My current relationship with Japanese animation is best described by the phrase: passion has passed, but love has remained. Discovering this world more than ten years ago and watching the nth number of films and TV series, I have come to a number of conclusions that I adhere to to this day: animation is different; all ages and themes are submissive to it; this direction of cinema has earned the right to be called art; if you think that moving pictures are the lot of children, then you are poorly informed and you have much to expand your horizons. So far, no, no, no, no, no, I'm going online, inspired by the long separation, to find out what the world is like and what's going on in it. I won’t go into details, but I will say that in Japan, production and interest in animation reach a size comparable to the hype around the cinema in Hollywood. Animation is produced in different formats: TV series, feature films, mini-series released only on media (the so-called OVA - Original Video Animation). It is often based on a manga (a Japanese version of a comic/graphic novel), but it is not necessary, there is a huge number of original and independent works. The flow of animation is huge, it is unusual to get confused and, of course, there is a huge number of passing projects, but among them there are real pearls. Here is one of them.
Ping Pong The Animation was released in 2014. The format is a TV series. The number of episodes is 11 (which is not typical: usually due to the link to the season, the series are released in the format of 12-13, or 24-26 episodes). It is necessary and sufficient. There would be more – the narrative would lose momentum and slide into quick-moving serial “soap”, there would be less – the characters and the story that unites them would remain undisclosed. The series is based on the manga of Matsumoto Taiyo (Matsumoto Taiyo) – “Ping Pong”, an artist (mangaki) who developed his unique recognizable style: largely minimalist and deliberately careless, perfectly conveyed in animated reincarnation. By minimizing the details of the environment, he pays more attention to the transmission of movement in statics, thereby making what happens more dynamic and tense. In this regard, he continues to build on the developments made in his previous great work, Tekkon Kinkreet / Black & White. If the action takes place in a futuristic world of an uncertain future, with characters whose motivations are not always clear, let alone misunderstanding everything that is happening, then in Ping Pong the action takes place here and now – in modern Japan. The focus is on the most ordinary high school students who love table tennis. With their dreams, resentments, aspirations and evils of character, which makes them even more attractive for the viewer, because he can identify with them, such characters are easier to empathize.
The focus is on two friends: the restrained, never-smiling Makoto Tsukimoto, nicknamed Smack (the origin of this nickname is one of the intrigues of the series) and the cheerful, daring fool Yutaka Hoshino, nicknamed Peko (he loves sweets and got his nickname in honor of the brand of candy). They have been friends since childhood and have been in love with table tennis ever since. In fact, all the characters we see are not indifferent to this sport. Here Ping Pong is elevated to the role of a deity: before him worship, for him sacrificed, to serve him dedicated life. Ping Pong is the main character of this series, which is why it is included in the title of the series. Ping Pong is a model of the world, with its winners and losers, goals and ambitions, joys and disappointments, meanings and nonsense. Characters meet teachers, opponents, participate in competitions, lose, win, try to understand themselves and their desires. And we enjoy a brilliantly executed visual series and along the way receive questions of self-determination: we play in defense or in offense, whether we have goals and if they justify the means that we spend on achieving them.
The last series will dot all the "e". We’ll take you to the future and see what happened to the characters and where their ambitions or lack of them took them. We will be led to the idea that only those who know what they want and find the audacity to follow their dreams will be able to achieve something in this life, while the rest remain to hang around in the hole and shed tears on their prematurely buried self.
To summarize:
Great film adaptation, great manga! The manga is more chambered, enclosed in a tennis microcosm. The screenplay is spectacular and bright, but no less substantive. In the anime, additional characters and storylines are introduced, nothing, I must say, significantly adding. The difference between them can be compared with the difference between the Rubik’s Cube (in the manga Smehach plays it and it speaks much more accurately about him and reveals his character) and a portable game console: both are created to occupy leisure and entertain, but in one case more restrained and intellectual, and in the other bright, motley and accessible to everyone. You want to see it as a dynamic and intense sports series, you want it as a philosophical reflection on the purpose of a person and his abilities. The work is multifaceted!