As the title indicates, this post is about how Ping Pong uses a conventional hero, in an unconventional way mind you, as a means to tell its story. It does this by taking the tropes of generic hero stories and treating them as a template to build on. I will explain the similarities in this post by going over the tropes.
Defeat them the way they defeat you: This trope is usually implemented subtly in hero stories. It is when the hero is defeated early on in a season or a show and has to make a come-back and defeat his opponent, sometimes at his own game and sometimes in the same way he defeated him. You can see a variation of this in the first season of Kaiji and a better version in season 2 of Ruroni Kenshin where Kenshin defeats Sojiro Seita by breaking the latter's sword, which parallels the same way Seita had defeated him earlier that same season. This trope is used with regard to China and Peco's game where Peco defeats China easily, just as easily as the latter had defeated him in the earlier episodes of the show. However, unlike in conventional superhero stories, this is used to show China gave up on Ping Pong professionally and instead opted to make friends rather than to show humiliate the villain and show how much better the hero is.
The Dragon: Dragons are a mainstay of fairy tales, often posing as the final challenge meant to be overcome before reaching the finale. They are ultimately objects of adversity, incapable of having a character of their own, their sole purpose to be the evil to be defeated before reaching the princess (who exists as the object of love). Dragon in Ping Pong is the leader of a Ping Pong club and poses the same sort of fearsome challenge that a normal dragon would. However, the true subversiveness of writing comes in when the main challenge becomes one of mental strength rather than one of physical prowess, as it is the internal issues of Dragon that push him to play competitively and Peco's own victory only comes when he mentally pushes through his physical injury. This makes the whole thing be about physiological wellness instead of brute strength. Furthermore, the dragon is made peace with by the end. Peco even says "Love ya, Dragon." by the end, which, though it may seem negligible, is a sign that the dragon has lost his original function.
The good guy and the bad guy: This is pretty simple. There have been several allusions to a video game wherein the protagonist is a superhero and the antagonist a giant robot. These two characters are symbolic of Peco of Smile respectively. The former is supposed to show the upbeat attitude of Peco and the latter the unfeeling nature of Smile. The really interesting thing about this is how the first half of the show spends a lot more time with Smile than it does with Peco and how they are both friends at the end of the day. This chemistry takes an otherwise black-and-white dichotomy and adds layers of complexity.
My discord: https://discord.gg/WfPJXjB
My patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BoldnessofSouls