The Ping Pong Club
The Ping Pong Club is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Minoru Furuya. It was serialized in Kodansha's manga magazine Weekly Young Magazine from 1993 to 1996, with its chapters collected in 13 volumes. It is about the dysfunctional members of a middle school ping-pong club.
The Ping Pong Club was adapted by Grouper Productions into a 26-episode anime television series. It was licensed in North America by Central Park Media.
The Ping Pong Club manga has had over 25 million copies in circulation. In 1996, the manga won the 20th Kodansha Manga Award for the general category.
Plot
The series focuses on an unconventional ping-pong club whose members show greater interest in lewd humor than athletic competition. When Kyōko Iwashita becomes the club's manager, she attempts to redirect the team's focus toward actual ping-pong, despite constant distractions and the members' lack of discipline.Characters
; Maeno; Hiromi Izawa
; Takeda
; Yūsuke Kinoshita
; Tanaka
; Gorō Mitchell Tanabe
; Kyōko Iwashita
; Chiyoko Kamiya
Media
Manga
Written and illustrated by Minoru Furuya, The Ping Pong Club was serialized in Kodansha's manga magazine Weekly Young Magazine from 1993 to 1996. Kodansha collected its chapters in thirteen volumes, released from November 6, 1993, to February 6, 1997.Volumes
Anime
A 26-episode anime television series adaptation, animated by Grouper Productions, was broadcast in Japan on TBS from April 6 to September 28, 1995.In North America, the series was licensed by Central Park Media and released under their Software Sculptors label. The series had first a sub only release on VHS starting in 1999. It was later released with an English dub on five DVDs, starting from the fourth volume, released on October 9, 2001; the fifth volume was released on December 11, 2001, and the first to third DVDs were released from August 13 to December 3, 2002. A DVD box collection was released on December 3, 2002.