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This is part of our yearly Advent Calendar, which publishes an essay a day each year during advent. Find the rest of this year's and previous years' calendars here.
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On the Show that Saved My Life: Ping Pong the Animation
Jaric Sarmiento
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It's 2016, Trump is about to be elected, I'm reckoning with the fact that maybe being an asshole wasn't as cool as I always thought it was, then I receive two acceptance letters: one to go to San Diego State University for computer science, and another to go to University of California, San Diego for creative writing. I also applied to them for computer science but I guess they liked my essay. Anyway, it didn't really matter, I'm at home contemplating dropping out of community college, all my friends have moved on, and all I want to do is spend the rest of my days sitting at home and watching anime. So I do. First on the docket: from 2014, directed by Masaaki Yuasa, about five high school athletes: it's called Ping Pong.
Yes, it really is about Ping Pong.
Well, of course it isn’t actually. We writers know that the thing a story is about isn’t really what the story is about. Moby-Dick isn’t really about hunting whales and surely a story must be about something more significant than Ping Pong for it to be able to save a life. And so maybe that’s what it’s about: insignificance.
It’s about Smile asking himself what the point is in wasting blood and sweat on an after school game. Shit, isn’t it just supposed to be for fun? It’s about Akuma coming to terms with the fact that all the work he’s put into the game is worthless in the face of talent. What can someone with slow limbs and really bad astigmatism do in the face of absolute monsters? It’s about the monsters like Dragon and him torturing himself every night with practice so that he can never be as insignificant as his father, or China desperately trying to prove his worth to a country that treats him like he no longer exists. It’s about our Hero, drowning in a river, asking himself why he’s spent his life chasing around a ball that weighs 2.67 grams.
But, of course, you don’t produce an eleven episode show about a game if you really thought it was insignificant. So that can’t be it. In that case, maybe it’s about what sports shows are usually about.
Like, something about friendship. Like the way skill and talent can divide us. The way the coaches of our protagonists all haven’t talked in years despite being good friends in their youth because their skill at the game all took them to different places. Or the way Smile has been waiting for his best friend to catch up to his skill level so that he can finally have fun playing the game he loves again. Or the way Dragon has been completely isolated at the top, spending all of his downtime at a tournament in bathrooms alone to avoid the crushing weight of the stadium. Or the way China was deported from his home country because he simply wasn’t good enough at the game to stay. Or the way our Hero falls into a depression because coming to terms with his actual skill level gave him an identity crisis. How can a game just be for fun, if the trajectory of our lives and relationships are completely dependent on our skill and talent?
So maybe it’s that: it’s about how our abilities define us. There’s a reason they’re all given nicknames. Smile is called a robot because of his analytical and deliberate approach to the game, and maybe he plays like that because of the cold and emotionless way he carries himself in life. Or, you know, the other way around. Sure, they nicknamed him China because he’s from there, but it’s not just that: every bit of the way he plays is defined by his home country. He uses a chinese penhold paddle, he utilizes lots of drives, and he has a lot of experience in mind games. Every time he plays, he broadcasts it: I am from China and I deserve to be back there. And, of course, Dragon is named as such because he’s the strongest. The one to beat. No one else can even come close. The world of ping pong treats him like a legend and he lives up to it. And maybe our Hero is called that because he’s the one that’s capable of slaying dragons.
If that’s what you think being a hero is about. The show opens with the words: “here comes the hero,” and the adage gets repeated throughout the show. So maybe that’s what it’s about: being a hero. But what the hell does that even mean? Especially in the context of fucking ping pong. Is it someone who’s just really good at the game? It can’t be, because Dragon is really good at the game and he’s portrayed as the opposite of heroic. Is it someone who has a lot of fun in the game? That’s a good guess because a lot of sports shows are about that: the virtue of having fun. But that can’t really be it because Smile, who’s obsessed with trying to have fun with this game, is depressed. Maybe it’s being a really good teammate, that’s another thing sports shows are obsessed with, but unfortunately this is about a one-on-one sport so that can’t be it either. Besides, we can go ahead and call these qualities “heroic” and we can pat ourselves on the back for stretching the definition of the word so we can make Ping Pong seem more epic than it is, but it would be quite dishonest, wouldn’t it? None of these really make a “hero.”
No, heroes are people who save lives. So the question is obvious: how do you save lives by playing Ping Pong?
Let’s go back to our Hero, drowning in the river. He gets physically saved by Akuma who encourages him to go back to playing Ping Pong, but this doesn’t do much in terms of lifting our Hero’s spirits. He’s still depressed. This was just a failed suicide attempt but there’s really nothing stopping him from just trying again. Nothing has changed until he goes back to the dojo and sees an old picture. The music lifts, our Hero smiles, and he looks for his coach and begs her to start training him again. And from here, he saves four lives.
First, he saves China’s life. It’s their first time playing since China beat him 11-0 in the first episode. The Hero doesn’t even register as a threat to China. It should be easy. Just the second round of the tournament, and China is one of the contenders for the trophy. But of course, it doesn’t go as expected. Of course, within the first round, all eyes are on the match. Everyone’s thinking it: shit, is a nobody about to take a round off of one of the tournament’s favorites? Dragon starts to watch to analyze the emerging opponent. Smile leaves because he already knows how the game is going to go. He says, “welcome back, Hero,” as he exits. And China, he’s panicking. This is the guy he destroyed just a year ago and now he can hardly keep up with him. Losing to Dragon is one thing but losing to a random kid? How can he ever face his home country again after that? China holds his necklace and images of his childhood flash before his eyes. Our Hero thanks him for “teaching [him] how to fly.” China smirks. It’s 10-7 on game 3. Match point for our Hero. China hits the ball back and sees a vision of his mother welcoming him home. The ball hits the net and our Hero advances to the next round. China holds his paddle in a praying position, looking up with his eyes closed and smiling. There’s no other word to describe it, he looks serene. China will never go home and for the first time, he’s at peace.
Second, he saves Dragon’s life. Before the game begins, our Hero makes a promise to Dragon: he’ll show him that human beings can fly. Dragon sees the image of his father standing by a cliff again. He assures our Hero that human beings cannot fly. The game starts and for the first two rounds, Dragon is dominating our Hero. It looks like a lost cause. Beating a contender for the trophy like China is one thing, but beating the actual best player in the country is an entirely different thing. But when all looks lost in the middle of the third round, Peco hears Smile singing inside his head. It’s the Hero’s theme song. And from there, he starts flying. Suddenly the game is much more even. Our Hero is able to hit the ball back, our Hero is moving at blistering speeds, our Hero is putting the Dragon on his backfoot. And as Dragon chases the ball around, as he desperately tries to return the ball, each becoming more difficult than the last—he realizes something: he’s having fun. The ball hits his paddle and flies into the air, Dragon looks up and sees a bird flying right above him and smiles. It’s match point. Dragon accepts his defeat. He looks at our Hero and asks him if he’ll take him back to the skies. Our Hero doesn’t answer. They both smile at each other. The Hero doesn’t need to, because people can fly.
Third, he saves his best friend’s life, Smile. They call him that because he used to always smile when he would play ping pong. That’s what our Hero remembered when he saw the picture of Smile the night he was drowning in the river. He hasn’t been smiling lately because our Hero started taking the game for granted. He hasn’t been a good player in a long time. Our Hero arrives late to the match and Smile says “you’re late.” Our hero says “I got here as fast as I could.” And for the first time in a while, they play a real game of ping pong. For the first time in a while, Smile doesn’t play like a robot. For the first time in a while, Smile smiles.
And the final life he saves is mine. Because like the other three lives, after watching our Hero play, I got it. If you want to be a hero, all you have to do is to find something you love and love it completely and sincerely. If you can do that, you will save lives on your path of loving that thing. Of course, it’s not that easy. There are thousands of things preventing us from fully loving something. From expectations, relationships, skill, talent, economics, identity, and everything else. And it’s hard to say what it even means to love something. What does it mean to play ping pong like you love it more than anything else? You can’t just play to win, because it’s not love if you’re expecting something out of it. You can’t just play to have fun, because it’s not love if you’re not giving it everything you’ve got. But if you stick with something and continue to profess your love for it over and over again then maybe you’ll be able to fly. And so I decided to stick with writing. Maybe one day I’ll write something that will save a life just as this show saved mine. But that’s not really my goal, of course.
Because this show isn’t about being a hero or saving lives. It’s about ping pong.
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Jaric Sarmiento is a multi-genre MFA candidate at the University of Alabama and co-creator of 108webnovel.com, an interactive multimedia digital novel. His writing is featured in No Contact, The Other Side of Hope, Southword, and A Velvet Giant. You can find him on Instagram @anflowcrat
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