In 2019, Kensuke Ushio quickly went for me from “that person I know a lot of people love” to “One of my favorite anime composers period.” I’m genuinely impressed by his ability to create all kinds of dubstep inspired, electronic ambient sounds and alter them in such a way that they end up fitting all variety of different shows and scenes, while still being consistent within his own style of music. Even his most out there and unorthodox pieces like in Naoko Yamada’s Liz and the Blue Bird OST still have Ushio’s trademarks all over it. But even now, 5 years after it’s original airing, his music for Masaaki Yuasa’s masterpiece “Ping Pong The Animation” still stands proud as one of the greatest anime OSTs ever created.

The OST for Ping Pong The Animation is incredibly varied and filled with raw emotion. It features some excellent, blood pumping, electronic tracks such as “Hero Appears”, “The Heat” or “Like a Dance”,  while also showcasing Ushio’s mastery in more melancholic, peaceful and blissful pieces, namely the classical European-inspired “Old Joe”, playful and childish “Yurie” and emotionally powerful yet quiet “Wish Upon A Star”. But my favorite track in the entire OST has to probably be “Peco” used in episode 10 during the semi-final match between Peco and Dragon, for multiple reasons.

The usage of the track in the fight between Dragon and Peco has a lot of weight both contextually and narratively. Even simply calling the piece “Peco” should be enough to let you know what feelings and aesthetics it’s going to showcase. But let’s start at the beginning.
First half of the episode features a lot of narration from Dragon’s perspective, thanks to which we can learn what ping pong means for him and what makes him to be what he is. Despite showing an overwhelming power, there’s an instance when it seems like Peco might turn the things around. We can see Smile sitting on stairs in silence not even watching the game. Soon he gets approached by the coach asking why he’s not watching Peco play, to which Smile responded that it’s time for the hero to come back and save him. Right after that, we cut back to Peco and we can hear the start of the track “Say My Name” playing. You can hear the tension building up while Peco is giving his proud monologue, claiming to be “The Hero – Hoshino Yutaka”. The viewer can is expecting to see our main character come back to the game and start winning. And that’s exactly when, right before the climax of the song, it’s getting cut as Dragon gets a seemingly easy point.

Right after that, Dragon goes on his few minutes long monologue I mentioned earlier while a dominant, powerful and all mighty orchestral “Dragon” starts to play. That’s when we realize that the obstacle on our hero’s journey named Kazama Ryuuichi isn’t going to be some sort of minor drudge, and we understand it simply thanks to the visuals, ost and it’s implementation. Soon we follow it with a much mellow instrumental while we’re getting a look at Dragon’s past and what brought him to this point in time, right there, right now. And even after that the assault on Peco from Kazama’s side just keeps coming. And right when we’re thinking there’s no way for our main character to get a victory… we hear whistling.

That’s when we can see how important Smile is on Peco’s character and who he is. There’s an exchange between them that helps him realize why is he even playing ping pong in the first place and what he wants to achieve by that. We turn back in time to the days of childhood of our main characters and learn that the whistling was actually a song created by Smile while he was a kid. And the sounds are reflecting that, the whistling is very childish, innocent and simple, which perfectly encapsulates the simplicity of life back then and how easy it was to get lost in your fun small passion. Which makes for a perfect prelude to what’s about to come, actually.

The Track “Peco” starts playing immediately after the whistling ends and Hoshino starts finally winning. And this piece, named after our main character, has to easily be one of the greatest character songs I’ve ever heard. I’m in awe of how superbly it manages to express the character of Peco, with all the eclectic, crazy and insane different instruments all somehow tied together. It almost resembles a video game OST track with how energetic it is, yet somehow it still feels very childish and innocent. It makes for the perfect follow-up to the whistling we heard just a second before, “Peco” has the same innocent soul to it but it’s much more complex of a track. It’s diverse, experimental and bold in many ways. The intricacy of it makes a good juxtaposition to the place in which our main characters were compared to their childhood. They’re in a new place, encountering new difficult challenges, they are on the verge of the chaos that is adulthood. Yet, despite it all, their love for simplicity of ping pong as a sport still remains and the genius of presenting it all almost only with the show’s OST ends up creating one of the most memorable moments I’ve ever seen in anime.