This is the most consistent anime i have ever seen, for me every episode was a 10/10. Despite only being eleven episodes long it has incredible character development with almost every character getting fleshed out extremely well alongside a meaningful story that shows very realistic characters grow and come of age with a unique but fitting art style and some stunning animation.
The show starts with a flashy black and white opening with a loud energetic song but don't be fooled this is not at all a flashy show, this is definitely an anime that you have pay attention to while watching or things will go over your head.
I personally missed a lot of things on the first watch and i don't doubt i am stilling missing some small things on my third watch through.
The theme of this show seems to be the question "why do we play?" and failure. The question of why do we play comes up when you see how hard they struggle.
Why do we play when it makes us hurt so much?
Why do we play knowing we are going to get hurt?
Why do we play when we know we aren't going to win?
Because we love it.
I played football for team 6 years because i loved it, i loved the highs of a strong tackle, a great goal, a perfect cross but when i stopped enjoying those things i stopped playing, the lows, the time dedicated to training, the humiliating defeats are only worth it for the highs playing brings. When i stopped playing it was because i stopped really enjoying the highs and when you don't enjoy the highs the lows aren't worth it anymore.
Ping pong has these players go through extremely low lows but the highs are worth it for them because they love playing.
They fail and get back up because they love playing, and they grow by failing and only by failing and getting back up do they start to understand themselves.
With characters like Sakuma coming to terms with the fact that no matter how hard he works he will never catch up to Smile or Peco if they just put a tenth of the effort in just because they have more talent than him,
or Kong who bet too much on ping pong slowly realising his life can be more than ping pong and learning how to set aside his arrogance and entitlement, that his life is not over if he fails.
I believe smile had at least some level of joy in playing ping pong and though the main reason he played ping pong was to bring his hero and friend Peco back after he became lazy and selfish, he still enjoyed playing. But i do still think he didn't enjoy it as much as everyone else in the show and that shows in how ready he was to quit and his reason for it :
"If i don't enjoy it, why should i play?"
If he doesn't get the highs from playing ping pong that everyone else does but still gets the lows why should he play? Because he wants to bring Peco back to his old self, the Peco that was his hero, the Peco he looked up to, who he wanted to be like, so he minimises his lows by staying inside of his comfort zone and never really trying, this way he doesn't get the same highs as everyone else but he doesn't get their lows. Like a machine he just stays still and does the best he can without going outside his comfort zone.
He only really starts trying after Peco quits ping pong and i think that is because Peco has left him Peco is no longer the hero to him he once was, so frustrated he retreats back into his shell and starts playing robotically and following his coaches orders like a machine and that is when you start to hear robotic sound affects when he plays.
The metaphors and meanings in this anime are beautiful and almost poetic in the way they are handled, the hero being the main one with smaller metaphors such as the butterfly really elevate this show from an amazing show to an absolute masterpiece.
My favourite metaphor that i didn't fully pick up on the first watch was "blood tastes like iron" it didn't fully click to me until i saw someone explain their interpretation, i'm going to quote them because i don't believe i can word it any better than they did
"But first Smile. I'm not gonna tell you what Smile is like since we've seen plenty of that already, but it is immensely important to understand why he is the way he is. Smile as a child hailed from a loveless, empty home and as a result he wasn't able to clearly express emotions which only made his case worse. The bullying and general asshattery prompted him to use his 'emotionlessness' as a shell, an armour against harm: if he only exists, then nobody will bother him.
This attitude is immensely sad of course: what's worse is that it's the same attitude he had at the start of the show. After the Koizumi match, Smile unleashed the full power of this robotic defense mechanism, seemingly impervious to harm... but also impervious to life. There's only one thing that can break through his armour and it's facing him today.
We've seen the scattered flashbacks over the episodes in which Smile is in a locker. Today, Ping Pong finally expands on that memory. It first displays Smile's defense philosophy of 'if I don't do anything, not even act like a human, then they will leave me be', but Peco exclaims that Smile's wrong, because 'you know, Smile? Blood tastes like iron'.
To me, that line is a two-fold sentiment. The first thing it means is that no matter how 'emotionless' or 'robotic' Smile may seem... he's still human. Blood may taste like iron, but it's still blood: Smile can experience all those emotions just like everyone else, because he's human. The second part is that there's strength in being human. Smile used his robotic armour as a defense measure, but there is also strength to be had from expressing emotion and fighting with your heart on your sleeve, even if it's just during ping pong.
Smile only fully realises it during his match against Peco, but he too, is a human capable of experiencing raw emotions. The moment he breaks free from his armour during the match is the moment where he breaks free of his own armour to finally, finally become human once more."
"Blood tastes like iron" is a phrase that you can interpret in multiple different ways and there is no incorrect way to interpret it, just like this show everyone can draw their own conclusions
This is my interpretation and what Ping pong means to me
My conclusion is that Taiyou Matsumoto really made a classic right here.
Credit to u/watashi-akashi for the quote and his write ups helped me understand and appreciate this anime even more
Credit to @Aleczandxr his video on Ping Pong helped me understand and appreciate it even more
Credit to @semblancebros their reactions and discussions helped me pick up on more things i missed