Hong Kong: 1 Japan: 0 
Okay, the manga Ping Pong was made in 1996. Anyway this doesn't prevent the movie from being Japan's attempt to answer to Shaolin Soccer's worldwide success: same idea of sport as a revenge and a of a coach trying to revenge against his past. If financially the movie reached its goal in Japan, it would be presomptuous to say that it's the same artistically. This ain't a total flop like Volcano High: there's few video clip like scenes, Takenaka Naoto is correct playing the coach and the directing outside the game scenes is only flat. But the movie suffers mostly from being too slow: since the pitch ain't stunning, this way we don't feel concerned. The few gags don't make laugh and the drama potential of playing while being hurt is not exploited. There's too much useless dialogues. Most of the young actors oscillate between the expressivity of a tank and overacting. As a consequence, Peco et Smile are just the clichés of the bigmouth and the shy guy. For the game scenes: the directing hesitates between too slow filming, abuse of slow motions, dynamic but confuse editing. Moreover, sound effects are too heavy. And the scenes on the bridge are filmed with manierism while the flash backs use an ugly green filter. For the music, it's bad eurodance. We don't forget Chow Sing Chi's fireworks.
