"Ping Pong the Animation"

Spring 2014 season has started and one show has stood out for me so far.  It's "Ping Pong the Animation."  The art style is unique, realistic but simplistic at the same time.  The dialogue is very realistic as well, almost like a live drama.  This one episode introduced Hoshino (aka, Peco) and Tsukimoto (aka, Smile) two talented first year students in a high school ping pong team.  They're childhood friends who trained at the same ping pong dojo (who knew there were ping pong dojos). They sneak over to the another high school to peek at the new Chinese exchange student recruited for ping pong.  All the dialogue from the Chinese student Wenge and his coach are in Mandarin, and it's not broken Mandarin or magically changed to Japanese. It's refreshing to see the producers committed to using fluent Chinese speakers.  Can't wait to see more of this noitaminA show.  It's currently streaming at Funimation in the United States.  Elsewhere it can be found at Crunchyroll.