Sports may not be my favorite type of manga, but I’ve read quite a few of them over the years. But I didn’t expect one to open with a kid licking the blood off his hand as another watches and narrates that blood tastes like metal. I know this genre is about blood and tears, but an almost vampiric-like joy about blood is not what I was signing up for.
Fortunately, once you get beyond the creepy and often hard to understand opening, Ping Pong features the themes you’d expect from a title like this and even manages to become enjoyable.
Hoshino (nicknamed Peco) and Tsukimoto (nicknamed Smile) are both members of their high school table tennis club, having been trained at the same facility. Their attitudes, however, are completely different. Hoshino ditches all the time, using the excuse he’s too good for the team; Tsukimoto attends practice regularly, but he has no real desire to play to win. They’re both considered the strongest members of their team, but their coach, Koizumi, appears to have a special interest in Tsukimoto.
He’s not the only one. A ringer from China, Wong, notices that Tsukimoto throws his games to his hero, Hoshino. Sakuma from the strong Kaio (Neptune) Academy is also connected to Hoshino and Tsukimoto and has things to prove even though his captain, Kazama, wants him to concentrate on his own matches.
Ping Pong was originally five volumes long, and had I only read the original first volume, I imagine I would have hated this series. Tsukimoto and Hoshino do little to endear themselves for a good portion of this volume. Hoshino acts like a big shot and makes money goading people into betting matches; Tsukimoto pretty much shrugs his shoulders at everything but keeps talking about a hero. In most manga, they’d be the side characters, not the stars.
With two-and-a-half volumes’ worth of content, though, it’s much easier to see the manga’s development. Every sports manga thrives on tournaments, and this first volume of Ping Pong features the Inter-high qualifiers. But in this lengthy volume, that only makes up a fraction of the story. Ping Pong is more about discovering what each young man needs to succeed — or if it’s even possible for them to based on their own skills and personality. Yes, readers want to see if the players win their matches, but they probably want to see Tsukimoto and Hoshino lose even more. That’s the only way they were going to change, although Koizumi makes valiant efforts to awaken Tsukimoto’s spirit. His attempts to “woo” him into training can be compared to that of a romantic attempt. Even then, the characters tend to play it cool, as if they’ve always acted this way, in order for them to keep their pride.
With the manga now halfway over, at least one, maybe more characters seem to have bowed out of the action. Plus, unlike most sports manga where the goal is to be #1, I’m not exactly sure how this series will end up. Is the stoic Tsukimoto smiling enough to count as a win? Entering Inter-high? From a narrative perspective, it’s good that Ping Pong is keeping me on my toes.
As I alluded to earlier, Ping Pong can be a rough read. The characters often look like they should be starring in a horror manga more than a sports one. Think Junji Ito more than Takehiko Inoue. I doubt this manga pulled the female demographic unlike titles like The Prince of Tennis. The manga is very stylized and looks older than its age. I did like a lot of Matsumoto’s layouts (wordless two-page spread, magazine excerpts taking the place of a panel), but the lack of a supporting cast means that there’s no character to help explain techniques or the rules. I also couldn’t figure out who was narrating at times, but at least Tsukimoto and Hoshino can always be identified thanks to their moon and star icons. With the volume being so long, I had mostly adjusted to Ping Pong‘s art by the time I finished, so it isn’t impossible to overcome.
With sports manga tending to be long, Ping Pong volume 1 is intriguing as a short series. But note that it’s likely to be very different from those you’ve read before. The manga will keep you guessing, but it also keeps you guessing as to whether you’ll actually grow to like these characters.