News

Scorching Ping Pong Girls Manga Gets Sequel Manga on April 28

Manga creator Yagura Asano launched a "chapter 0" of a new manga on Takeshobo's Storia Dash website on February 24 titled Shakunetsu no Idol Musume (Scorching Idol Girls), an apparent reference to their older Scorching Ping Pong Girls (Shakunetsu no Takkyū Musume) manga. At the end of the chapter, it reveals that the manga is a spinoff that leads into a new sequel to Scorching Ping Pong Girls titled Shakunetsu no Takkyū Musume Reburn!!, which will debut on April 28.

The Shakunetsu no Idol Musume chapter is set in a girls' high school named Teikoku Private School, and centers on school newspaper reporter Mogami, a conservative and traditional girl who disapproves of her school's well-known school idol group Black Swan. Black Swan is a strange idol group that also functions as the school's table tennis team, and is led by center idol/ping pong ace Kuroba Hakurogi. Mogami is assigned to write a feature article on Black Swan, and finds out from Kuroba that the origin of Black Swan was due to Kuroba wanting to make the school's ping pong team uniforms fancier. It turns out that Kuroba is extremely dedicated to table tennis, and Mogami follows her to a match. [Warning: The following text contains spoilers for the chapter. Highlight text to read the spoilers.]
Mogami is revealed to have practiced ping pong intensely herself, before giving it up. Kuroba's win inspires her to declare her love for it again. Mogami relays the results of the match to her younger sister, which is revealed to be Agari Kamiya, revealing Mogami to be Agari's older sister. The story then shifts to Agari and the other characters from Suzumegahara in Scorching Ping Pong Girls.

Asano launched the original Scorching Ping Pong Girls manga in Shueisha's Jump SQ. 19 magazine in 2013, and moved the manga to the Tonari no Young Jump web magazine after Jump SQ. 19 ended publication in February 2015. The manga abruptly ended in February 2019, and Shueisha published seven compiled book volumes for the manga.

At the time of the manga's ending, Asano stated that they were uncertain about finding another venue to immediately continue drawing or starting a new work entirely, but vowed not to give up. The creator wanted to say more, but refrained from doing so now since such "needless comments" would only detract from the work itself.

The manga follows Koyori Tsumuzikaze and Agari Kamiya as they enter the world of girls' middle school ping-pong.

The manga inspired a television anime that ran from October to December 2016 from director Yasuhiro Irie (Healer Girl, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Code:Breaker) and the studio Kinema Citrus. Crunchyroll streamed the anime as it aired in Japan.

Sources: Storia Dash, Yagura Asano's Twitter account