Ping Pong (Blu-ray Review)
Director
Fumihiko SoriRelease Date(s)
2002 (July 28, 2026)Studio(s)
Asmik Ace/TBS (88 Films)- Film/Program Grade: A
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B+
Review
Watching Ping Pong, you’d never know so much of it is CGI. Of course, with its pedigree it starts to make sense. Filmmaker Fumihiko Sori was a special effects prodigy doing character animations on Cameron’s Titanic and chose Taiyo Matsumoto’s cult manga to be his debut feature, a tale of sportsmanship and friendship that could showcase his storytelling while hiding his craft, thus every ball seen in this film is a construct—and there is so much Ping Pong in this film. So much that you start to forget it’s not real. The choreography and coordination it took for the actors to make this film is mind-boggling.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Childhood friends Peco (Yosuke Kubozuka) and Smile (ARATA) are the stars on their school’s Ping Pong team. When we first meet Peco, he is at the end of a losing streak. Peco needs to get his head back in the game so he can fulfill his dream of being the best player in the world. Smile is secretly a Ping Pong prodigy, possibly the real best player in the world but he doesn’t really care about the sport, he just wants to hang with his friend, so he intentionally loses his games—even against Peco. We learn most of this during a flashback to the prior school year, before Peco lost his mojo and stopped playing for almost a year. Everything leads to a tournament where, after some serious training, Peco goes up against opponents China (Sam Lee), a player who wasn’t great enough in China but has a leg up in Japan, and Dragon (Nakamura Shido), a fearsome player from a rival who treats the game like a religion, and eventually one last, no-holds-barred game against Smile.
I actually didn’t know about this movie and I’m so glad 88 Films chose to release this because it’s really a hidden gem of Japanese cinema. Originally shot on digital, the transfer is sharp with strong blacks and nice detail. There are no artifacts and the digital effects showcase nice blur and perfect detail. Transferred at 1080/24p in 1.78:1. Sound is showcased in an immersive 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio in Japanese, with an alternate DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track with newly translated English subtitles. The extras are light, but strong. I really like what is presented here. Sadly, the Viz Pictures DVD had a close to one-hour long making-of documentary that I would have loved to see that is sorely missing from this set. It’s a bummer it couldn’t be brought over. What is here tries hard to make up for it. There’s a lovingly detailed audio commentary by writer/translator Zack Davisson breaking down the manga, the film, the filmmaker and life in Japan. Video extras include An Artist’s Take: Michael Arias on Taiyo Matsumoto and Ping Pong where filmmaker and fellow prodigy Arias (producer of The Animatrix and director of Tekkonkinkreet, also based on a manga by Taiyo Matsumoto) discusses his love of Matsumoto’s work, his relationship with him, his fandom of this movie and a humble overview of his own career. There’s also a detailed video essay by Japanese film scholar Jasper Sharp entitled A Different Class. The packaging includes a liner notes booklet with an essay, See the Ball, by Jonathan Clements, reversible sleeve with new artwork by Luke Insect and a numbered Obi Slip if you’re lucky enough to pick up the first 2000 copies of this limited edition.
- Todd Doogan