Ping Pong Episode 2 "Smile is a Robot"

Last time on Ping Pong, Peco had his soul crushed into a fine powder by Wenge's superior play. The arrogant young man had no answer for the well-rounded play of his would-be rival, and Wenge skunked Peco before banishing him to the Shadow Realm with Yugi's grandfather. Perhaps that last part didn't actually happen. This week, will Katase's other star player fall victim to a nemesis of his own?



The answer is "not quite" but man oh man do I love how funny this episode is at its best. First of all, there's this guy:

And this:

And last but not least this:

The idea of Spring love emerging for a man approaching his own personal Winter is beautifully played upon here and in later episodes as Jo and Smile grow closer through their trials and tribulations. Jo sees himself in the young Smile and wants him to see heights that cannot be found when great natural ability isn't cultivated into great practical skill. The love letters, the wistful glances, and the classroom courtship complete with homemade lunchboxes, each staples of romance anime, are turned on their head when it's the English teacher himself giving a lecture on how learning English is pointless in the face of Ping-Pong. Eventually, Jo decides to push his tough love to the brink and forces Smile to confront the reality of his own talent.

As of January 6th, 2016, living humans still don't have the ability to go back and forcibly alter their DNA to give themselves LeBron James's physical ability. We can all work our absolute hardest at the gym, practice running and jumping and lifting and throwing, and never even make it to the NBA. It takes a tremendous string of fortune to get the right genes to become an elite athlete, and when we see talented athletes wasting their potential with drugs or perceived low effort it often feels like an outrage, an injustice. Why should these unappreciative people be so fortunate, when others so badly want what they have but will never know that power? This is the idea that forms the backbone of underdog stories; the audience lives vicariously through the actions of the less talented and indulges in the fantasy of taking the top with their own meager gifts. 

Is it fair, though, to ask of the talented that they do their absolute best to maximize those natural gifts? Should we really expect every tall, graceful man or woman to play basketball? Would it be unfair to force Einstein to study science if he just wanted to make oil paintings for his whole life? These are questions that Ping Pong wants to investigate, and Smile and Jo's relationship is perhaps the core of that investigation. For Jo, it's a grave injustice to waste a gift like Smile's. "You don't chase the ball, the ball chases you." For Smile, who has been bullied all his life, being told that he needs to cash in on his gift is just another form of bullying. In order to stand up to the bullying, Smile has to do the one thing he doesn't want to do. To Jo, talent is a tool for liberation, but to Smile it is a prison with no escape. When Smile embraces his "robotic" side and earns the victory, his only joy is in a temporary escape from being bothered, not any sort of competitive thrill.

While Jo and Smile's arc takes up most of the episode, a few other interesting things happen here. Episode 2 introduces Kaio academy and its captain, Ryu Kazama, while also showing the aftermath of Peco's fall from grace. Kaio and its students will take up a bigger part of the show from this point forward, but here Kazama is introduced in a manner that is fittingly stern and powerful. All business in the form of a teenage boy, Kazama's strong features and bald head give him a great end boss appeal right out of the gate. His clear admiration for Smile is only outstripped by his blatant dismissal of any real threat to his chances. You already know you want to see this guy get his comeuppance. I really love how when Jo and Kazama are walking they use the split-screen rather than just showing both characters in one frame. It creates a great contrast between the weary yet wise veteran and the youthful but brash prodigy.

I really like the next gif because honestly it just looks cool as heck. The zoom is disarming and becomes more and more uncomfortable to watch the more times you see it. Is the camera accelerating or staying the same speed? Why are all the tables so uneven? Its just great to watch and I kinda want to make a loop where it zooms forward again just because I like it so much.

This episode doesn't venture into too much new ground visually, but it's filled with great moments regardless. I think the sound design is also totally on point. I really love when Jo falls to the ground, and Smile takes off his glasses to clean them. The sound is like a robot using its arms, followed by that neat clicking sound that robots tend to make in the movies when they're scanning an area with their eyes. The image of Jo gliding around the table with the serenity of his beautiful "serious" theme playing is indelibly etched in my brain. I like the song so much that it's my phone ringtone. It's actually got a nice sort of darkness to it after the opening bit. It provides a nice contrast to the sort of goofy, flowery theme of his that plays during the early "courtship" part of the episode. I also like the tribal drumming theme that accompanies Kazama's arrival. It fits especially well with his character as we understand him to this point. He is an intense ping pong warrior with a fittingly intense theme.

Overall this episode is probably on the lower end of the series for me, as it doesn't involve nearly as wide a range of characters as most episodes and serves mostly to lay the groundwork for relationships that will be more thoroughly examined in the middle of the season, namely Jo/Smile and Kazama/Smile. It's still really good, and every time I rewatch the battle between Jo and Smile I find something new to appreciate. It also subtly sows the seeds of bigger plot things that I don't really want to spoil right now.

Ping Pong Episode 1: "The Wind Makes It Too Hard to Hear"

I initially planned on writing my Yuasa series in chronological order of his career, moving from Mind Game up through Kemonozume, then Kaiba, The Tatami Galaxy, and finally Ping Pong. It makes a great deal of sense to see how an auteur's work evolves over time, as the maker's attitudes adapt to the world around them and as their abilities improve (or decline!) with experience. Jean-Luc Godard is a great example of a filmmaker whose career follows a neatly traceable trajectory as he moved away from narrative-driven film and towards an increasingly experimental style as his politics became a more essential element of his style. Akira Kurosawa, on the other hand, went from political propaganda filmmaker to world-renowned Shakespeare adapter over the course of his fifty year directorial career. Yuasa, by any reasonable accounting, could merit a similar attempt at linear scrutiny of his brief but impressive career.

Reason, however, does not factor into my feelings about Ping Pong and the attention it deserves. If there is one goal behind my postings about beer, film, anime, or anything else, it is to spread my love and appreciation so that other people might find something they too can love. Ping Pong is the most lovable thing on the planet this side of adorable puppies and kittens. It oozes joy and secretes an aroma of sadness and empathy and optimism all at once. It loves you and wants you to find pleasure not only in watching its wonderful images and hearing its terrific sounds but in reflecting on the parts of you that you want to change and then changing them because of a goddamn sports anime. Ping Pong is a gift that keeps on giving, and if I can convince even one more person to give it a chance the screencapping and gifmaking and writing will all be worth it.

Now that I've totally hyped you up, and without further ado, Episode 1:

There is a school of thought about Ping Pong which says that the show is "ugly" because it looks weird. Ping Pong may not have an artistic style that appeals to everyone, with its mostly deliberately unattractive cast and strange line work, but its drawings show an intensely individualistic style that fit perfectly with the show's motifs. At least until the story reaches a later arc, each character has plainly identifiable traits which mark them as their own person. From the impish Peco to the handsome and stylish Wenge, the main cast is memorable and distinct from the very first episode. Even the more minor characters get their own trademarks, from Ota's enviable hairstyle to Jo's bushy brows and wrinkled, weary face. Oddball camera angles, tricks of perception, and simple yet colorful backgrounds force the action to feel alive even when the animation slacks.

Yuasa also revels in reminding the audience that what we are watching was once a manga series printed on real paper, with all the limitations and virtues of that medium on full display. I suppose the word to describe these sequences would be collage, but they feel like more than that as the brief frames of animation contained within give an already profoundly kinetic series an almost unfair boost. This episode also ventures into the realm of the unreal, during the climactic battle between Peco and Wenge. It is the dark yet playful touch of Peco flying through the abyss that really seals the deal on the gravity of his defeat. It's not much of a spoiler to say that this sort of thing is sprinkled throughout the series yet never feels old or overused.

The scene from which the episode takes its name offers one of my favorite moments of the entire series. The entire sequence is just fantastic, as it confirms the dynamic between Peco and Smile as players hinted at when coach Jo watches them play earlier in the episode. It also demonstrates for the audience that the mysterious player from China is a serious threat before he's ever swung a racket. But what really cinches the scene as brilliant in my mind is the establishing shot, after Peco and Smile arrive in the gym and Wenge and his coach are shown on the roof.

As Peco and Smile prepare to play a game, the camera floats from a high angle near the basketball rim, through the gymnasium walls and into the sky above the buildings. It floats there, wandering and flitting about like a kite in the wind, before arriving at Wenge's face as he leans in to hear their play. Flight is a prominent motif for the whole run of the series; here we already have the opening scene with the robot and the witch, as well as Wenge's arrival on a jet plane and subsequent vision of a plane flying overhead as the ball sails off Peco's racket one last time. Yet it's this boldly cinematic shot that I feel best encompasses the show's ambitions. It actually reminds me a bit of an iconic shot from Godard's 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, during a rooftop monologue by Marina Vlady. Whereas that 360 degree pan gains from the drabness and repetitive imagery of the banlieue rooftops, the Ping Pong shot's dancing motion conveys a great vastness between the two groups of players despite their actually rather close proximity.

I haven't talked too much about the bits of the episode that I imagine most people tend to focus on, like the characters themselves or the plot arc contained within. It's not that those bits are insignificant; to the contrary, one of the show's strongest elements is the flesh and blood. But that's stuff that comes even stronger later, and the sort of thing that anyone with experience watching quality serial drama can probably notice without too much help from my end. What I will say is that I love how this episode builds up both Peco and Wenge as elite players and then immediately pays off the audience with their match. The entire run of Ping Pong is only eleven episodes, so there's no time spent dragging out arcs or individual matches for filler. Characters with less than five minutes of total screen time will feel complete, because so much attention and care is paid to their brief time in the spotlight. I also really love the soundtrack of this episode, because it contains several of my favorite songs from the whole show, including Wenge's futuristic, Metal Gear Solid-esque (in my opinion!) theme song.

It's my belief that the greatness of Ping Pong can stand on its own from Episode 1 all the way to the conclusion without want of any justification. I hope you liked this episode enough to stick with the show. If you enjoyed this episode even before you read my musings, go right ahead to Funimation's YouTube page and watch the whole show in a couple of sittings, as I've already done several times. If you think that reading my musings is worthwhile to your enjoyment of each episode, or you actually have things to do in your personal life that make marathon viewings of anime impossible, then I hope you stick around and come back to check in every day or three. I plan on trying to make one post like this a day, to finish the whole series in a little over a week and a half, and there might be days where I try to put two episodes together when it's not super important to highlight particular elements.