Ping Pong is full of interesting visual choices, but the "hero" was the one that I enjoyed the most.
(A/N: This post contains spoilers for the ending to Ping Pong.)
Throughout Ping Pong: The Animation's run, they would occasionally cut back to an image of a shadowing winged figure that never spoke, at least not verbally. It would declare "I'm the hero!" in large words across the screen, but there were no clues about who or what this "hero" was. At first I assumed that it was some sort of reference to the video game that one of the main characters Smile is seen playing, or the theme that he hums under his breath, but otherwise I couldn't figure out why the show kept referencing it without context. As the show continued, my confusion only grew. The show was about competitive sports and friends growing apart, right? Why continue to show this strange creature?
It's not until nearly the very end of the show that it's clarified what this means. The "hero" is a reference to the other main character, Peco, and a promise that he made to Smile when they were still kids. Smile's apparent apathy towards the game suddenly makes much more sense. He never wanted the attention or the fame that playing the sport has suddenly brought on him; he just wanted to play against Peco. He wanted the hero to come in and save the day. Once that becomes clear, the imagery of the hero, especially it's past usage, becomes very interesting. Sometimes, like in the above image, it feels like it's overshadowing Smile rather than a benevolent figure waiting to reach out its hand to him. It's easy to read the different ways that the "hero" appears as a metaphor for Smile's changing thoughts about Peco over the course of the show.
However, at that point in the the story when this is revealed it was unclear whether or not Peco could save the day thanks to a variety of obstacles that I won't spoil here. However, the visual callback is one of the many things that I really enjoyed about watching Ping Pong. What started out as something confusing was actually a very early way of setting up the final conflict. The lightbulb moment for me when it all came together was not something that I'll soon forget.
Images from Hulu.com.
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