Baise Shandian is an anime Ive had on my radar for a ridiculously long time at least 5 years for sure. The primary purpose of me writing this review is so that it gets some of the attention that it deserves and people dont sleep on it. As a disclaimer Im not at all familiar with any trends or standards of Chinese anime so Im not gonna harp on its objective technical quality that much. With all that out of the way: First off the character list thats currently on this AniList page isnt entirely correct. These were the protype characters that appeared in the teaser trailer and while they do have the same names their appearances have been altered to be certainly less ... animeish. However their portraits still paint a pretty obvious character profile of each one: Ruozhi Zhang is the cool and aloof prodigy Lu Wang is the honor student hard worker as well as somewhat of a prodigy herself Xintong Li is there for moe factor and Xiao Ding is our resident playboy. The summary for the show is about as follows: Upon arriving at her new school Ruozhi Zhang a retired top table tennis childhood prodigy player realizes theres quite some interest for her sport in town namely after a fateful encounter with Lu Wang the class president. After making friends with absolute table tennis nerd Xintong Li they are all pulled into the schools newly founded table tennis club. Despite everyones enthusiasm about the schools performance the school team needs at least one more strong player if they want to stand a chance at not getting absolutely destroyed at the upcoming competition not even Xiao Dings outrageous talent and unpredictable technique combined with seasoned veterans Ruozhi Zhangs skills can carry them ... can they convince Lu Wang to join the team? And is Lu Wangs head really as far in the books as she makes it seem? Its certainly by the numbers sports anime stuff the whole squads here: the girl thats given up on her dream but still willing to play simply for the hell of it and maybe theres still something out there to rekindle her love for the sport the cute girl with mediocre skills but the metaphorical glue that holds the team together the girl thats all jokes and raw talent even if somewhat unpredictable/unreliable and the girl thats got both talent and drive just her own internal doubts holding her back. However even if its nothing entirely remarkable I do think theres a lot to appreciate about these characters. Xiao Ding is perhaps the weakest out of all of them shes got a spunky boyish personality clearly horrible grades and a lack of manners but her raw physical talent is just so cool to watch that I forgive the relatively short runtime of these episodes for kinda forgetting to flesh her out beyond rebel with a heart of gold. Xintong Li is toothachingly cute and wants to make friends but shes also an absolute nutter about table tennis. Im really glad that shes not just cute girl with a lot of enthusiasm and very little technical prowess Xingtongs hyperfixation has made her into an incredibly perceptive audience member and that seems to reflect in her playing even if we dont see her play all that much. Ruozhi Zhang and Lu Wang are the two that get the most development and I found it pretty refreshing how they played off of each other. Ruozhi may be retired from playing professionally and is somewhat selfconscious about her lack of practice but its clear she still really cares about the sport and its something that she has a special connection with. Yes she had a semitraumatic event thats made her take a pause in her career but its not just simplified down to And she was too scared to play again. Lu Wang on the other hand was also quite good in her youth but she absolutely hated losing so while she avoids joining the team she still shows off her skils to people that dont know any better and revels in the attention. To Ruozhi table tennis has never been just a game but all the same she seems to have lost the spark that made her so fascinated with it Lu Wang despite her hesitation in taking the sport much further than that rekindles that spark in her when its all too obvious just how dedicated to this sport she has been and to what extent she could be capable. As an intermission I have to say that the art and animation in this show are actually very good. Its not overly smooth all the way through theres nothing overly egregious like twoframe bouncing chibis on plain colored backgrounds to stretch out jokes but there is a noticeable drop in interesting angles and quantity of inbetween frames for scenes where were not watching the table tennis action. The character art stays consistent all the way through however so its hardly a shame to have to linger on a lethargicallyanimated interaction when the style is adhered to and the characters are all given the weight they deserve. I was impressed even by the inconsequential frames where a large portion of the student body could be seen it was clear that some of them were only moving in a twoframe loop or not moving at all but they all still had distinct hair and clear consistent structure not just prop shadows for the school setting. The meat and potatoes of this show is of course the table tennis scenes and they managed to capture that energy of professional highspeed table tennis perfectly. With some fancy intense angles and perspectives in the mix it is a real treat to watch even if an episode might feature a lot of talking and selfreflection the pingpong scenes always spice it up. If you recall the original teaser trailer for this show they are regretfully not that intense but its also nowhere near Cinderella Nine levels of go girl give us nothing. To somewhat touch on the overall negative aspects of the show I dont think that anything here is a dealbreaker but its clear that this show did suffer through some production troubles and rewrites. Even if the show isnt necessarily messy or impossible to follow the story is very straightforward and sweet it does feel like there was supposed to be a bit more here at least 6 episodes more for sure. For example who is Xiao Ding and whats her deal with being so good? Is she just good because she is or does she have her own personal reasons to play and thats why shes developed these freakish even if unrefined skills? We get a good bit of background on Ruozhi and Lu but theyre also still vague on their exact backgrounds and overall relationship to the sport. I loved the parts where Ruozhi describes her emotions and we see the associations she has with playing/watching table tennis but everyones drive to be there and work hard is largely left up to the viewers interpretation or dare I say conjecture. In summary this is a pretty okay short show or more generously a fantastic prologue to a show that doesnt exist. Unfortunately the only readily available upload I found of it online has subtitles that leave a lot to be desired but they do give you a decent gist of whats going on there seem to be a myriad of Chinese idioms and simple machine translation issues that evaded the proofreaders but I am not going to be one to complain when Ive been digging through the depths of the surface internet for a chance to watch this show for years on end. If you like engaging allgirls casts with little bit of subtext on the side with a healthy helping of sports action this is for you especially if youre like me and appreciate the shows that have a more raw feel to them and not just cute girls doing cute things.