New Japanese movie titles on DVD reviewed in English.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Each one of the movies we review are available on DVD with English subtitles. You can buy them easily at CD Japan.

Ping Pong

Released: 2.14.03
Item no: AEBD-10148
Price: ¥4700
Click here to buy it.

Taku: This month we're reviewing "Ping Pong", a movie based on a five-volume manga series of the same name by Taiyo Matsumoto. It's about a high school table tennis club.

Tomo: Don't worry, if you've never read the manga (and we haven't either), then it won't detract from your enjoyment of the movie at all. There's no need to read the manga because the movie stands on its own.

Taku: You would think that a movie about table tennis would have to be incredibly silly and difficult for most moviegoers to play along with, but that is completely not the case with this movie. Though similar to "Water Boys" because it is a comedy about a sport that most people don't take very seriously, "Ping Pong" does a great job of getting the viewer to take the story and the drama of the movie seriously.

Tomo: This movie reminded me a lot of "Water Boys". Though both movies are comedies, "Water Boys" was definitely more cornball and harder to stomach. In "Ping Pong" you actually have to get into the drama and play along. Before watching "Ping Pong" I couldn't imagine how a movie about such a sport could be this entertaining, but it really works.

Taku: It takes a little bit of time to get into the characters and figure out how this whole movie is going to play out, but once you get to know the characters better you will get really excited about who wins and who loses the matches. Even though it's just about a silly ping pong club, it is really important to the characters. We don't even find out about their family lives or anything about the characters, except that they play ping pong. The movie really lets you into their world so that it seems important to you too.

Tomo: It's based on a manga and it really shows. Even though the manga artist decided to leave the whole thing in the hands of the movie makers, the director went to great lengths to preserve the style of the manga in the film. They even made sure that the actors they casted closely resembled the characters in the manga. In fact they're so proud of it that they even show pictures of the manga characters next to pictures of the actors. The manner of storytelling in the film closely resembles manga. The ping pong matches especially remind me of scenes from sports manga where the characters are in the middle of a match and then people on the sidelines will make comments to help add drama to the match. This style of commentary from off-court characters is hardly a new concept to sports movies, but this movie really takes it to the extreme, placing a great emphasis on drama during the matches.

Taku: The two main characters are "Peco" and "Smile". They are childhood friends who are both members of the ping pong club at their school. For Peco, ping pong is life. He introduced Smile to the 'sport' at an early age and showed him how to play the game. Smile doesn't take ping pong as seriously as Peco, until later in the movie when Peco quits and Smile becomes the star player on the team. Everyone says that Smile has great talent for ping pong, but he doesn't care as much about the 'sport' as the rest of the players do. There are three other ping pong players who have to play against Peco and Smile. They are "China", "Dragon", and "Akuma". China is a player from China who wasn't good enough for the Chinese team, and decided to go to Japan.

Tomo: They had an actual Chinese actor, Sam Lee, play the part rather than using a Japanese actor like so many other movies and dramas do in these cases. This makes the character easier to take seriously. Dragon is the captain of a rival ping pong team from another high school, and Akuma is another player on the same team who is an old rival of Peco's. Also in this movie, you will notice Naoto Takenaka, who was also in "WATER BOYS".

Tomo: Peco is played by Yosuke Kubozuka, who we remember as the lead from "Laundry" and such dramas as "Long Loveletter". He is an excellent actor and we just love him. He brings so much to this character because he is good at playing weird people with strange quirks. His performance is hilarious. ARATA was also in the first movie we reviewed for this site, "DISTANCE".

Tomo: Like Star Wars Episode 2, "Ping Pong" was completely shot on digital film. The DVD is a fully digital direct transfer from the original source. The movie had a surprising amount of computer-rendered CG graphics. The movie's director, Fumihiko Sori, also worked as an effects supervisor for the movie, "Titanic". "Ping Pong" is his directing debut. The CG looked so good that throughout the movie we had no idea we were even looking at CG until we watched the documentary footage that came on the bonus DVD (bonus DVD only comes with the limited edition version).

Taku: Let's start with the opening scene of the movie. The main character, Peco, jumps from a bridge, all motion freezes, and the camera rotates around his body, traveling under the bridge and up into the sky, giving us a sky view of the bridge. This looked really cool when we first saw it, and neither of us knew how it was done. Later, when we watched the documentary DVD, we saw that much of the scene had been rendered in CG. This amazed us, because we found the scene so convincing the first time we saw it.

Tomo: Thoughout the movie, in order to show the intense, and basically humanly impossible ping pong matches, the ball had to be rendered by a computer and added in post. The actors were filmed running around swinging at air. The scenes were so convincing that at first we believed they must have been shot with stunt doudbles who were champion ping pong players. Again, watching the documentary footage showed us just how much of these convincing scenes had been rendered by computers. Even scenes where characters are casually practicing had the ball rendered in 3-D, probably to make it more visible on the screen. Again, the results are 100% convincing and we're still dumbfounded about how they managed to make it look so good.

Taku: There are also scenes where the crowd in the background was actually 3-D rendered, rather than using real extras. Again, we had absolutely no idea we were looking at a fake audience while we were watching the movie. And even after we found out, we still couldn't believe it. The CG that was used in this movie was absolutely amazing cutting edge technology, making this movie probably the highest budget movie we've reviewed so far.

Tomo: This movie was a big theatrical hit in Japan, and it was a big hit with us too. It does resemble sports movies I've seen before a bit, but there is really nothing quite like it for so many reasons. I loved watching this movie, and I wholeheartedly recommend it. It receives a rating of nine from me.

Taku: This movie receives our highest combined rating yet. I will also give it a nine. This movie feels very well-made and is a delight to watch. Don't let the fact that the concept sounds stupid keep you from seeing it. "Ping Pong" is excellent and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Tomo's Rating: 9

Taku's Rating: 9

Director: Fumihiko Sori
Cast: Yosuke Kubozuka, ARATA, Sam Lee, Shido Nakamura, Koji Ogura, Naoto Takenaka
Running time: 114 minutes
Subtitles: English, Japanese

Buy it here.