Ping Pong: The Animation

Watching many anime series, one might assume that teenage protagonists serve no purpose except to fight aliens, spies, robots, and raging hormones. But in Ping Pong, the two young men at the center of the story are members of a high school table tennis team who are struggling to overcome significant personality quirks. Peco is the resident smart aleck who acts as if rules were made strictly for other people. But his fallibility as a player becomes obvious after an embarrassing defeat that he is initially unable to handle. Peco's friend Smile—an odd name, considering his stoic demeanor—is the proverbial diamond in the rough who requires a lot of coaching and encouragement to find his full talents, but he lacks the aggressive drive to ultimately dominate at table tennis. Peco and Smile are fully textured characters whose emotional interactions are intelligent and sincere, and the seemingly mundane table tennis tournament setting is actually more engrossing than many of the intergalactic battles found in anime. Compiling all 11 episodes from 2014 in a dual-language Blu-ray/DVD Combo set, rated TV-14, extras include episode commentaries. Highly recommended. (P. Hall)