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!
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9 Comments
lol, the manga looks pretty win.
Being in the stereotypical azn family, we definitely have a ping pong table in our basement. A lot of my family is pretty ridiculous, but I’m totally fail at it.
Ping pong has never been… cuter? This I have to show to the ping pong addicts back in the dorm…
Haha my dad’s a pro at ping pong!
sadly, i do not have the same talent
but its fun lols
Sure I’m up for a duel anytime
That kid has my name written all over him! O_O (maybe not the “kawaii-ness”, but the “I’m a loser who can’t play any sports” type of guy)
This does look pretty charming! *blush*
@ Totali: Throw away those dreams of ping-pong! YOU’RE A SENDO-SMASHER FOR LIFE!!! *cue Rocky music*
If you like ping pong, you definitely need to check out the manga of the same title by Matsumoto Taiyo if you haven’t already!
oh wow, a CUTE sports manga?! That doesn’t come out too often, with all the sweaty GAR sports mangas out there
Thanks for the heads up on this fun and cute ping pong manga, will most likely recommend this to fellow otakus in the office XD
I JUST got into ping pong this year at college cos we just needed more activities to waste time with and I surprised myself with how quickly I picked it up. I play tennis myself so it probably helped a lot.
I’m definitely going to check this out. Looks cute as hell.
I’m reading this manga, because his hero is EXTREMELY cute. I want to learn some ping pong too >_<.