t go the harem or moe route either. I think if you enjoy more unusual-flavor stuff, you’ll probably get a kick out of a lot of their work. Examples: Princess Jellyfish, PSYCHO-PASS, Kids on the Slope, etc. (Edit: I fixed this link to the Hulu page.)
Thanks again for commenting. I hope you enjoy watching Ping Pong each week! ^_^
Thanks for the info and recommendations! Kids on the Slope in particular looks fantastic!
I don’t know if you travel for the convention season, but if so I’ll be giving a presentation at Anime Central in Chicago on May 16th called “Evangelion: Investigating its History and Meaning,” which I’m hoping will be good ^_^
I’m not attending any conventions this season, but I gave a few panels at ACen last year and really liked it. Very nice con. Have fun!