P2: Let’s Play Ping Pong!

Ender on June 3, 2008 · in Other Series

I’m a noob at ping pong. Dabbled a bit in college, but sucked pretty bad. Back in the day, Kungfucius schooled me during a Thanksgiving holiday “celebration”. Of his total domination over my pathetic ping pong skills. I stuck to it though – whenever the opportunity arose (usually random and infrequent), I would zealously work at improving my handling of the paddle. Several years down the road, I’m able to hit the ball back and forth at a decent clip , if not with any real finesse. At least I’ve developed a decent serve. But lately, coming up against Taiwanese and Chinese coworkers, I feel I have hit a wall. What better way to be inspired than by reading a sports manga?

If it exists, then there’s an anime about it. P2: Let’s Play Ping Pong is an unassuming but charming sports manga that seems to cross Yotsuba&! with Hikaru no Go. It stars the cute-as-a-button Aikawa Hiromu as the perennially undersized freshman who desperately wants to be on *any* sports team, and his athletic childhood friend Saotome Otome, in the classic hero-in-training/female supporter roles. P2 follows the typical shounen sports structure – there’s shades of Prince of Tennis abound – but what sets it apart is its topic of choice (a sport that is unpopular in the West) and its SD characterization of Hiromi. Nothing groundbreaking, but fun for ping pong amateurs like myself.

I’ve actually been itching to have a showdown with Kungfucius after all these years, to demonstrate that MY TRAINING HAS MADE ME STRON-GAR, but unfortunately this climactic time-skip match just isn’t in the cards. Kungfucius – It’s time to d-d-d-duel!